New App Inventor User Interface in Open Beta!

I’ve been mentioning for a while now that the internal scroll in the blocks section, both in all Firefox forks and in Firefox itself, skips and doesn’t provide smooth scrolling, which is frustrating. This forces users to rely only on browsers with Chromium engine or use a Chromium User Agent on Gecko engines. Since a new UI is still being implemented, I thought it might be worth checking if this is an issue with the builder or with the Gecko engines.

Sample video

I use Firefox as my primary browser on MacOS. For me, the scroll on the blocks flyout does not skip, but it does scroll much faster than it does on Chrome.

i am also using firefox but it directly scrolled to either top or bottom

Ah that's what I mean, it scrolls too fast or skips content, so you have to scroll and scroll, otherwise it skips most of the blocks.

I too have same issue a while ago,
I use Mac Mouse Fix app which solved this issue.
Give it a try it's free

The new UI is beautiful and I enjoy using it. Thank you for all your hard work!

I have a suggestion that isn't so much about esthetics as it is about the nuts and bolts. When working on a dense design, it becomes increasingly difficult to insert and move components around in the designer. I would love to be able to drag/drop/move components in the component tree itself. You could see exactly where you're placing your component even when the designer becomes cramped.

Would this be possible without a ton of work? Would others find it useful?

Thanks,
Bryon

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Believe it or not, we have some keyboard shortcuts in the work from this summer's Google Summer of Code projects that adds this functionality from the keyboard. This is @Venky 's work. We are not the fastest at getting new features into production due to our small staff, but this is on my priority list.

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Wow! This is great news and kudos to @Venky! I am in no rush for this feature but looking forward to it!

Thank you!
-Bryon

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The search textbox could be much bigger to suit the new UI :sweat_smile:

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The width in the new UI isnt fixed and it changes depending on the component title.

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I have a fix in the works for that.

1 Like

Are suggestions for the Block Editor welcome in this topic?

@>-->---

Yes, You can!

image

This thread is just about the new UI. If you want to discuss potential block editor improvements, I'd first suggest you take a look at the following thread:

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What are you doing when you attempt to use this checkbox? When I tested it, it worked as expected.

For some reason I can't see my objects anymore.I also loaded previous versions of my project and I have the same issue. I think there is something wrong with the interface cause I was able to see them. I have included .aia file
Jim_test_chkbox.aia (3.9 MB)

Can you you see the components in classic mode?

You set everything invisible.

The checkbox reveals all.

Good point @ABC
I changed back to classic mode and it worked but it's not a permanent fix it seems. I explain

Neo mode
open >> jim_test_chkbox - not ok
change to Classic mode - ok
change to Neo mode - ok
open >> jim_test_chkbox2 - not ok

From there we have two cases

Case A
now if you try to open again jim_test_chkbox
open >> jim_test_chkbox - ok << still works ok

Case B
but if you try to do the same as before to jim_test_chkbox2 (changing to classic and back to Neo) then

jim_test_chkbox2 - ok
open >> jim_test_chkbox - not ok

which means jim_test_chkbox loses its "fix"

I have included the second file also for testing
Jim_test_chkbox2.aia (3.9 MB)