A tree to navigate and move components?

[Adam Garbinski]

One of the things I find particularly cumbersome in Appery builder is dragging components within the page. It is a frequent operation even, if you are a skilled developer since your ideas and user ideas about how the app should look like may vary greatly during the project time. Sometimes it involves moving over many objects which can't be done in a single step because builder's preview screen does not scroll when you drag something. So you have to make stops - drag the component a bit up often inside other component, scroll the screen up or down and then make another move.... Not a pretty UX Sometimes it is not possible at all and the only way to move component to a new location is to create a custom component from it and then put that custom component in the new place.
My recommendation is to add something that would facilitate that process. Perhaps a tree that shows the complete structure of the page.
Current breadcrumb is fine and should stay that way but having something extra that facilitates moving objects would be a great relief.

[maxkatz]

Can you give an example where exactly it becomes difficult to move components? If you can post screen shots or a short video -- that would be great to help us better understand the problem.

[Adam Garbinski]

I will try but it might be difficult.

See, this is the bottom of the page of my App. You can see the input component there.

Now take look at the top of my page:

Let's assume I want to move that intput component from the bottom of the page to the place somewhere near the page header. Now it is impossible without making stops on your way up and dropping that component somewhere on the page, because appery builder does not scroll your screen when in drag mode.

Also, when your page is complex it is sometimes hard to figure out where exactly some object are and who is the kid and who is the parent.
Very nice representation of that idea is available in 'Data' tab when you edit your maping. You can see the whole page tree there which is a great help in mapping. So I suggested doing something similar in 'Design' tab.

Hope I made matters more clear not less
Cheers,
Adam

[maxkatz]

Thanks.. this helps.