Awesome Table - A better view builder

Post date: Oct 11, 2016 4:20:23 PM

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More than a year and a half ago, we released the awesome-table.com web app in an effort to make Awesome Table less dependent on Google Sites. Now most people are creating / editing their views on the web app rather than in the gadget editor UI of Google Sites.

In the meantime, Google announced the new version of Google Sites. Awesome Table is compatible with this new version: You can open our web app, create a view, get the link and insert it in a site page.

In the future, all views will be created from our web app and thus we are focusing our efforts on delivering the best experience possible there. We have completely redesigned our editor and it is now available to all:

You will notice some similarities with the UI of the new version of Google Sites, including the sidebar on the right:

We have replaced many text buttons with icons, making the UI more consistent with all the new Material Design apps from Google, while keeping it as simple as possible. And when you change a setting, you can click on the update button and quickly see the result, as the view is now the main element of the UI.

Technically, this new editor was built using Polymer and follows the rules of Progressive Web Apps. This means that the app will feel more and more like a native mobile app (logo on the home screen, loading page, full screen,...):

What are the next steps?

We have to improve the home page / view list. We will mostly copy the home of Google Docs, Sheets, Forms, Sites etc., and include a template gallery.

It should look similar to your list of spreadsheets available at sheets.google.com

We will also make use of service workers to offer a nice offline experience and instant loading of views you have previously seen (both on desktop and mobile).

And we will rely more on Google APIs, using Google Picker to help you select a spreadsheet, the Drive API to check permissions on your spreadsheet and the Sheets API to list the tabs and range of your sheet.

This is just a glimpse of our roadmap and we are planning many more features to make Awesome Table even more awesome :)

Oh by the way, we have nearly 3 Millions users on the Google Apps Marketplace now, meaning that Awesome Table is in the top 15 of the most installed apps on this marketplace:

https://apps.google.com/marketplace/u/0/app/gljjlppdnmnaaopmnekbgldhndaggjee