Tables are core to what makes Coda powerful and flexible, but we know getting started with them can be tricky. As part of our ongoing effort to streamline how you use Coda, we’ve made a few improvements to how you add columns to tables:
Reduced the number of nested menu and options in column type menu
Added helpful hover previews to all column types, so you can confidently make the right choice
Improved search keywords to make finding the right column type easier
Updated search results and categorization to be clearer and easier to parse
Many other smaller fixes and quality of life improvements that make adding a new column more approachable and simple.
I love that the team are streamlining Coda. Its something thats really needed to help new users get started faster. Thanks for your guys hard work on this!
What I am not a fan of is having to click twice. It feels backwards considering you used to be able to do all of this in one click.
Could we somehow activate the column type menu if we hover over the plus?
is is possible that this update also created unexpected behavior:
this is a published doc showing hyperlinks. They still work, well that is to say if you click on them. When you hoover your mouse over the link, the content of the page you are on is shown, not the content of the hyperlinked row.
I believe this is unrelated, but seems like it might be a bug regardless. Let me escalate this internally and see if we can track down what’s going on here. Thanks for reporting this.
Fan of the efforts being made to make Coda more accessible, but the execution is stacking updates that add friction for “high ceiling” builders.
Previously we could mouse over one menu and scroll fast to type.
Now it takes multiple scroll wheels to get to “Relations” - very common column type for builders.
Unrelated, but this compounds the added friction around formulas - which now takes multiple clicks to get into.
Column UX is challenging because we’re adding/editing columns every couple of minutes, so a thoughtful update for experienced builders that makes it faster/fewer clicks/scrolls would be great!
Thanks for the thoughtful feedback! I’ll take this back to the team as we continue to gather feedback and iterate. Especially helpful to hear about Relation column type, as this is certainly harder to get to now, outside of search.
The one piece of feedback I’d give is allow “text” to be a default when a column is created
Previously, if the last column of a table was selected, we could press tab as many times we’d like. And as we press tab, Moore and Moore, the corresponding number of columns would be added to our table.
Now, we are forced to pick a column type every time that we make a column. So I can’t even tab and make multiple columns at once.
Hi @Scott_Collier-Weir, thanks for the thoughtful feedback, as always! We will actually be updating the tab behavior shortly, which should be live by Monday.
The new Tab behavior will no longer open the column type menu, but instead put the cursor in the column name of the new column. In actuality, if you want to rapid fire creating columns you will need to Tab twice, for each column. This solution will be a bit in between what we have now and what happened previously. Once this goes live on Monday, we’d love feedback on this and look forward to continuing to iterate.
Plz prioritize functional updates such as MAKING PAGES SHARABLE (NOT NEEDING TO SHARE THE ENTIRE DOC). In my mind, this would have been a feature of the MVP of this product and I am so confused how it has not implemented yet. Is there a reason?
Thanks for sharing the feedback, and certainly share in your eagerness for sub-doc sharing. My colleague, @Ayuba_Audu, shared an update relatively recently on the topic that you might find helpful that outlines the roadmap and challenges to getting there:
Hope you find this helpful. Also if you have additional feedback or thoughts on that request, that thread would be a great place to share those.
I’m maybe picky, but for once it’s really annoying not to have the little arrow anymore. I cannot explain that, but it feels really unconfortable for a daily use not to have this anymore.
It’s really about UX, but for me it appears to create a lot of friction
As a UX designer I will say the issue is with the icon. Icon should be about action not type of the current column. So it should be an edit icon or a column icon. “Column Options” may be shorter, like “Configure”, you clicked on the header to get to the menu of the column it’s obvious it’s about column.
I just noticed the option to hide the add column button. It really helps clean up the look of my tables! No constructive feedback here so maybe a useless comment haha. Just wanted to thank the Coda team for all the work they put into both the small and big improvements to Coda. I’m sure there’s plenty in the works and I’m very excited to see all the new features that will be rolling out in the future
