Would it be possible (or would anyone find it useful) to have the debugger’s evaluator inside the editor? My thought is it would be incredible to have a real-time display of expression results as you compose them.
Example: When finding a specific user to modify, you’d start with “Search for Users” and the evaluator shows all users, then you add a filter “Admin = yes” and the evaluator responds with users that meet the filter, and so on…
I feel like many new users (and even myself when trying to figure out a complicated search filter or sort), are often composing blind not really understanding what their expression really means. I know that taking the time to understand how it all works is on them, but being able to see what your expression is returning as you’re composing it may help connect dots.
Doesn’t even need to be “real-time” per se, but so many new users feel stuck when their expression goes red, and I think something like this could be useful for troubleshooting and learning.
I usually wait for the errors in the editor to see where the problems lie from a bubble perspective. Then I use the debug to test with different browsers for rendering. For me it might be redundant, but I’m new and haven’t built anything that would require anything complex.
Checkboxes with workflows might be a solution. Position them underneath the search on the page. After people are done typing, they could choose their filter for admin (or whatever) based on the current results.
I’m not sure I see how much better it is from the run mode debugger, and in run mode it makes much more sense since we have real data to evaluate things… Maybe this is more about better documentations or examples?
As regular user (not expert), it’s a very HARD time to find values and logics when selecting by name. The suggestion is to be able to see REAL VALUE of all variables in INSTANT moment, that will be awesome. Not everyone as the ability to remember variables (particularly hundreds of variables). So in the debugger mode inside editor, we can check in real time the value of all variables selected. Again, this will be a major AWESOME upgrade.
Well, the evaluator still displays blank for custom data that has no entries yet (EX: RG whose data source is a type with no entries). I actually just spoke to a new user who wasn’t seeing anything on his page because he simply hadn’t created an entry. Everything else was set up, and he couldn’t see that his search was returning zero results. Obviously there are other ways to discover this (such as the debugger), but I think having an “instant” feedback could have shown him that no matter how many different ways he configured his dynamic data, it was always going to return 0.
Composing expressions will result in something even if you’re not composing correctly. You get flagged when you’ve entered an incompatible expression (it turns red, creates an issue, and sometimes displays prompt to change Parent Thing or Search for first item, etc.). However, users don’t always know what value they are returning.
In fact, I think an instant real value return would be especially useful for those red flag encounters. Other cases would be when you’re trying to filter a giant list with a bunch of variables or have multiple sorts on a list. You can have a perfectly compatible expression, but it might not return the filter or sort order you want. If you had an Evaluator-type response showing you what you are returning, it would help inform your next steps.
Having said this, I do see the redundancy because in run mode because you have elements as context, and sometimes going through a workflow offers better information, but I think I just want something simpler that helps me do checks.
It’s also possible that this might not apply to enough environments that it’s too specific of a tool to implement, but I hope I’ve explained what I’m after.
If bringing live data into the selector is too cumbersome, maybe a half way measure might be more approachable. For instance, eliminating all invalid data types from the selector to begin with. Of course, sometimes when an invalid Type is selected, going further through the More prompt and additional selections ends up with the correct data type. In those cases where secondary selections are required, maybe those selections could be listed with another color.
