Introducing beta (previously, experimental) features (including parentheses)!

Love the initiative!! Could you please let us choose where to put the parenthesis? Making it automatic lets the software choose where to put them, and sometimes they don’t work on certain formulas.

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Hi! I think the ability to build more complex expressions has been one of the key features we are missing. Parentheses look like a step in this direction. For how Bubble is implementing this and what you mentioned before, I understand that one challenge is how to let the user build the expression correctly without messing with open/ending parenthesis.

I can imagine two ways here:
A) Allowing build expressions more freely (just typing), like opening a ‘(’, and with some validations as currently are, warning for example that the expression is incorrect because there are more ‘(’ than ‘)’.
B) Making the expression editor more like boxes (parent/child scheme), as we usually see in many codes like HTML. Similar to the existing Arbitrary text that was mentioned before, but more in a visual and easy way to build and edit expressions. In this scenario, including a parenthesis may add a ‘(’ and ‘)’ and you may move/drop each part where you want.
I understand this probably requires important changes in the current expressions system, but I honestly think the ability to build big and complex expressions is key for many apps.

Thanks!

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I’ve been using this quite extensively the past few weeks - And have been able to do everything I wasn’t able to do in the past, including long addition and subtraction equations. In my humble opinion, this is working well enough to satisfy my needs as a long time Bubble power user.

What isn’t working well is the ability to copy an expression within a parenthesis and paste it. We still have the paradigm that copying an expression copies everything… so taking one piece of a long dynamic expression and just trying to grab one piece is still beyond our grasp.

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Can anyone advise if theres a particular method to inserting the parentheses?

I’m creating a custom formula but it seems that when using the point and click tool is inserting variables in the wrong places. Manually typing out the formula with parentheses doesn’t seem to work either which would make generating a formula much quicker.

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Hi @grace.hong is there any news about the official release date of parenthesis? It is months after your post about this test release. Also, when using this at this moment, is there the change it will break once the official release is out?

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We’ve received a great deal of feedback that has helped us prioritize this as a project going forward! There’s quite an amout of work required to get the interaction model right since users mentioned that the prototype as it stands can use some refinements. Therefore, it’s difficult to necessarily provide an estimated launch date.

For whatever we launch, we’re likely not changing how expressions are stored on Bubble, and even if we did, you should be able to preserve the capabilities created through the experimental paretheses feature.

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It’s amazing how the simple parenthesis can help form much more complicated equations in a more simple way. Really need this.

What I’ve been doing a lot for complicated equations is to set up custom states to hold the value that I would normally place inside of parenthesis. Maybe there is a better way to do it, but having the option to just use parenthesis makes life a lot easier. Hopefully this can get perfected well.

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Thank you for this clarification. Even in its current not so friendly shape, the experimental parenthesis feature is a big leap in experience of creating/updating expressions. Thank you for this.

So like you said, yes, please make sure the expressions created with experimental parenthesis feature are kept intact even after a well rounded solution is built.

Hi @grace.hong
I can’t see the Deferral Drawing, only the other 2.
Do you know why?

Thanks

It’s part of the 21 update as standard I believe!

Hi philip2,
Thanks!

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@grace.hong are there any updates on when we might be able to see parentheses?

Turn parens on under experimental in settings. You know, just like explained in the original post? (Also, that feature works great and solves a great many limitations in Bubble so there’s no reason not to turn it on.)

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Apologies, did not see the instructions - I came here direct to atlasproject’s reply and thought I missed the experimental phase or something.

Sorted !

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@grace.hong
It’s been about a year since the release of the feature. I’m about to start a new project and I’d like to use the feature, but for stability’s sake, I don’t want my app to rely on experiments. Is this feature going to be released has a standard soon?

Thanks!

Yes, we’re working on releasing this feature soon, as part of our expression composer revamp, this quarter!

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Fantastic! Thanks for replying quickly.

Hi all! I love the parentheses for math expression!

However, I would like to know if there is a way to limit the number of digits in a decimal number. I would like to have a maximum of two numbers after the point…

Thank you all!

I’m not sure what that has to do with this thread…

but in any case, just round the number to 2 decimal places using :rounded to 2 (or you can use :formatted as, and select a number with 2 decimal places, depending on exactly how you want to display the number).

Hello, we are now in July. Is this feature still experimental? can we relay on it?

Thanks