Right now it’s really easy for newcomers to Anvil to think they’re sharing a clone link when they’re actually sharing the publish link. That’s because on the Share App screen, the publish link is at the top, and the clone link is below it.
We already have a way to get to the publish link, through the Publish App screen. Can we get rid of the Run Your App section from the Share App screen, so that the clone link is on the top of that screen? That will help newcomers get the right link when they’re trying to share a clone link. If they want a publish link they’ll still be able to get that from the Publish App screen.
3 Likes
I think I’d oppose this, on balance. Mistakes in this direction are not so consequential, whereas mistakenly giving someone a copy of your Data Tables when you intended to give them a link to run your app could be a privacy breach. (Maybe there are ways to deal with that, though, like a setting that disables clone sharing for an app–unless the setting is changed.)
That seems like an odd argument against making the UI clearer, that the current confusing UI is confusing in a harmless way.
I realized I was sharing my data only after cloning a few apps. I don’t like the data sharing happening by default and without explicit warning.
I think the UI should explicitly show the list of tables that will be shared and ask whether you want the data to be included or you want the clone to create empty tables.
4 Likes
I strongly second this, under the “explicit is better than implicit” banner.
3 Likes
Agreed, that would be an awesome feature.
On a related note, the “Publish” dialog currently displays a clone link this way (after an additional click to uncover it):
I expected to see a note about Data Tables being included, as there is on the Share dialog.
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Last I tried, if you download the app as a single .yaml file, the database table contents stay behind. It doesn’t address any user-interface wants, but in behavioral respects – wanting to send an app w/o data – this might be considered a sort of a workaround.
