This post is regarding a feature request I want to make. The feature is about being able to click on a hyperlink and able to navigate to that section on the same screen. Like how we have on websites where clicking on something scrolls the page and takes the user to a certain section. Similarly, something like a!sectionLink that takes the section label or some identifier as input and takes the user to that section on the same page.
This would be helpful when there are dense interfaces or long interfaces having a lot of scrolls. And as portals come into the picture, this can also be very well used on Appian portals as they are expected to have long scrolls.
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hmmm.... i get where are you coming from. If im honest, my first thougt was. "but why are your interfaces so big"?Usually i am fan of a higher number of interfaces but with a limited amount of interaction/information per interface than just 1,2 very big ones.They become complicated to maintain especially the original designer is not available any more.Am i right, that this issue comes in general from the wish to navigate on large interfaces?
Yes. That is right. Sometimes, we tend to have like activity trackers/history timelines that do not look good with paging. Similarly, sometimes, the interfaces are intentionally kept long so the user can experience the feel of browsing through some feed.
hm...got it.... I Think it should be possible to jump to section or boxlayout.Perhaps with an additional parameter like "validationgroup" but than called "sectionName" per layout you try to jump to.
Or just a!interfaceLink() where the main parameter it accepts is a UID (string). Simultaneously, all on-form components (including sections, boxes, and input fields etc) are upgraded with a new optional parameter where an arbitrary UID can be set for that item (where the only requirement is that each one is unique). Then on click of a!interfaceLink, the form would auto-focus (along with scrolling to) that component.
(note: i'm not in love with the name interfaceLink, but the main point is that it can and should be something much more general than "section", IMHO)
but is the UID sufficient to jump to a refreshing section?
I didn't mention anything about refreshing (and neither did Harshit in the original post) - can you explain what this would entail and/or what constraint you're imagining?
AFAIK what I describe above (just like what Harshit lays out) could be made to work just like on-page links do in classic HTML.
sorry my miswording. I meant jumping to the section and kind of refocus on that.
My point is, in my hypothetical implementation, Appian would (and as far as I know, easily could) create this functionality such that all we need to do is make a link with a!interfaceLink and a valid UID found somewhere on that form. It could use their own bespoke highlighting functionality or just reuse existing stuff.
a!bookmarkLink()?
I could see this being of some use, and maybe not too much of a lift to incorporate.. The more functionality the better.
Chris said:a!bookmarkLink()
The name definitely needs some brainstorming, lol... it would necessarily be self-descriptive without making someone mistake its functionality for something else.