We’ve introduced the designer module in 6.0 with the purpose of decoupling the user interface creation from Excel workbooks. This approach proved to be very successful with its intuitive interface and added features. In the 6.1 version, responsive applications created with the designer can now enjoy data new data visualization and workflow features! The designer is now more powerful than ever.
In this update, we gave the designer applications data visualization capabilities in the form of dozens of new charts and hundreds of new maps. Just like any other module, you can drag and drop these visualization tools into your applications to present to your users.
Pretty much all geographical regions, continents, countries, states, counties can be visualized using the new maps module. We introduced 4 map types to choose from: Standard Map, Cartogram, Continuous Cartogram, and Tile Map. Drag-and-drop, then select your data fields.
Charts and maps created this way are fully interactive and responsive. This means that users can mouse-over data fields to drill-into the data and visualizations will scale based on user screen properties.
Having everything decoupled from Excel workbooks, of course also means that you don’t even need your original spreadsheet anymore to modify the user interface of your web applications. Once the workbook is uploaded, you can simply use the SpreadsheetWEB web interface to add, remove, or modify any UI element directly from the designer page.
This update also made the designer a powerhouse, capable of implementing entire workflows around workbook logic. We’ve added print and email events that can be triggered by action buttons. When clicked, a button with the appropriate events tied to it will launch all such events. This means that users can get a PDF export and notify other users with the click of a button!
And that’s not all. You can now create custom actions into designer applications by coding custom logic in C#. This way, you can manipulate calculation results or UI actions before or after certain system events.
Along with new data visualization and workflow features, dozens of new features have been added with this update to the designer module, and we hope that you’ll like these new tools as much as we do! For a full list of the change log, please see our user guide.
Sign up for a free trial account if you haven’t already done so and start building modern web applications from your Excel spreadsheets in no time.
