Hi all,
I stumbled upon some problems which happened to me more than once, which I will describe.
Those were incredibly frustrating and time-consuming, as I lost hours of work.
SCENARIO: ADVANCED USE - DYNAMIC LAYOUT
Currently I am improving the layout disposition of objects in my Apps.
I noticed that by letting the app use the default values, the default "scale with points" setting leads to very different layouts depending on how is the setting of "scale and character size" on Windows 10. The font and object size changes in PowerApps is simply massive - in my opinion.
So I need more predictability on how the app looks across devices, and also how it scales as the user works in a window of arbitrary sizes, ans as the user resizes the window during operation.
To that I am replacing the literal numbers in the properties: Size X, Y, Height and Width of several objects, so that they conform to layout disposition and flow more adequate to our requirements.
The bug is that there are several actions that cause the app to recalculate and overwrite those values, overwriting the previous values even if they are not literal numbers.
My proposed solution, then, is that certain reflow actions in the design interface only overwrite attributes for font size, position and dimension attributes if their values are literal numbers, but not if they are formulas.
First Problem: Changing the App settings - Screen Size settings will overwrite custom formulas and values when rescaling the app. I think there may be more settings in the app that cause it to recalculate object positions, but I did not do an exhaustive check.
Forms: Forms really don't like custom width values. If the user changes any value of border, brackground or dimensions in the form, width custom formulas for datacards are lost, even if I am only saying "width = Parent.Width".
Components: Changing App dimension settings in the App Settings will break formulas on attributes for size, position and dimension even inside Components. I have created a resizing circle which would have a few icons scale gracefully as it is resized as a component, and it broke, requiring to have it redone.
Finally, a different-but-not-too-different problem. If I accidentally delete a form, and then undo the action, it is not restored faithfully. The Attributes for Size, position and dimensions for the app, datacard, and its components are restored with absolute values rather than restoring their original formulas.
