The New Glide

 

Recently I wrote a post about constructing a simple mobile app on Glide (www.glideapps.com). At the time I mentioned that I liked using the platform, but that it was limited by the need to use Google Sheets as the backend database (and by other factors, like a lack of templates). However, all that changed last month when Glide released version 2.0, which includes a number of new features.

The biggest change, in my opinion, is the release of "Glide Tables" the platform's proprietary database. Glide Tables are much faster than linking to Google Sheets, plus they're more scalable and they allow you to access the same data tables from multiple apps. You can still use Google Sheets as your database, but that's optional now.

Another major change is the addition of a bunch of new components, including:

• Webhooks (A webhook or web callback is a way for an app to provide data to other applications as it happens)
• Large scale (1 GB) file uploads
• Barcode scanning
• New button styles
• Satellite maps
• Sound effects
• Hint components

You'll find some other improvements too:

• Tablet and desktop views of your app in addition to the smartphone view (paid plans only)
• A new, much faster (open source) data editor
• A re-designed App Builder
• Additional team collaboration features
• An "Action Editor" that lets you build sequences of actions (workflows) with conditional branching capability
  
• A new dashboard
• Hundreds of new templates

Glide's pricing structure has also changed. The "Free" plan is now called the "Personal" plan to indicate that's it's intended primarily for personal, rather than commercial use (you're still limited to 500 rows of data on the Personal plan). The "Pro" plan, which allows 25,000 data rows and provides phone, tablet and desktop views, is now $32/month ($24/month when paid annually).

You can go to https://www.glideapps.com/blog/introducing-glide-2.0 for additional information on the new version of Glide.