August 2023 updates for modernization and theming in Power Apps

Note: This blog is in continuation of the announcement of modern controls coming to canvas apps & new look for model driven apps. You can find the July 2023 updates here.

Modern controls updates in canvas apps

In the month of August, there was critical progress made on the journey to modernize Power Apps with the release of new controls and improvements on existing controls. 

Below are the August updates for modern controls already released or currently in deployment: 

New control released:  

• Table – The first iteration of a new responsive Table control is now available for makers. After connecting your Table to data and selecting the columns you want to see, the Table will show your data in a tabular or list format, depending on the width of the control. Following are the key properties & control behaviors for maker to utilize this control well:
  • There is default reflow built in which updates table to list view. And makers can also take full control of the responsive behavior of the Table by utilizing the Reflow property.
  • The tabular format boasts infinite scrolling to give users a more modern data browsing experience over paging. Note this initial version only supports connecting to Dataverse entities, but we will be expanding support to other connectors soon, as well as evolving the Table’s customization options.

Key control improvements:

Below are the important updates we made to the controls last month:

Text	– Ability to highlight text in the text control which allows for an unblocked copy and paste on the text control. – Auto height for the text control is now available in the properties panel.
Date Picker	– Control updated to be consistent with Fluent 2. – New date format properties – Short, Long Abbreviated and Year Month, which are more accommodative of standard date properties across regions. – New properties to customize date picker like StartDay, EndYear, StartofWeek, & more to make it more usable for end users.

What is next?

There are several awesome capabilities that we are going to be bringing over the coming weeks:  

• Per control styling – We are in progress on the first couple of styling properties that allow a modern control to deviate from the app’s theme. We’ll be starting with allowing makers to override the font size and color palette of a control. 
  
• Upcoming controls
  
  1. Header control: Starting this fall, makers can look forward to using out-of-the-box higher level building blocks to create their apps.  These controls will be able to handle more complex app scenarios while being easy to configure and responsive. The first of these controls will be App Header, which is expected in the fall. Improved app navigation is another concept we will address with these controls, and App Header will also be enhanced to handle navigation. 
     
  2. Form Control: We have a new form control based on modern controls in development which aligns better with the new design language and similar in functionality of existing form controls with no new learning curve for our makers.