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Controls - Top 6 changes that are coming to Modern Controls in 2024

What updates and enhancements might we see to the Modern controls in 2024? Find out here...

There was a great article that was posted on the Power Apps blog the other day by Yogesh Gupta, Senior Product Manager. The post highlights the modern control roadmap, including the progress made in 2023 and a glimpse into what we'll see in 2024.


Based on this article, here's what I think are the most exciting modern control enhancements that we'll see in 2024.

1 - Changes to Modern Text Input, Dropdown and Combo box controls

These basic data entry controls will gain label and required properties.

The ability to define label text against a text input control (or any other data entry control) can help speed up the development process by not having to add separate label controls next to data entry controls.

Adding custom validation (such as required text entry controls) can always involve much effort so hopefully, the addition of a 'Required' property will help.

2 - New Modern Dialog control

An exciting enhancement will be the addition of a dialog control. Adding custom dialogs (such as yes/no confirmation dialogs) has traditionally involved a lot of custom work.

At present, the creator kit offers a dialog control which we can use. However, the addition of a dialog control in the core Power App controls rather than having to rely on third-party controls will be a great enhancement.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/guidance/creator-kit/dialog?WT.mc_id=DX-MVP-5004229

3 - New Modern Toolbar control

Another addition to the modern control toolset will be a toolbar control. There aren't too many details about this announcement, but I would imagine it would provide the sort of functionality that's illustrated in the screenshot beneath.


4 - Improvements to styling properties

Many of the modern controls lack basic settings for styles.

Taking the example of the modern text input control, the modern control does not provide the ability to set the fill colour (ie, the background colour), or the text padding within the actual control. These are two settings that have been mentioned specifically in the post.

The simple missing properties can easily prevent the adoption of modern controls therefore, this proposed enhancement is important.

5 - New Fluent Icons

Microsoft will introduce a new fluent icon control. This update will be welcome as it will enable us to build UI that more closely matches the fresh look and feel of the modern controls.

6 - Support for Theming

The built-in theming capabilities in Power Apps have never been very powerful because they only permit the selection of a handful of prebuilt themes. In the proposed update, there will be a move towards being able to create custom themes. This update will be great as it would allow us to more easily build apps that match the colour scheme of an organisation.

Summary

With modern controls, we can build apps that adhere to modern 'fluent' design that's been adopted by many products in the Microsoft stack. The problem is that these controls lack the functionality of the controls that they replace and can still be buggy. The enhancements that Microsoft have proposed are very welcome and I look forward to seeing them in the near future.
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