Weak app design (but good on desktop) – Coda Review

Coda is an amazing product that has made making spreadsheets and documents a JOY. I've been using Coda since 2017 and have loved seeing all of the new features and updates. They're really pushing a great product and bringing in some much needed innovation to document building. The app however has struggled since it's release. The experience is just plain bad, if not terrible. On desktop/Chrome it's a fantastic experience. It's very easy to create or edit different pages (or "sections" as coda calls it), edit and view tables, and navigate across all of your data in a document. It really is fun in my opinion. In the app, everything is a pain. I'm glad I can view my documents but editing it or adding new content is frustrating. The only format that doesn't quite break is a plain paragraph of text. Tables are not very elegant to view (and tables are Coda's main feature!). You have to scroll horizontally to read columns and cannot zoom in and out (seems like a basic feature that should be included). I would find value in being able to control the scale of the content I'm viewing, versus being stuck at one scale and can see only a few rows and columns at a time (I'm used to Google sheets in that way). This is an issue with more complex tables with more data. The entire experience is very awkward and clunky. There's nothing elegant about it, where desktop shines with almost every aspect of creating and editing. Other big pain points-- 1) no way to reorder rows of content. cannot drag and drop like on desktop. 2) no swipe actions or long press functionality for anything in table view (seems like an inherent app-like feature that should be included) 3) confusing that some tables show up as a list (where there is an add row below/above option if you swipe) but then some show up as tables (and you can't change between them) 4) editing a row of content forces you into a new page. Would rather stay on the same page like on desktop or any other spreadsheet experience unless I specifically say that I want to open the deeper view. 5) editing a row and then going back to your table resets your view back to the top of the page. Annoying and a pain when you have scrolled to the middle or bottom of a table (or tables) and then lose your place. Overall the app experience is awful so I use coda only on desktop. I was initially excited when this came out but every time I use it I get more and more frustrated with Coda. For such a pristine desktop design, this app really does the opposite and goes backwards in terms of innovative and intuitive design. I love the idea of "a doc as powerful as an app" but this app just isn't there yet.
Review by dandelionlion on Coda.