Utilizing a gallery view significantly streamlines the management of image-centric data, like a clients-item-catalog for a logistics firm I was working with today.
I’ve optimized the laborious task of incorporating over a hundred images into Google Sheets to create such a catalog, given the multitude of clicks needed to embed a single image, not to mention the absence of a full-screen viewing option.
I was deciding between Baserow and Airtable for this project and ultimately chose Airtable for two key reasons. Implementing these features could make Baserow’s gallery view as efficient as Airtable’s.
Create new rows on drag and drop images
In Baserow, each image must be manually uploaded to its respective row, a two-step process of “create a row” followed by “upload image.” However, when handling image-based data, it’s far more practical to generate a row upon image upload. With Airtable, you can drag and drop a collection of images, instantly creating a new list of rows — effortless and instantaneous. Or you can choose to drag and drop these images into the existed row without open the extended view. I eagerly await its integration))
For a visual demonstration, here’s a screencast: CleanShot 2024-02-20 at 16.25.37 · CleanShot Cloud
Image Cover options
While both Baserow and Airtable offer a cover photo for each row in the gallery view (it would indeed be strange without one), Baserow limits you to cropping the image. For a logistics company’s inventory list, where product photos can vary widely in format and aspect ratio, seeing only a portion of a required table, chair, or sofa is far from ideal. Airtable’s “crop or fit” mode, which displays also the entire image without cropping, is essential for such tasks and should be a standard feature in Baserow as well.
Here is a screencast with demonstration CleanShot 2024-02-20 at 16.50.13 · CleanShot Cloud
Incorporating these two features would greatly enhance Baserow’s usability for image-heavy projects and could potentially make it the go-to choice for similar tasks in the future.
