Cards, Simple Lists And File Lists

Not every list of records is a table. Your application may show the same records as a grid of cards, as a stripped-down one-line-per-record list, or as a list of documents and pictures you can preview and download. This chapter covers those three lighter ways of looking at data, and when each one is the right choice.

What These Layouts Are

A list screen always shows the same thing underneath: a set of records that match a query. What changes between layouts is how much of each record you see and what you can do to it without opening it.

The first two are genuine layouts your administrator can choose for a list screen. The third is not a separate layout — it is what happens when a file or picture field is one of the columns of a table or a card grid. That distinction matters, and is explained under Seeing Files And Pictures In A List.

For the anatomy of a list screen as a whole — the heading, the filter bar, the page size selector, the loading placeholders and how layouts are switched — see List Screens.

Cards

The card layout replaces rows with tiles. Each tile is one record.

What A Card Shows

From top to bottom, a card contains:

• The record title, as a link in the card header. This is the field your administrator marked as the record's title — an order number, a person's name, a project name.
• One line for each field in the list, in the order set by the column picker. Each line can show a short bold caption followed by the value, or just the value if no short caption was set.
• Colored chips instead of plain text, where the value points at something that has a color of its own — a status, a category, a priority. A field can also be set up to always look like a chip. Chip-style fields sit side by side rather than each taking a line of its own.
• Pictures, full width inside the card, when one of the fields is an image field.
• Tag chips at the bottom, if your administrator enabled tagging directly in the list, followed by a small tag button when you are allowed to change that record's tags.

The card header is separated from the body by a thin line. If the record itself carries a color — for example a status color — the whole card is painted in it, and the text switches to black or white so it stays readable.

Two cards side by side do not always show the same lines. A field that is hidden for a particular record (because a rule on that field says it does not apply) is skipped on that record's card only. So a card with four lines next to a card with six lines is normal, not a fault.

Example A recruitment team browses applicants as cards. The card header is the applicant's name. Below it: a photo, then Role: Warehouse operative, then a green chip reading Interview scheduled, then Applied: 14. 2. 2026. Applicants who have not been scheduled yet have no interview date line at all, because that field is hidden until a stage is reached.

How Many Cards Fit Across

The grid adapts to the width of your screen: one card per row on a phone, two on a small tablet, and three, four or five across on progressively wider desktop screens. You do not control this and there is no setting for it.

Inside a pop-up window the grid is deliberately narrower — at most two cards across, however wide your screen is. The same card list therefore looks more cramped when you meet it inside a pop-up window than when you open it as a full-page screen.

Opening A Record From A Card

Click the title in the card header. The record opens in a pop-up window stacked over the list, so the list stays where it is behind it. When you close the pop-up you are back at the same page, scroll position and filters.

The title is not the only clickable thing on a card, but nothing else opens this record:

• A value that points at another record opens that record in its own pop-up.
• An e-mail address starts a new message; a web address opens in a new browser tab.
• A file name opens or downloads the file, and a picture opens enlarged over the page. See Seeing Files And Pictures In A List.
• A tag chip filters the list by that tag.

Plain text values and the empty space around them are not clickable, so a card is not one big button. To open the record, aim at the title.

If your administrator has pointed the title at a different destination, the link may take you somewhere else instead. Pop-up behavior in general is covered in Pop-Up Windows.

The Per-Card Menu

Move the mouse over a card and a small three-dots button appears in its top-right corner. Clicking it opens the same per-record menu you get by right-clicking a table row — open, edit, delete and any custom actions your administrator has added, subject to your permissions.

Three things are worth knowing about it:

• It only appears on hover. Where there is no mouse pointer to hover with — a phone or a tablet — the button may not appear at all, which leaves cards effectively look-and-open only on that device.
• Right-clicking the card body does not open it. The menu is attached to the three-dots button, not to the whole card.
• It never applies to more than one record. Whatever you pick acts on that one card.

The menu is not shown at all on public pages.

No Checkboxes, No Bulk Actions

Cards have no selection checkboxes. There is nothing to tick, no select-all control, no "3 selected" counter, and no way to run one action across several cards at once.

There is also no "…" actions menu under a card grid, and therefore no spreadsheet export from a card layout. That menu is not one of the pieces that can be placed on a card layout, so asking for an export button on a card view is not the fastest route to an export — ask for a table view instead.

If you need to act on many records at once, or to export them, switch the screen to a table layout (if a layout switcher is available) or ask your administrator for a table view of the same data. See Selecting Records And Bulk Actions and Action Buttons And Exporting.

Grouping On Cards

If the list is grouped, cards appear under group headings instead of in one flat grid. Each heading is a button reading <grouping name>: <value>, with a minus icon; clicking it collapses that group and the icon becomes a plus. Records with no value for the grouping field are collected under a heading reading (none).

When calculations are switched on, each group heading carries a chip showing two numbers separated by a slash — the result for the records currently displayed, and the result across all matching records. Hovering the chip shows the tooltip Displayed / All. Grouping and calculations are covered in Columns, Grouping, Merging And Calculations.

Nested groupings indent one step per level.

Paging And Filtering On Cards

Cards page exactly like tables. Below the grid, usually on the left, sit the page-size control, the page selector and the numbered page strip. There is no "Load more" button and no infinite scrolling on cards — you move between pages, one page at a time. ("Load more" exists only on the board layout; see Boards.)

Everything in the filter bar works normally on a card grid:

• the Filter controls and the operator choices, exactly as on a table
• saved views and the refresh button
• the tag cloud, when it is on the screen
• the column picker — and here it genuinely matters, because the columns you pick are the lines that appear on every card
• the Find on page... box, which hides any card whose visible text does not contain what you typed

Keep in mind that Find on page... only looks at the cards currently on screen. It does not search the other pages and it does not go back to the server. Use a real filter for that. See Filtering Your Data and Saved Views And Queries.

If the query returns nothing, you get the view's own no-data message — No data match the query. unless your administrator wrote a different one — plus a Remove filters button when filters are active.

Dragging A Card Into A Folder

If the screen has a folder panel, a card can be dragged onto a folder to file the record there. This works on cards and on the simple list, as well as on tables. See Tags And Folders.

Worked Example: A Product Catalog

A purchasing team keeps a catalog of 240 products. As a table it is a wall of codes. As cards it becomes browsable: each card shows the product photo, then Code: PRD-4471, a chip reading In stock, and Supplier: Novak s.r.o.. The buyer scrolls the grid, recognizes the item by its photo, clicks the name to open it, checks the price, and closes the pop-up.

When the same buyer needs to export the whole catalog for a supplier meeting, cards are the wrong tool — there is no export there. They switch the screen back to the table layout, or open the table-based catalog view their administrator prepared for exactly this.

The Simple List

The simple list is the most stripped-down layout in the application. It shows one line per record, containing the record's title as a link and nothing else, with a hairline between lines.

What It Deliberately Leaves Out

• The fields are not shown. Even though the column picker is still on the filter bar, whatever you pick has no visible effect here. This is the single most confusing thing about this layout: picking five columns changes nothing on screen.
• No checkboxes, so no selection and no bulk actions.
• No per-record menu at all. Unlike cards, there is no three-dots button and right-clicking a line does nothing. To do anything to a record — edit it, delete it, run an action on it — you must open it first.
• No "…" actions menu and no export.
• No pictures, no thumbnails, no file links, because no fields are rendered.

What it does keep: tag chips next to each line, if inline tagging was enabled; folder drag and drop, if a folder panel is present; and the full filter bar.

Where You Meet It

Because it is compact and has no controls, the simple list is normally used where a list is a supporting element rather than the main event:

• inside a record detail screen, as a list of related records ("the invoices on this contract")
• inside a pop-up window opened from somewhere else
• on a dashboard-style page where several short lists sit side by side
• anywhere the point is "here are the five things, click one" rather than "here is my working data"

Grouping, Paging And Filtering

Grouping works: group headings appear as buttons that collapse and expand their group, with the same (none) heading for empty values and the same Displayed / All calculation chips as on cards.

Paging works, with the same page-size and page controls below the list, on the left. There is no "Load more" button here either.

Filtering works in full. One nuance is worth remembering: because only the title is on screen, the Find on page... box can only match the title text (and any tag names). Typing a customer name into it will find nothing if the customer is a field that this layout does not render — even though a proper filter on that field would work perfectly.

When there is nothing to show, the simple list displays the view's no-data message inside a gray panel with an information icon, plus the Remove filters button when filters are active.

Example On a contract detail screen there is a panel headed "Amendments". It lists four lines: Amendment 1 — extension of term, Amendment 2 — price adjustment, and so on. There are no columns, no checkboxes and no menu. Clicking a line opens the amendment in a pop-up. To delete an amendment, the user opens it and deletes it from there, because the list itself offers no menu.

Seeing Files And Pictures In A List

There is no separate "files" layout you can pick. Files show up in a list because a file field or a picture field is one of the columns — on a table or on a card grid. Whatever the layout, a file value is rendered the same way.

File Fields

A document field renders as a link with a small cloud-download icon followed by the file's name. Clicking it opens the file in a new browser tab. Whether the browser shows the file (a PDF, usually) or downloads it depends on the file type and your browser's own settings — the application does not force one or the other.

If the field holds several files, they are listed one after another, each with its own link.

If you are allowed to edit that field, a small red trash icon usually appears next to the file. It is withheld where removing the file would leave a required field empty. Treat it carefully: it deletes the file immediately, from the list, with no confirmation dialog, and the change is saved to the record straight away — you do not have to be in an edit form, and there is no undo. On a field that holds several files, a grip handle also appears, and dragging it reorders the files and saves the new order at once.

Picture Fields And The Enlarged Preview

A picture field renders as a bordered thumbnail. Where more than one picture is stored in the field, the thumbnails are shown at half width side by side. The picture's name is used as its tooltip.

Clicking a thumbnail does not open the record. It opens the picture enlarged over a darkened page. Close it with the close button next to the picture, by clicking the dark background, or with Esc.

Each picture opens on its own. There are no next/previous arrows and no "Image 1 of 3" counter, even when a record has several pictures in the same field — you close the enlarged view and click the next thumbnail.

Thumbnails are generated when the picture is uploaded. If a thumbnail is missing and you see a broken-image icon while the file itself still opens correctly, the thumbnail was never produced; report it to your administrator rather than re-uploading repeatedly.

On a table, a picture used as the record's designated thumbnail is capped to a small height so rows stay even. On a card, it is not — a picture on a card is drawn across the full width of the card unless your administrator set a fixed display width for that field. This is why card layouts suit photo-led data and tables do not.

The Simple List Shows No Files

Because the simple list renders no fields, a record's attachments are invisible there. If people need to reach documents from a list, that list must be a table or a card grid.

How This Differs From The File Repository

The file links described above are attachments on a record: they belong to one order, one contract, one applicant, and they were uploaded into a field on that record.

Some applications also have a separate File repository screen, listed in the administration part of the navigation. That is a different thing: a browser over every file in the application at once, covering both files attached to records and files that stand on their own. It has its own folders, search, selection and display options, described in the chapter on files.

Two practical differences to keep in mind:

• The File repository does not show picture thumbnails. Every file, including images, is represented by a generic file icon.
• The File repository is not available in every application, and it is separately permission-gated. If you cannot see it in the navigation, it is either not enabled or not open to your role.

Uploading, replacing and removing files, the upload panel itself, and the File repository screen are covered in Uploading Files And Images.

Example A claims handler works in a table of claims with two file columns: Photos (three thumbnails per row) and Report (a PDF link). She clicks the first photo, it fills the screen, she presses Esc, clicks the second photo, and so on. Then she clicks the report link, which opens the PDF in a new tab. She never opens the claim record itself.

A Note On "Files (List)" And "Files (Thumbnails)"

For your administrator The layout dropdowns still offer two entries named Files (list) and Files (thumbnails). Neither is active: choosing either one silently renders an ordinary table instead, with no warning. If a screen was set up expecting a dedicated file layout, it is displaying a table today. Build file browsing on a table or card layout with the file field as a column instead.

Choosing Between Cards And A Table

Ask for cards when the record is something a person recognizes by sight, when there are only a few fields that matter, or when the screen is used on a phone. Ask for a table when the work is comparing, sorting, selecting and exporting.

Two hard limits should decide the argument on their own:

• No selection and no bulk actions on cards. If the daily job involves ticking several records and pressing one button, it must be a table.
• No export from cards. If the list is exported regularly, it must be a table.

And ask for a simple list only where the list is a small supporting element. Making a working screen a simple list removes every per-record control from it.

Tips And Gotchas

• Cards and simple lists cannot be exported. The "…" actions menu belongs to the table layouts.
• The three-dots menu on a card may be out of reach on touch devices, because it only appears on hover.
• The simple list ignores the column picker entirely. If you pick columns and nothing changes, you are on a simple list, not on a broken screen.
• The simple list has no per-record menu at all — not even by right-clicking. Open the record first.
• Find on page... only searches what is rendered. On a simple list that is the title alone. On cards it is the title plus the field lines shown on the cards. It never searches other pages.
• Cards with different numbers of lines are normal — a field can be hidden on some records and not on others.
• A card that appears blank apart from its title usually means the list has no columns picked, or every picked field is empty for that record.
• The red trash icon next to a file in a list deletes the file at once, with no confirmation and no undo.
• If a card list feels slow, reduce the page size first. A grid of cards asks more of the browser than the same records as table rows; see Large Lists And Performance.
• A layout you switched to yourself does not follow you. If a layout switcher is present and you change it, the choice lasts for your browser session only. Colleagues, and you in a new session or a different browser, still get the layout the view was set up with.

What To Ask Your Administrator For

Phrase these as outcomes, not as settings:

• "Show this list as cards, with the photo, the status and the owner on each card."
• "Add a layout switcher to this screen so I can move between the table and the cards."
• "This card is showing the wrong fields — I need the delivery date instead of the created date."
• "Give the statuses colors so the cards are color-coded."
• "Let me tag records straight from the card without opening it."
• "I need to export this list — please give me a table view of the same data."
• "I need to run an action on many of these records — please give me a table view."
• "Show the attached invoice as a column in this list so I do not have to open every record."
• "This related list on the detail screen is a bare list of names; please show the amount and the date as well." (That means moving it off the simple list layout.)
• "Please give me access to the File repository." (Only if your application has one.)

Related Chapters

• List Screens
• Tables
• Columns, Grouping, Merging And Calculations
• Selecting Records And Bulk Actions
• Uploading Files And Images