Hi there, Thanks for the feedback! Similar to @stewart.anstey's comments, I think there's probably a balance of wanting to use our templates to demonstrate how Retool works (in simplified examples), while also showcasing good design practices. I'd love to hear from even more of our community about the layouts that work best for end users in the real world 
Also, our team is working on shipping quite a few design improvements over the next few quarters, so we'll have to refactor our templates a bit once these improvements ship. One of these improvements is app "drawers," which recently shipped to Retool Cloud & help with drilling down on app data. I don't believe our templates have been updated to use drawers yet, but thought I'd share in case you find it helpful as an alternative to the standard modal. As always, let us know if you have any feedback on things you'd like to see in Retool 