A better design experience and then bring it into Wappler

Sharing this with x Bubblers if you are looking for a better way to get on top of Bootstrap.

The only thing I dislike about Wappler is the design abilities, for me it is slow laborious and I hate having to swap between tabs and not being able to create modal windows across My Macs multiple screens. It is painful at times.

Fortunately, Wappler does let you import external designs if they conform to strict bootstrap. After searching around for a solution I finally settled on https://bootstrapstudio.io/ (I am not affiliated - just in case you were wondering) but it is an awesome bootstrap design tool! Cheap too!

It is everything you expect a Boostrap designer to be and has a great balance of code and visual development tools all in the one view. Best of all I can have the code on one screen and the visuals, files templates and all others on another. I can even move around my bootstrap components on the screen if I want to.

It is updated regularly and allows you to set the bootstrap version and using jquery as in Wappler.

Until Wappler is able to focus on its design layout and capability to make it easier, you will find this tool fills in the gap.

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I donā€™t think bootstrap studio is a better option for building Bootsrap 4 layouts.

The way you click-and-add elements in wappler design view is really better than what bootstrap studio offers. Getting a long list of all elements in the sidebar and trying to guess which one to drag on the page and guess where it can be added or not really complicates the process and slows you down.

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Nope totally disagree. This is not how it works, but each to his own. Its an option if others are more used to a more in-depth see it all visual design exp.

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Iā€™ve worked with Bubble, Webflow and Bootsrap Studio and so far wappler offers the most advanced options to create responsive layouts and makes it really easy to do so

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For you maybe not for me and not for others. Its a tool for the toolkit and if you prefer to design in Wappler good for you. For me I find it frustrating, old school. But like I said we all think differently and for some other options are be preferred. Like backendlessā€™s new UI interface (https://backendless.com/ui-builder-no-code-visual-app-development/), its not a fad to be more visual, its integrated because a lot of low code and no code developers prefer this design method.

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I find drag and drop approach for web design old school. Dragging stuff around and wondering where to drop it or nest it is really frustrating to me. Wappler has this perfectly well done using the click to add approach, so you always know which elements are available there.

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Your view not mine or that of many other new apps! And I didnā€™t intend to enter a debate providing an option for others that donā€™t like the Wappler design method. So you have made your point I get it, you can move along now!

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Guys, please keep the discussion civilized!
@StevenM if you donā€™t like Wappler, then you can just use Bootstrap studio as your web development tool.

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Thank @Teodor like Wappler for back end work no other tool is better, just donā€™t like the front end, so sharing other options for XBubblers who like to do the design visually.

I donā€™t appreciate being jumped on for sharing resources. And it is certainly not the first time this community has jumped on customer for expressing a opinion which may help others, and certainly not very welcoming for new customers.

And @Teodor I certainly donā€™t appreciate being told to go elsewhere if you donā€™t agree Wappler has not got everything right!

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Hey @StevenM. While Iā€™m personally happy with everything Wappler, I get that you were just sharing information on the forum that no doubt some people may find useful, wether they use Bootstrap Studio or not.

Never any harm in sharing info, Thanks!

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@Philip_J thank you!

Hey @StevenM, thanks for sharing your experience and wanting to bring awareness of the widest range of design possibilities to us all! :slight_smile:

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Cheers @Antony :slightly_smiling_face:

Thank you @StevenM for sharing this. I stumbled on the tool you signposted organically, while researching better Bootstrap design tools, having become rather frustrated by Wapplerā€™s own. Wappler has made backend work much easier, but for UI work, it still slows you down - 80% what I got stuck as a newbie was UI - that is not good. When was the last time you had to use the same process in design tools? ā€˜Beautifulā€™ code is just better formatted text!

I hope Wappler developers take note of these comments and improve the product. It has great potential, but currently let down by design system.

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Agree. Itā€™s painful and documentation does not help.
Bootsrap documentation neither as you have to guess and find how to do in Wappler what you learn in there. Itā€™s really complicated for non dev. I would dream something like the visual tool from Bubble with a good responsive system : this would kill the competition.

While Bubbleā€™s design system may seem like a timesaver and easy on non-devs it eventually comes to bite you big time.

Itā€™s much better in the long run to dedicate time to learning battle proven CSS frameworks like Bootstrap, Bulma, Foundation, Tailwind, etc

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only real minus is how painful is the management of responsiveness. Except that itā€™s really pleasant to work with their system.
I agree with Tailwind Css, itā€™s my dream to get it included in Wappler.

Overall, the best of both world would be tailwind css with a drag and drop system ā€œa la bubbleā€. Tailwind is a perfect candidate for such solution. This would be amazing.

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This is still a mystery for me : who is the Wappler target?

As of today, a non dev has a steep (and I mean steep) learning curve with Wappler. Not only because of the ā€œless intuitiveā€ way of doing things (vs bubble) but mostly because documentation, how to, tons of video (like bubble has), ecosystem of people creating content / courses. No offense but this is really making the things hard.

Yeah. Responsive engine is hell in Bubble.

Tailwind is the new fancy, but it still is a 12 column by default CSS framework. This means that a free pixel perfect approach as Bubble doesnā€™t make sense. Same as it doesnā€™t make sense either with Bootstrap. Thus why itā€™s not implemented in Wappler.

I would say that the at the moment their userbase are (no/low)-coders that want to build simple or complex webapps and stick to web standards, own their IP(source code), have hosting freedom and not have any sort of limitation when building.

The caveat is that you need a basic understanding of the standard tech stack they are using for the above to be possible. The more you have your basics covered the sooner you get productive.

But as the target are nocode builders they keep improving every week the app to make it more appealing to non-devs, but itā€™s a hard thing to balance as a lot of full-stack developers are here for the