A better design experience and then bring it into Wappler

From Bubble to Wappler
#9

Thank @Teodor like Wappler for back end work no other tool is better, just don’t like the front end, so sharing other options for XBubblers who like to do the design visually.

I don’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 don’t appreciate being told to go elsewhere if you don’t agree Wappler has not got everything right!

1 Like
#10

Hey @StevenM. While I’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!

3 Likes
#11

@Philip_J thank you!

#12

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

5 Likes
#13

Cheers @Antony :slightly_smiling_face:

#14

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 Wappler’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? ‘Beautiful’ 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.

1 Like
#15

Agree. It’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. It’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.

#16

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

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

2 Likes
#17

only real minus is how painful is the management of responsiveness. Except that it’s really pleasant to work with their system.
I agree with Tailwind Css, it’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 “a la bubble”. Tailwind is a perfect candidate for such solution. This would be amazing.

1 Like
#18

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 “less intuitive” 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.

#19

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 doesn’t make sense. Same as it doesn’t make sense either with Bootstrap. Thus why it’s not implemented in Wappler.

#20

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 it’s a hard thing to balance as a lot of full-stack developers are here for the

#21

indeed it’s my feeling : the balance is not easy for Wappler team.
From my side what I feel hard / frustrating :

  1. documentation and ecosystem of courses / videos etc.
  2. front end
  3. “the do this get that” bubble approach is very powerful / easy to understand for non dev.

Overall I will continue to learn with Wappler, but to be honest it’s more steep than expected and every time I want to do a simple thing I spend time searching in doc or community. Most of the time I find “kind of answer” but it’s too often outdated / non visual explanation (= code). I really miss the tons of video and courses we can find when learning bubble.

1 Like
#22

Also Bubble does have a huge amount of people trying to start a business around it. With plugins, courses, templates, etc. So that helps new users start. But Bubble users spend huge amounts of money trying to bend Bubble to their needs.

Wappler approach is different. As they made the right choices at the beginning they can focus on delivering value to their tool.

While for each game-changing feature in Bubble you will get 100 announcements of Bootcamps, Blog posts, showcases, monthly updates, etc. That is because Bubble is such a mess due to wrong initial decisions and explosive growth that made them take more wrong decisions and now improving just a small thing takes them ages.

1 Like
#23

Yes. Agree.
But ones time has value too.
I’m not against spending money in order to get good basis / strong idea of best approach / concepts / etc. The time you spend trying to figure it out has value and those courses / bootcamp can be very valuable.

1 Like
#24

Have you gone through this course? It’s for 3.x but the basics are still the same.

#25

Hopefully when they get version 4 bedded down the UI Wappler ide will be more stable to facilitate video tutorials and documentation. It has taken me about year to become confident using Wappler, but things have changed a lot since then and I would hate to try and work it out from scratch today!

#26

yes, it’s the best source available in my opinion.
But again it’s just a very basic approach. It’s really the first step to get the big picture.

1 Like
#27

how you learnt? what was your “strategy”?
dev background or you come from nocode world?

#28

I can from Bubble and even though I am from the industry I was not a coder. I had to refresh on css and bootstrap and learn as I went. I found the courses offered helped jump start the process or understanding how Wappler process worked. I guess you could say coming into this I had general knowledge but still learning even and I have been able to build some pretty sophisticated functionality without having to write my own JavaScript!

Still got about a year to go to finish my app but pretty impressed with what I have been able to do. It has its shortcomings and some basic components missing such as drag and drop rows in a table and a few others. It is getting there though and by the time I have finished the app will be well worth the time I have invested.

1 Like