Hi all,
I’ll be venturing with a mobile app for our main project shortly.
I haven’t touched mobile apps with Wappler, or elsewhere before so this is new ground.
It looks like Capacitor is the right choice, over Cordova. I was wondering if there is a general consensus or pro/con for either Framework7 or Bootstrap for the frontend framework?
I would really appreciate insights from the community on which is the right choice and why, or just a simple pro/con for both.
Thanks!
Hi,
From what I experienced F7 did not work, lot of crashs.
Maybe it has been updated - I used BS5 + capacitor
Then the answer is simple: Capacitor with Bootstrap. Anything else is to much hassle for this tech stack.
Thank you both - that was my concern re Framework7 how well maintained it is.
@kfawcett I believe you are active in building mobile apps. What’s your thoughts on BS5/F7?
I experimented with F7, but it’s was too limiting and not fully hooked into Wappler at the time. I was more familiar with Bootstrap and it has the ability to look like a desktop/web app as well as function fairly well as a mobile app. F7 will give you a more mobile-native look and feel with its fancy transitions and other features, so it really depends on what your desires are.
Do you want more flexibility, less hassle, and want to build across web/desktop/mobile? Go with Bootstrap.
Do you want a more native look/feel for Android/iOS apps and don’t mind overcoming interface/UI challenges as you build? Go with F7.
I believe @mebeingken is using F7, so he may have another opinion.
My first mobile app project was F7 and I felt like I was coding everything myself…well, basically I did. It worked, and was a great project (now deprecated) but it was by no means a great Wappler experience.
Current project is BS5 and working quite well for thousands of users.
I would actually very much like to use F7, but I suspect the support within Wappler has not changed much–It’s in a chicken/egg loop–advanced users won’t touch it because it isn’t fully supported, and Wappler doesn’t enhance it because nobody uses it.
Hey!
From my experience:
I created a full crud app on Android using F7, Wappler, and Android Studio and literally cero code.
It has a native look, it’s very nice.
But you must know there are a few bugs, the most important is that the latest stable version of F7 (at least, compatible with dmx app connect) is 5.7.14 More info
Then I wasn’t able to handle the back button and I guess is a F7 thing that crash.
With capacitor and BS framework:
I didn’t give it a try, but I assume you will fight against the capacitor plugin implementation like with F7, here’s a little help from Patrick: Network capacitor plugin
That’s good news!
Does Wappler now support all of the components from the Kitchen sink? I ran into too many items having to be hand-coded.
Hey Ken, well, not exactly, opening the template on 5.7.14 will crash everything
But from that version, it has a few that they’re on the Wappler way.
The other day I was trying to insert other components from the f7 docs and to my surprise most of them were running without issues, just copying and pasting the entire example, but of course, the app structure panel won’t recognize any element, so it needs some hand-code.
I agree, it’s a shame, I think F7 can be a huge point for Wappler if everybody sees the potential it has.
Ya, that’s what I thought…still requires a bunch of copy/paste and then no visibility in app structure. If I wanted to do that, there wouldn’t be a need to use Wappler.
Another example of something that just hasn’t gotten traction because it doesn’t do enough to get people engaged, and then doesn’t get developed further because nobody talks about it, so largely not enhanced.
So, this is a standalone mobile app, from the web app. So due to this, the ideal scenario is that it performs natively. BUT, I don't want it to take twice as long to build because of bugs/issues. My concern with BS would be does it have the necessary mobile interactions like swipe/pull for refresh etc.! Can you comment on this? (and thanks for your original replym too).
This really is the oposite if what we want from functionality in Wappler. I love that I have the opportunity to build a mobile app to accompany our main product, but, I'm not a professional, or even educated hobbyist in actual development - so I imagine it would take twice as long, and a lot of me clogging up the community with questions to attempt F7.
This presents some optimism, but it does seem like you have some advanced knowledge and were able to work around some of the issues and crashes - and with the Wappler team so spread across different platforms, languages (and the proposed addition of MORE languages) I don't like my chances of getting support to work with F7 at this point. I might play around with something super basic, trying to use most of the functionality to see if I get errors/crashes and if I do - I won't have spent too much time, and i'll switch to BS5.
This has been touched on before in a rather large melt-down post. It is frustrating that things are implemented to 80% and thus get no real traction because it just isn't 'quite there'.
Thanks everyone for their input.
