My Top-30 flow killers in Wappler. What would be yours?

Coffee Lounge
#1

There is the “Flow”. It is a state of work, when everything goes perfect. It is when you feel like the tools you use are an extension of your mind. You think about something – and instantly implement this. You do one thing, then another, then another – all this goes quick, easy and naturally. You see all the information you need, and have no distractions. Your mind is clean, you calm, you know what you are doing. You are in the creative drive.

And there are flow killers. These are annoying obstacles that break your Flow or just prevent you from going to that state. This can be some annoying bugs and errors. Or it can be some excess moves and clicks that take your time. Or when you need to manually search for something. Or when you don’t know what button you need to click. Or it can be situations when you need to take a pause to remember what context you are in now. Eventually, you feel frustrated and confused.

So, the Flow is our bro, and flow killers are stinkers.

There are many flow killers all around the Wappler.
So I decided to make a public list of the flow killers that irritate me the most. It is not all requests I created or voted for. There are only ones that really affect my everyday work in Wappler.

And I encourage you to join me in this initiative!
There are some reasons for this:

  • You will have the written prioritized list, so you can come back here from time to time and bump some of the features you expected the most. And it will help you to track the progress.
  • Your requests will get more support, fresh thoughts and critical views too.
  • We all use Wappler differently, so we will know each other better and see work in Wappler from different angles.
  • New users will be acknowledged of some of the Wappler’s issues, so they will be prepared and less frustrated.
  • The Wappler Team will see what bothers users the most and maybe will correct their plans and priorities.

To be honest, my ultimate goal here is that we all together will be able to convince the Wappler Team to balance the 2023 roadmap so it will include more UI/UX improvements. So the focus would be on quality, not quantity. I’m speaking not only about “week/sprint of UI/UX improvements”, but a whole month dedicated to it. Or maybe it is worth marking the whole 2023 year as the year of better work flow in Wappler. Because there are some simple FRs that have waited for years already. I can’t imagine how much collective time it would save if it were implemented early.

Before we start, few subjective notes:

  • It can be Top-10, Top-30 or whatever suits you.
  • I tried to prioritize my list first, but quickly saw that I can’t highlight favorites here – all those requests matter for me. So instead I grouped the list by areas. You can sort or group your list as you like.
  • Numeric list looks better
  • For each feature attach a link to the request. If there is no FR, create one
  • Regular links through ctrl-K look more compact and easier to read than embedded ones. But this up to you.
  • Better discuss particular requests in related topics.
  • If you like the FR from some other’s list, make sure to visit the topic and leave some comments, bumps and likes.
  • That’s ok if your list will be similar to others. Don’t miss some items only because everyone already wrote about it. Because this is the whole point — figure out and show what is more important.

Here we go! :sunglasses:

IN GENERAL

  1. A way to keep all wappler elements in sync if one of them is modified. Refactoring QoL

  2. Instant inline editing for data binding input

  3. Keyboard Support For Various Popups
    (particularly in my case I need it for quick close of popup panels by press “Enter” on the keyboard)

  4. Better drag-n-drop UI when you want to place node between others

  5. Quick tab/file refresh (back to saved version)

TARGETS

  1. Wappler updates keep wiping out Redis from package.json

DATA BINDING PANEL

  1. Code tab by default in the Data Bindings panel (optional)

  2. Add more formatting to the visual expression editor
    (particularly, return the spaces)

WORKFLOW EDITOR AND FLOW EDITOR

  1. Show properties panel under the current node

  2. Better visual grouping for nodes in Server Actions and Flow Editor
    (I have a awesome new idea and I hope to present it soon)

  3. Improve Wappler’s validation when working with server actions
    (and in flows too)

  4. Ability to reduce height of the properties panel in the Flow Editor

WORKFLOWS

  1. Conversion of Normal Server Action to Library Action

  2. Double-click Exec step to open underlying library action

  3. Output for debugging only

  4. Different colors for icons in library actions

APP STRUCTURE

  1. App Structure Component Filter

  2. Search Box on App Structure , Server Connect and Dom Panel

  3. Context menu for App Structure

  4. App Structure Window: Expansion and Contraction Only When Clicking on Expand/Contact Arrow Icons

  5. Preserve App Structure state/view after drag-n-drop or delete

  6. “Group” component for grouping non-html elements on page

PAGE ELEMENTS PROPERTIES

  1. Dynamic Events Buttons — show which option currently is active

  2. Make Server Actions editable from picker

EXTERNAL COMPONENTS

  1. Local option for resources such as Calendar, Summernote, Tagify etc

DATABASE MANAGEMENT

  1. Pre-fill database migration description

DESIGN VIEW

  1. Improve selecting columns, rows and containers in Design View

PS: I withdrew the last 3 but I still left Top-30 in title for a nice number. :sweat_smile:

7 Likes
Focus on future versions of Wappler
My personal impression of Wappler after 2 years
My personal impression of Wappler after 2 years
#2

The biggest improvement I can think of (and it’s interesting that you missed it out…) would be the ability to have more than one project open at a time (or at the very least easier access to SC API files from a sub/mobile project)

I am trying to work on mobile projects but find the flow of Wappler deeply frustrating. Having to constantly switch between web project to set up API endpoints and back to the mobile project is time consuming.

With mobile in mind, I think a rethink of the project set up could help iron out some teething problems users have - there’s a lot of common questions in this community:

  1. Allow multiple CORS entries in web projects
  2. Add the server/hostname preference to capacitor/cordova projects (this link deals with Cordova but not Capacitor)
  3. Clear advice/defaults for Security Provider cookie setup for mobile (SameSite, domain, Redis etc) - perhaps a pop up available from the Sec Provider component
  4. Static ports for Capacitor (and other) web projects
  5. Default to credentials enabled for mobile project SC components
6 Likes
#3

Thank you for your thoughts!

I knew it would be #1 for everyone who creates mobile apps in Wappler. :slightly_smiling_face:
I just still haven’t dived into it, so it isn’t in my list.
But I can imagine that’s a huge headache.

1 Like
#4

#24 I made the list!

I will have to go through my list as I have a few.

But one of the biggest ones for me would be an “undo” button when editing server actions/flows. My server actions tend to be long and complicated. It would be nice after testing an action that I could just then go and hit undo to return it to its previous state. And more than one undo, have a history of some sort allowing X number of times to undo.

And then my next Item on the list, would be to organize the tabs into colored tab groups. So lets say I am working on some pages and I have 2-3 pages I’m editing stuff back and forth and then the appropriate server actions. Would be nice to organize them into a colored tab. so I could have 25 pages/actions open, but I would have them organized into tabs so I could combine one and go to the next. Very similar to how google chrome uses tab groups.

2 Likes
#5

Yes, nice one! The Undo/Redo option would be cool.
Seems, you’ve been waiting at least 3 years for this.

There also another requests about it: Second, Third.

Tab grouping isn’t my thing, I get an instant anxiety when I see more than 5 tabs anywhere. :sweat_smile:
But of course it is a good request that will help a lot of users.

So, now you have links to your favorite FRs right in one place, so you can bump it occasionally.

#6

Thanks Nick, I would love to have a customer like you for our SaaS.
You always provide a lot of constructive feedback.

I was thinking of doing the exact same thing, making a list like this. But it takes some time…
There is a lot of low hanging fruit to speed up working with Wappler and make it much more enjoyable.
I’ve even been making Autohotkey scripts to create my own shortcuts to fix flow killers.

I’ll try contribute soon to the thread.

#7

Same here, Keyboard Maestro for the rescue :slight_smile:

#8

Curious to know what you’ve set up. Care to share?
I’ve so far only set up some shortcuts for creating server actions (like ALT+1 = create comment, ALT+2 = create value, ALT+3 = create condition)

Feel like there’s much more to make but quite new to AHK so it takes me some time to make the macros.

1 Like
#9

For Wappler for the moment only one shortcut to setup the editing environment for mobile frontend dev for me :slight_smile:
Design View → Activate Mobile, Split View → activate and drag to desired width, Console → Active and drag to desired height

This give me roughly a editing window of similar size to the Chrome debug view.

CleanShot 2023-02-25 at 14.33.13

And while talking flow: I use Prepros for SCSS & TypeScript compiling and code formatting (via Prettier). Runs automatically in the background. Most of the time I use Sublime or Nova (or VS Code) to have a secondary editor open, especially for SCSS editing.

CleanShot 2023-02-25 at 14.42.15
CleanShot 2023-02-25 at 14.42.152560×720 320 KB

2 Likes
#10

Thank you, Karh. I appreciate that!

Indeed, for me it took more time than I expected but I feel so relieved now.

Exactly!

I’m already intrigued about what it is gonna be. :slightly_smiling_face:

Thanks for the tip, I’ll check it out!

Or maybe it would be a nightmare for you. :sweat_smile:

1 Like