WAPPLER Almost VISUAL way of building

[bibi]

As I get to work with Wappler as a newbie,

I’m starting to size that the “Visual building part of Wappler” is not a tipical DRAG and DROP Way of Building things that we usually find in other typical “Drag and Drop” Designing tools.

It works different…having us to focus on the Right or left size of the Editor to pick up Actions etc.
But you can not Drag it with a mouse and Drop it on the Main windows…and resize it.
Rather you use ADD buttons from the Main Design windows…

I think that this way is not wrong since it forces one to pick up an action related or not to a database so the Database coding happens in the background while you “design the Form”.

BUT…

I believe that is where most “Drag and Drop” Designers will feel in lack of the “easy D/D” intuitive way of designing a form, as most other tools offer.
The Wappler way of building things this way is therefore less intuitive and producing lots of comments/request for having “the other Drag/Drop” designing way replacing the Wappler Way.

I guess this would not be necessary as long as BOTH Designing Tools could be integrated to Wappler.
( Don´t aks me how )
But in someway, Drag and Drop Tools are so intuitive that they hardly request any users to “have to learn about them”…While Wappler Designing Method is very efficient but not so intuitive.

So This Topic is about requesting the integration of an ADDED DRAG and DROP Designing tool - BESIDE the Wappler TOOLS in order to quickly add elements such as : fields buttons, columns, multicolons, etc…that would be as intuitive as other popular “Website Designing IDE”.

I´m not sure HOW this could be easely done or even possible…but I guess some improovment can be done. (With lots of works for the Team, probably…)

But on the other hand, this should speed up the designing process and makes it a lil bit more user friendly…with less Documentation to produce…
As a comparison on how much more intuitive things can be, lets see this example of a Wappler method (With 10 steps) for adding a form with 2 columns…and compare it with some Drag and Drop “2 columns frame” from some other IDE which usually request very few clics to add and resize…

…so keeping the Wappler way of doing this but adding an extra Drag And Drop Method beside would NOT hurt the Designing work I believe…

[George]

Actually there is a very specific reason why we don’t just do drag & drop in Wappler.

Wappler vs Pinegrow

Well actually Wappler has also a very nice visual designer for Bootstrap 4 - all elements are available and you can add them very naturally with the smart context menu - that shows you only the allowed elements so you don’t do nesting errors and have a choice of only elements you can place in the currently selected context. Once you get the idea - you will see how productive and clean that is - and will never want to use overfull choice of elements that aren’t valid in the context anyway. Well…

[brad]

I don’t understand the push for a Drag and Drop method. It would require a much more cluttered UI. Not sure why I would want to drag something when I can simply just click a button as it is now?

[updates]

I agree with @brad.
I think that big part of the problem is just start to use Wappler and get involved in its logic.

I never used webflow, pinegrow or other editors. I re-started to make website again after years in 2017 using Dreamweaver and DMX extensions (I was ignoring what Bootstrap was in 2017… )

When I start using Wappler first days I was not even able to use it, simply because I never experience before to add things visually in the page starting with just the blue plus sign at centre of an empty page.

But when I decided to leave completely Dreamweaver and start developing in Wappler I simply get used to this interface and workflow. Today it is natural to use Wappler.

It is a matter of all software I suppose. You get used to the famous software workflow and it become the mainstream. But not always is the best option.

We are talking about Drag and Drop just because other platforms like webflow or pinegrow use it.

Also Adobe Muse (if I remember well) was using drag and drop.

It is the human being to get use to the easier option.

Wappler is a very young software but yet so sophisticated and powerfull. The developers are working a lot every day to easier our job.

I.e.: if you need to make a form, you can use the form generator, you will jump a lot of steps!

Wappler is based on the “picking”. Instead of drag and drop you pick a value, a dynamic value or a component. It is just a matter to change a little your mind.

[bibi]

I don t think the UI would need to be more cluttered, if its done well…
Many webpage drag and drop Builder are not more cluttered than Wappler is, the pre-made Navbar for instance can be see as a plus and also as a large panel of “options” that one might no use while sticking to only a few of them… so it all depends how you see pre-made stuff vs Drag and Drop similar components to build a similar NavBar…the same things can be done in both ways…
The Drag and Drop resizable way only seems more intuitive for me probably…

[bibi]

I got this, that Wappler builds in a dif. way with its Logic - that is very powerfull on the database linking side…
I just see that Drag and Drop and resizing would be a plus feature in Wappler for I myself sees it as an ultimate way of Designing a webpage and a normal way in “any” software evolution in general, nothing against Wappler or the great work its Team doing every month…

[lwoolsey]

I also agree with Brad, the biggest problem I see with drag-and-drop is I can leave my working window maxed and would have to get to the taskbar to toggle windows (even with a dual monitor setup). I am perfectly content to click a browse button.

[bibi]

hmmm not sure I can get why one would have to toggle windows, but its another talk maybe
Now,…since it would be an “extra feature or mode” this means to me:
…if you prefer to work the wappler Editor mode as it is, you d just keep using it.
in a way it is very practical but reminds me more of the MIT “lego style” designer or should I say builder…
Its started with the DB side and ended with the graphic side.

I´m thinking of the Visual Drag & Drop feature as a Toggle option where one, switch to this one because one would prefer to design the Website in this way…just as tons of Html webuilders have used their users to design them visualy.
They started with the Graphic side and end (so so…) with the Database side
(…most dont even come close to Wappler when its time to link all the Database system to the graphic made part, others dont even try to deal with it)

So you d pick up the +Button Designer - or - the D&D Designer depeding on how you d like to work.

As a comparison, to the MIT block designer, the D&D would be more like designing in 2D with Sketchup, you draw lines and add cells without wondering how it works under the hood.
In a first Step.
In a second steps Wappler still would have to maintain all Dropped elements organized, and I guess that´s the hardest part to do and what Georges prefers to avoid if I understood his previous comment…

 that shows you only the allowed elements so you don’t do nesting errors

But I´ll keep thinking that Designing purely in a visual way might be doable…
thats just an extra work and time to code for sure !