Wappler UI improvements

The issues you describe must be related to some really small screen.
On a 27" screen with 2560x1440px resolution the panel looks perfectly fine in a two columns layout:

And still you have more than 1200px of working space in Design View with the Right Panel open.

Are you sure this isn’t because you’ve made a change - in which case the message should appear? I switch between server actions a lot and haven’t noticed the message appearing unless it should.

I agree a lot of scrolling is required and though I really like the interface and layout generally, it does leave a lot to be desired in some respects (eg not being able to view much of the text in many of the fields - for classes and conditions etc - really slows things down). It helps having a large monitor but Wappler doesn’t make the best use of it (I have a 43" monitor).

Do you not use the full screen option - ‘Expand Server Connect’ button? I think this is a very useful option. Eg I have some queries with 50 conditions, but the conditions tab only shows 6 or 7 by default. Having this panel full screen makes a big difference. It might be worth exploring this option more.

im working from my laptop with 1920x1080

i don’t want to take the whole space. just to have more room to fully see the action tree without horizontal scrolling.

You certainly wouldn’t want to have Server Connect taking up the whole screen most of the time. However while you’re working on SC files, it can be very useful and of course you probably won’t be needing App Connect etc. during this time.

I agree with you that the panel management generally is not very flexible and can be frustrating. Eg I would like to have the dates displayed next to files in File Manager while working in App Connect - but the panel organisation doesn’t make this possible. even if you have plenty of screen space.

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@Teodor instead of pointing out how wrong webflow is, you should listen what is being said as feedback. The general point is that we want to be educated by wappler.

As far as I can read between the lines it seems like you’re not that fond about educating people (but I might be wrong). But it should be an integral part of wappler, unless you only want to cater to experienced developers. Which is fine of course, but then just say that out loud.

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when i started using webflow, i had 0 html/css knowledge. was a total noob.
what i learnt on webflow, is most definitly helped me to navigate around wappler, which has lot to improve on the ‘visual design’ part of front end development.
i did not find webflow overwhelming at all.
rarely did i encounter that an option was being displayed which could not be used. and in such cases, a simple nudge comes from the ui saying ‘this is not possible’.

it may not seem logical to you from a highly experienced developer point of view - but from a noob’s point of view, it worked beatuifully and rather it taught me about the tech.

PS: keep up the incredible work with wappler. absolutely love it. have even given up on my webflow license now. but will still rant about stuff that we don’t like about wappler :sweat_smile: - coz we really really want wappler to be the very best web design+dev tool in the world.

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Very late reply - @nshkrsh is spot on.

There seems to be a defensive stance employed with some Wappler supporters/team posts. Let’s put it another way. If Webflow were to announce a new arm to their current offerings i.e. allowing users to create apps within its software, I guarantee, their tutorials would accommodate ‘everyone’. Not just techies, not just designers, but all. They would be easy to understand and fully comprehensive.

The implementation would be elegant and intuitive - not just to me but thousands of others using WF. But it is missing the developer functionality, and therefore this is where Wappler could step in (which it does to a degree). But the learning is not comprehensive. I have seen the training videos.

You need to get someone on board who completely gets this.
There is a skill and an art to getting this right.

Sort this Arcjhilles heal out and you’ve just grabbed a bigger slice of the market - that’s if you want it? If not then me and others will just move on, no sweat.

Hello @pachamama,
Thanks for your feedback!

I agree there is a learning curve with Wappler and things are a bit different than what the automated page builders like Webflow or Wix offer, but that is only because of all the possibilities which Wappler offers.
You are not just locked in a single workflow without being able to fully customize every aspect of the design or functionality of your sites.
Once you get through the docs and get the basics you will see how easy actually it is to build anything with Wappler.
Of course it will really make the things easier if you have some basic knowledge of website development :slight_smile:

Anyway, we are constantly improving Wappler so we try to make it easier for people without much experience in building websites. It has already evolved quite much since this topic was created 4 months ago :slight_smile:

@Teodor,

With respect - I have read the docs and I understand certain aspects of Wappler (I also understand HTML, CSS, JS) but equally, once you put out decent tutorials which avoid assuming everyone thinks like you, then you might gain more traction. Because I do not fully grasp the complexities for server side-client side, designing databases and best practices etc. does not mean I can’t. I am well versed in all sorts of disciplines and skill-sets. By offering tutorials which are less stiff, easily explainable and enjoyable to watch might further your conquest and widen your share of the market.

The tutorials are not resonating with me and I suspect others too.

I also need to correct you as you have these wrong. Webflow users are in no way locked into a single workflow - sorry but that is complete nonsense. Equally, Webflow users can customise every element of the design. Sure they can go down the predictable framework path i.e. bootstrap-ish nav>hero>main>footer but a lot don’t - want examples?






My comment about customizing was more related to the functionality of the components and every custom CMS you can build using Wappler’s server side tools.
I do understand that you can customize the design and appearance of buttons, blocks etc.
But if you need anything more than the most simple CMS with the options to select your own database type, relational tables, updating multiple records at once etc is not really possible for Webflow users. I believe it’s just aimed at people who don’t really make difference if they just use some local file as a database or a hosted database (MySQL, mssql, postgresql) or people who don’t know the difference between a sumbit or reset button types. That’s not bad at all if the service does the job for them.

Bootstrap doesn’t really require you to use this “path” - these are just HTML semantic elements used with or without any framework :slight_smile:
https://www.w3schools.com/html/html5_semantic_elements.asp

I am always open to suggestions on what kind of tutorials you want to see here?
Do you mean we should start teaching the basics of HTML/CSS and/or Database principles?
Maybe some local “w3schools” copy: https://www.w3schools.com/ ?

Tutorials (videos) breaking down each aspect of database designing and the components you have available on Wappler would be greatly beneficial.

I am happy to go into more detail on how to do this effectively but you would have to hire me. I am at an Art Director stage of my life.

So you mean we need to start teaching the basics of web design and development in our tutorials?

No, have a look here for inspiration:

This doesn’t really answer my question what do you think is missing in our docs, but thank you anyway.

Missing in docs - some clarity. Take this for instance, and while you read it, imagine you know NOTHING of these and are coming to Wappler from a non-dev background:

App Connect is a high performance front-end framework just as powerful as React, Angular and VueJS. App Connect however is much easier to use due to it’s custom component structure and HTML5 attribute bindings.

That was something I quickly found near the top part of the documentation. Wappler is assuming you are at a certain dev level already when in fact many of your potential audience is quite capable of understanding these frameworks but needs some introduction to them first. Some will and will no doubt benefit, others will just think “you know what, I have a million and one things on at the moment with my job and the last thing I want to do is get my head bamboozled with a ‘perceived’ steep learning curve”

There is also no point telling people to go to w3c and read through their documentation. Why? Because, one - if you take your customer base away from Wappler to find the answer (w3c) confidence and loyalty is lost, and two - your are perceived as visual first low/code, no/code service.

Missing in video - breaking down database design, best practices and what each component does and why.

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Now that I’m thinking about it, yes I do miss a lot of the basics of web design/development. The drawback of creating a UI based (and paid) application like Wappler is that it attracts less technical user, and that I (and maybe others too) expect to learn everything from Wappler. I pay for it, so I originally expect to be thought how to use it. For less tech people, the difference between webdesign basics and Wappler specific tools/uses is not always clear. It all seems to stem from Wappler, thus we ask for help here.

Having said that, an experienced PHP developer I know has looked multiple times at Wappler and didn’t get it immediately, basically had a slightly less learning curve as I do.

We don’t expect every user to be a developer, but indeed we expect the users in our user base to have at least some basic knowledge of HTML, CSS and web site building.
That’s why I pointed to w3schools - as it is a nice learning resource.

That’s already in our docs :slight_smile:

I think you should be really thankful for people like @Hyperbytes and @psweb , which did explain the basics in video format. I would have given up a long time ago if I just needed to “read the docs”.

Of course we are, Nevil :slight_smile:

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