alphaPlan · Future of Mobile Development · Cheat-sheet 04
Beyond Adalo
Meet Bubble as a second no-code platform, translate its data words from Adalo, and plan your capstone as milestones you can finish.
Ideas to remember
- 01No-code is a family of tools, not one product: Adalo leans towards mobile, Bubble leans towards the web.
- 02Bubble is strong at responsive web apps, progressive web apps, reaching outside itself through its API and SQL connectors, and native mobile apps; it does not do self-hosting or code export.
- 03Bubble's words map onto Adalo's: a collection is a type of thing, a record is a thing, a property is a field, an action is a workflow.
- 04Three workflows do most data work: create a new thing, modify a thing, delete a thing, and a delete cannot be undone.
- 05The capstone milestones run in order: design first, model the data, build the core screens, add one real feature, polish and test.
- 06A small app that works from start to finish is a far better project than an ambitious one that breaks on the second tap.
Words
- thing
- A piece of stored data in Bubble; every thing has a type and a set of fields.
- workflow
- Bubble's version of an action, where creating, changing and deleting things happens.
- Create a new thing
- Pick the type, then fill in the fields, directly or from something dynamic like what the user just entered.
- Modify a thing
- Point at a thing that already exists, such as the Current User, and change some of its fields.
- scheduled workflow
- Runs in the background without blocking the screen the user is on; where long, repeated operations belong.
Do this
- Sketch the screens on paper and decide what the app is for in one sentence before anything else.
- Create your collections and the relationships between them before you build any screen.
- Build a home list, a details screen and a form to add a record, then choose the one feature that matters most and finish it fully.
- Walk through the app as a first-time user and fix confusing labels, empty screens and buttons that go nowhere.
- Prepare the presentation as a short story: who the app is for, the one path a real user takes, and what you would build next.
Watch out
- A workflow cannot undo a delete; think twice before wiring that action to a button.
- Bulk actions on a list of things consume more capacity and some have limits that change; check the current official documentation before depending on an exact limit.
- If you ever leave Bubble you take your data with you, but the no-code logic has to be rebuilt elsewhere.
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