Does anyone else think the new responsive engine is unintuitive?

@boston85719 these are awesome links you’ve shared! Thanks for uploading :slight_smile:

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This engine has runied my experince to bubble, I dont even wanna use this platfrom anymore, its a pain in the ass to use, and its not very user friendly, we need a way to be able to enable it!!!

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@dosas.rp I sadly agree with this. My hopes are it improves over time since they are still in BETA and have acquired a large amount of funding and growing staff team.

I can’t imagine the time headache and money that went into this update, flex box overall is a massive improvement to both functionality and HTML improvements for speed however, I feel like there are many other web builders that did a vastly better job at implementing the drag and drop style functionality with all the benefits of flex box to be user friendly.

There are pros and cons to the new system yet as a whole it’s very unintuitive and even as a long time bubble user I’m having a hard time adjusting to it without MASSIVELY increasing development time and headache.

Agree 100% ive build on bubble for over 6 years, and this update is literally making me want to pull my hair out

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Trust me the new engine is much better. You just need to get your head around rows, columns and fixed cells, margins and percentages.

The speed is amazing as well. Imagine maintaining an application and having to move around everything manually because you need to add a section somewhere, this is now history :blush:

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Look at this example, responsive to the edge, without me having to worry about margins. It’s built at 414px.

My personal tip: Just start all over again by creating simple apps, I did the same thing and got familiar with the system after 1-2 weeks.

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Less manual work is definitely a big pro.

Where I’m seeing it lack is in the actual drag and drop functionality.

A lot of stuff off with % heights as well. For example having a page that is 100% full vertical

an inner group called let’s say “page 1” which is a white group set to 85% fixed height centered. Overflow scroll

Inside that is a reusable element set to 100% (of parent I’m assuming)

Inside the reusable is a single repeating group set to 100% height (of the parent I’m assuming) with non fixed amount of cells.

Allow extra columns but min width of cell is 100%

Scroll set to vertical.

In theory this should have a page with a white group 85% of height and a vertical scrolling RG so the page doesn’t move or overflow.

However it acts as an unlimited ext vertical scroll essentially.

But if you change the white group to a px value rather than a percent it works as intended.

Quite a few examples like this.

In my opinion something like webflow, or Duda, or simvoly(especially simvoly), etc has a much simpler flex box user experience.

I have to agree with you it does have some incredibly powerful pros though.

I gave such an in depth example because I could very easily be doing something wrong by not understanding new build concept.

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Hi Chris,

Indeed, that’s been mentioned before, and Bubble has already said they will be improving it over time.

Can you elaborate on that? If a cell takes up the full width, how can there ever be more than 1 column?

Is the following anywhere close to what you’re after?

A couple things to keep in mind:

  • The new layout engine is still in beta; but even after it’t out of beta, it will continue to evolve and improve with time (and feedback).
  • The new layout engine, while based on flex, isn’t intended to expose every capability of the CSS flex specification. That said, I actually think it has the potential to be better than flex - especially once we get conditional control over other other layout properties (which is apparently also planned).

I’d also recommend getting something working as desired first, before introducing REs to the mix.

Having said all that, I do think there’s ample room for improvement to the UI. (Actually, that applies to Bubble in general - not just the new responsive engine.)

-Steve

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To clairfy I do think they will get it to a point of actually being better than any other web/app builder on the market however in current iteration of beta it’s very unintuitive and buggy with pop ups, reuseable, and group focuses. It’ll just take time.

As for the example, yes however the only spot different where I believe the issue comes in is the rg is hosted in a reuseable which is hosted in the parent group with white background. I’ll send a video.

If you’re just starting out my recommendation would be to use FIXED option. Just to play around with it, you know. Make it look like Kickstarter on a fixed version. This way you’ll concentrate more on the design that on engine details.

But if the whole point of this practice is mastering responsive engine then I’d recommend you to forget about texts for a while. Just build the similar structure as Kickstarter. So create a COLUMN page. It starts with 2 headers. Each is a Row type. And go on. Make each group different color and check how all this works on responsive. Use browser Inspector module. Once you make structure work fine you’ll figure out the rest. Remember: even individual icons should be in groups to work properly.

Hope this helps.

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Could you share tips on what works for you? Like what dimensions do you use for your pages? What container layout options do you prefer? What makes an app built on the new responsive engine look better than an app on the old engine?

Hey, could you share quick tips or a manual or something that you learned using the new responsive engine? Like what page dimensions work best for both mobile and desktop use cases and how do you know when to use which container layouts?

This is what saved my project.

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I do not have issues with the responsive engine I think it is rather easy to figure it out even without documentation HOWEVER ONE THING DOES GIVE ME A HUGE HEADACHE. REPEATING GROUP. Honestly, it makes no sense whatsoever. If I set the minimum width to a mobile size (which I want really) it will list only small pictures no matter what, if I set it to about 500-550 then it will enlarge properly looks great but then on mobile its out of the picture because the width is too large. Have no clue what is going on and I checked all the bloody videos out there. All are useless. Could pull my hair.

I have some major issues when i try to do things the “right way” and make more complex layouts “responsive”. Espesically nested groups and the mentioned repeating groups. I’m at the point where it’s faster to do it in CSS. :frowning:

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