Silly Bubble defaults that need to be changed

Putting these here for the next Bubble boosts, in descending order of egregiousness. Please contribute your own:

Expose API workflow as public

  • currently exposed by default
  • very common cause of security vulnerabilities in all Bubble apps
  • should be unchecked by default
  • anyone interested in calling their backend using the workflow API is technically competent enough to enable it as public themselves

Page layout

  • currently fixed (???!!!)
  • should be column

Text

  • currently fit width to content
  • should not fit width

Repeating Group

  • currently fit width to content
  • should not fit width
  • why is group not fit width, but repeating group is? They should objectively default to the same.

Swagger API documentation

  • currently exposed by default
  • just no reason for it to be exposed. How many apps actually use it? Probably in the dozens.
  • should be hidden by default

Progress bar colour

  • currently a static teal
  • should default to the appā€™s primary color variable

Expression parentheses

  • currently an experimental feature
  • come on Bubble, really? itā€™s been over two years and itā€™s clear this feature is going to be supported long term
  • should be enabled by default (lots of questions on this forum easily solved by ā€˜enable parentheses!ā€™

Remove Bubble mention in console

  • currently not checked
  • should be checked, no need to be self indulgent

Expose a sitemap file

  • currently not checked
  • bad for SEO
  • presumably this is unchecked to reduce the risk of secure pages being indexed, but all Bubble pages are accessible anyway?
19 Likes

Couple of them from me:

  • For me ā€œCollapse if hiddenā€ should be checked by default
  • When we group a few elements in a group, the default height of the resulting group becomes the height of all the elements put together before we grouped them. But this is an annoyance. This means that even if elements within that group are hidden and hence collapsed, the group wonā€™t reduce in height below what it was set initially. It should just become as minimum height zero, I think.

But probably both of these might depend on peopleā€™s preferences and I am not sure what would majority want.

8 Likes

Been asking for years hopefully they will get around to it

Been asking since the flexbox was first introduced, hopefully they will get around to it

Same, asked since flexbox first introduced, hopefully they will get around to it

Should not default to primary color, should default to white or transparent as it doesnā€™t really serve users much as most developers that want to show progress do so in other ways

Definitely do not make this enabled by default, it is an experimental feature. I personally do not use it, and Iā€™d hate to be forced into using something I have no need for

Yes

Yes

Keep it as not checked since not all sites want to be exposing their site map as not all apps are concerned with SEO, and for developers that are delivering more complex SEO abilities via their sitemaps, they generate their own, especially the case in multiple language apps that require SEO in multiple languages, and the sitemap file is not just links to pages, it uses the links from the data types those pages are the content type of via the built in ā€˜linkā€™ field for any data type that is set to the content type of a page or multiple pages, which would imply I believe that any data that is not exposed publicly or has privacy rules are not accessible via the sitemap even though the page might be.


1 Like

This is crazy to me, canā€™t even imagine writing most of my expressions without fine-tuned control over ORs and ANDs. I really genuinely am curious how itā€™s even possible to build an app without the parentheses.

2 Likes

Me too :sweat_smile: I know experimental features shouldnā€™t be enabled by default, but my point is that this feature is clearly no longer experimental if itā€™s been around for two years and was part of their expression composer overhaul (which they later backtracked on unfortunately even though it was a step in the right direction despite its flaws)

2 Likes

It is definitely weird to keep calling it experimental. Itā€™s like theyā€™re not really happy with its behavior but also donā€™t want to fix it but they donā€™t want to get rid of it either because itā€™s necessary. The thing about it is that itā€™s at least stable and ā€œwhat you see is what you get.ā€ If it breaks, it tells you that it breaks. They should definitely enable it by default in the short term but more importantly stop wasting time on the new workflow editor and give us a real working ā€œbetaā€ expression composer that is fully modular and allows you to:

  • edit anywhere inside the expression without breaking the whole thing
  • find & replace expressions
  • copy/paste individual parts of expressions

As for boosts, my biggest one right now that is an eternal source of frustration: Please stop resetting the design tab every time we view backend workflows. Itā€™s so annoying to keep having to navigate to the right element over and over again.

Another one, paste conditions in elements in a specific order instead of always at the bottom.

Iā€™ll try to think of other boosts later but there are already some good ones here I agree with.

3 Likes

Thatā€™s why itā€™s still experimental

What does the parentheses provide as capability that is not possible without parentheses?

Itā€™s at bottom because conditions are applied bottom to top

I always open a new browser tab to check backend workflows

1 Like

I agreeā€¦

Iā€™ve used the parenthesis feature on every single app Iā€™ve worked on or built since it was introducedā€¦ turning it on is the first thing I do when working on a new app.

I genuinely couldnā€™t even contemplate the idea of not using it.

It provides complete control of the order and grouping of operators in expressions - all of which is standard, fundamental programming logic which, without the use of parenthesis, you canā€™t do with Bubble expressions.

4 Likes

Yeah I know, sometimes I want them in a different order.

Iā€™m deeply superstitious about opening the editor with more than one tab.

1 Like

Thanks all, I sent this topic over to the team for review

8 Likes

I canā€™t open more than one editor at a time. Even one crashes every few minutes for me because of high memory consumptions.

Earlier I used to have one tab for live and one for dev. But now I am limited to one and a lot of my time gets wasted in just switching from live to dev and vice versa. Plus refreshing the page every few minutes because it crashes or becomes unresponsive.

Me too, since every time Iā€™ve seen a Bubble dev post in a forum that their changes werenā€™t saved, it was because they had multiple editor tabs open. (Iā€™m sure it can happen for other reasons, too, such as network glitches or computer problems, but this has been the pattern Iā€™ve been seeing.)

1 Like

When adding an API connector call, the default should be action and not datasource. I pretty much NEVER use datasource, since it doesnā€™t give any control over when it gets updated and you can accomplish the same thing with actions + page states.

1 Like

Excellent suggestion, probably best one yet. I also never really use datasource for same reasons you outlined.

Sounds like I might need to reinvestigate this. Do you have any screen shot of an expression you use this for that is not possible to be done with multiple conditions that are order properly for execution from bottom to top?

By default ā€œSet fixed number of rowsā€ should be unchecked with a 60px minimum height :face_holding_back_tears:

1 Like

You mean 56px isnā€™t good enough :rofl: who at bubble chose 56px as the default height of a row when we uncheck fixed number of rows?

3 Likes

Another one:

The default width for a group is 40px with fit width to content unchecked. This is a significant improvement over what it used to be, which was 200px with fit width checked.

However, since fit width to content is unchecked by default (correct in ~90% of use cases) and I rarely use min-width with fit width to content, I find that I almost always clear that minimum width. It would save time to have minimum width unset by default. I typically also clear the min-height, but since fit height to content is checked in those cases, I understand why having a default min-height makes sense.

1 Like

Dont know if itā€™s been mentioned butā€¦

A ā€œDo when condition is Trueā€ workflowā€¦99.9% of the time I want it to run everytime. Make ā€œevery timeā€ the default".

7 Likes

Popups.

Remove their default margins.

1 Like

When creating a reusable element from an existing group with workflows that are grouped in folders please get rid of the folder name that it was in. Currently we get this error in the newly created reusable that says this folder name is not an option ā€œxZuyGfā€ and if you check the name drop-down it is empty. So either create the same folders beforehand or at least empty this position.