Hi all! Adalo has been busy delivering on the things we promised! Here’s what’s happened / happening:
Delivered:
- Deep Linking delivered!
- Manual pagination for custom lists shipped
- Social Media Lists (faster than custom lists)
- Infrastructure updates improving builder speed
- Beta testing business integrations (Data Control Plane)
- iOS gremlins and updates done
- Database auto-hibernation (not deletion) improved
- Builder hibernation
On the way:
-
App optimization and indexing tool
-
React Native upgrades!
-
More code refactoring
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Canny feature requests & bug fixes
a. Enter/Send button feature
b. Upload Own Icon feature -
AI
1.Deep Linking is here!
On April 7, we shipped Phase 1 of our third-most requested feature in Adalo’s history: deep linking! And we’re happy to say that Phase 2 (of 2) shipped this week! We’ve still got training videos and improvements to documentation on the way, but we’re thrilled to get this out the door! Huge credit goes to our newest software engineer, Jimmy, who was himself a Community Leader before he joined.
If you’re not familiar with this feature, deep linking is the term used to describe a link that sends users to a specific location inside a mobile application. For instance, a user browsing an e-commerce store’s mobile app might want to share a link to a backpack with a limited time offer. When shared with a friend, clicking on this deep link will result in the app opening on the friend’s phone to the exact page (the exact record) they wish to see, or will redirect the friend to the app’s installation page.
In recent months community members repeatedly raised deep linking as a major priority, and rightly so. We’re thrilled to have this in your hands now, especially as it is one of the single most effective tactics to improve user adoption and grow users through user referral!
Learn more about how to add deep linking to your apps in our documentation.
2. Manual Pagination for Custom Lists
Our commitment to speeding up your apps saw us develop pagination for Custom Lists, meaning that lists will load incrementally (from the top) rather than all at once. While simple in concept, this involved quite a lot of refactoring, but you can see the results for yourself below:
^ Non-paginated vs paginated load times in Custom Lists
3. Social Media List Component
Custom lists are great but can suffer from performance issues due to the highly dynamic way in which they must be rendered. Our analysis has shown that Makers commonly adopt custom lists for social media apps, and so we’ve released a native social media component which has been optimized for this particular use case! See below for the speed difference:
^Custom List vs Social Media List load times
You’ll find the social media list component alongside other lists in the Adalo Builder:
Learn more about the social media component in our documentation.
4. Major Infrastructure Upgrade
On April 15 we completed (another!) major infrastructure upgrade which resulted in immediate performance and stability improvements within the builder, previewer, and production applications. This upgrade was the outcome of several months of very hard work by our backend and infrastructure teams, and the positive effects were immediately apparent to both our team and the many Makers who reported improved user experience in the hours following the upgrade.
5. Beta Testing Business Integrations with Complex Builds
We’ve started piloting our ‘connect to any data system’ Data Control Plane, and have been asking for businesses with complex integration needs to raise their hand so we can beta test it with them. We worked with Luggage Services (https://luggageservicessfo.com/) to build a custom luggage delivery and storage app which is already being put to good use in the Bay Area!
If you or someone you know would like assistance building and launching an app with complex data needs for their business (i.e. difficult to use APIs, or no APIs at all), please contact us here. We want to make sure the solution is battleproven before releasing it. For those reading previous updates, this is the DreamFactory functionality becoming available in Adalo.
6. iOS Build Server Instability Gremlins Dispersed
For quite some time now we have battled against iOS build server instability issues. Some of these issues are just the nature of the beast; managing this type of application deployment pipeline can be extraordinarily complicated, and Apple sometimes makes breaking changes with zero warning. However there has been one particular ongoing issue regarding disk server space which has plagued us for some time now, and incredibly the issue typically seemed to happen on Friday afternoons! We are very happy to report that on April 22 we implemented a permanent fix for this issue, and look forward to getting our weekends back.
Separately, we completed an iOS build server update ahead of an Apple-enforced deadline.
7. Database Auto-hibernation streamlined
Occasionally we tell people that we manage a lot of databases. Naturally people ask how many and throw out a number like 200. Try 3 million. And that number grows every single day by thousands. Maintaining infrastructure at this scale sometimes requires novel approaches, and earlier this year we had to dig deep into the novelty toolbox to figure out how we can continue offering free plans to all Makers while ensuring our infrastructure didn’t collapse from the weight of all these databases.
The answer is database auto-hibernation, which basically means applications and their associated databases not under active development will be put to sleep, or hibernated, until the Maker later returns to resume work. The benefits of this approach has exceeded our wildest expectations, and we’ve made many adjustments to give everyone using Adalo as much flexibility as possible. We know building apps can be an on and off thing, and our Free plan is here to support you!
8. Hibernate Builder After Period of Inactivity
If you leave the Adalo builder open in a browser tab for an extended period of time you’ll now see a modal similar to the below when later returning to the tab. This feature was added to improve overall system stability and reduce data synchronization issues. To resume work on your app just click the Reload Page button!
What’s Coming?
Here is a short list of what’s coming in the weeks ahead!
9. App Optimization Tool (Adalo X-Ray)
Over the past few months we’ve been working on an automated app auditing tool which will give Makers detailed insights into where specifically applications are slow and how to improve them. This tool will also be working behind the scenes to automatically look through every app on Adalo and use AI to apply indexes to databases. If your app has long-running database queries resulting in slow app speed, we have seen 10x improvement owing to these indexes.
This tool is currently being used on a daily basis by our internal team, and will soon roll out to a wider audience in a beta format, and we’re adding new dimensions for the AI look for, such as nested custom lists (custom lists within custom lists). If you would like your application audited, please email Adalo CTO Jason Gilmore at jason.gilmore@adalo.com with the subject line “Audit my app”.
10. React Native upgrades!
We have completed a huge number of React Native upgrades on the Adalo development servers (not the production servers). Not only does this deliver greater stability and more features the Adalo team is able to draw upon for the community, but will also improve native app speed!
To ensure we deliver these upgrades to your apps seamlessly, No Code Monkey founder Michael Heck has been working with us to test components on the new architecture. Once we have the changes needed for Adalo components and third-party components mapped, communicated and implemented, we will push the upgrades to the production servers for everyone’s benefit.
Ample time and guidance will be given to component developers to upgrade their components
Makers, you will need to republish your apps to both app stores to enable your users to benefit from these upgrades (once it is released)
11. Even more code refactoring!
Alongside the React Native upgrades, we’ve been elbows deep in the code of Adalo. What we’ve found is that some refactoring is needed to ensure that excess code Makers don’t need isn’t called each time an app does something. This process is referred to as Code Splitting, and we don’t have a timeline yet for how long this will take. We do know that it will deliver a big impact for speed, and the good news is it won’t take many of our engineers to do–it’s more a pair task going very slowly and deliberately through the code with a view of creating efficiency.
12. Canny feature requests
We have the delivery of Adalo 3.0 in sight, to be completed upon the delivery of the App optimization tool, the React Native upgrades and the code splitting efficiencies. That means we now have capacity for feature requests and non-showstopping bug fixes.
For feature requests, we’re using Canny as guiding us on what the community wants most. With Deep Linking done, during our internal AI hackathon we already got the Enter/Send button that was #12 in Canny drafted, and the Upload Own Icon is also being worked on. We’re looking forward to getting more of the feature requests shipped fast!
For bug fixes, we want to fix anything that’s making you pull your hair out and threaten to throw your computer through the window. Keep your eyes peeled for a poll to come out soon!
13. AI
AI is coming to Adalo, but we’re doing it right. All of our work on scalability and speed to first fully enable our App Optimization Tool is actually setting the foundation for prompt engineering. This is so prompt engineering will do more than give you a v1 output of screens. Your prompts will be able to harness all of Adalo’s capabilities & features to provide a drafted app you can easily refine into exactly what your vision entails, and it will structure your app to run fast for you.
Thanks for reading! We’re having the time of our lives in Adalo, and looking forward to continuing to improve the fastest to build, fastest to publish, and soon to be fastest app platform.
