As someone who is taking a web development course

General Discussion
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The more I use Adalo, the more incredibly frustrated I become with its lack of functionality.

Why can’t we have direct control over things. Why can’t I make a button control another element directly? Lack of this type of functionality is extremely limiting and forces the use of really odd and convoluted workarounds to do things, if even possible at all. For example:

Open up a user details panel that just has a bunch of text fields with their info. Each field has an “edit” icon. Click the icon to make a text input appear. You literally cannot do this with Adalo’s built in tools. You can do wonky things like make the button update a field on the currently logged in user you use as a variable to be something like “visible” then make the input field visible “sometimes” if variable = “visible” then it will show up. But this is, in my opinion, ridiculous.

I get that Adalo is aimed at mobile app development, and I’m trying to use it to create both a mobile app as well as a web portal access to that same app…but its “website” implementation is incredibly lacking and behaves in a really bizarre manner.

If you’re not going to implement the website creation side of things very well, then don’t even do it at all because it’s extremely terrible and frustrating not to have a “responsive” website.

My friend wants an app to help him with his trucking company. I’ve built him an MVP with Adalo to use on mobile phones relatively quickly but he doesn’t want his dispatchers to have to use the app to do things as they use websites or desktop applications to do all their other work.

So I’m working on building the website version for better data entry and man is it a slog.

It makes me want to either:

  • Completely abandon Adalo altogether and continue on and finish my development course and build the site myself using other tools like MongoDB or Google Firebase for user authentication and database management (hell, even AirTable). This will take much longer but actually benefits me in the long run. Using Adalo to build my friend’s app does not benefit me in any way, really…
  • Use Adalo for the mobile app but use a shared off-platform database like Airtable or some other service and build the “website” version myself, using the shared off-Adalo database, then use something like Zapier to complete the interactions since I don’t think Adalo allows for direct access with its API (though maybe it does, I haven’t completely read the documentation.)
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Hi @naossoan ,

There are 2 ways to do this,

  • use different screen as modal
  • use group in the same screen with style as Top and have visibility (it is called as fake modal by @theadaloguy )

Take some time off to clear mind and at the same time read old posts and do experiments in experimental apps, not directly to complex app.

@dilon_perera already proves here, he reads and helps a lot in this forum.

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Hi, you can always mix them, I don’t use Adalo for Webapps due to the lack of responsiveness, but I use other providers, and then I combine them with Adalo as an app using a centralized database or one that can communicate together (Adalo-Webflow or Adalo-WordPress). So your second point.

Adalo can communicate to Webflow/WordPress (Just a couple of examples) via the custom actions and webflow also can communicate directly to Adalo.
For WordPress, you do need or Zapier or a Form/Form handler that supports cUrL or API requests (I develop a lot in WordPress and there a lot of forms that can communicate to Adalo directly).

So the need for an external database is all up to the features you need, I use Airtable, Stackby, Google sheets, XANO, WordPress, Webflow (Even Squarespace ), ADALO, Other Adalo competitors. It all depends in the features and complexity. Just let us know the exact features you need, and tons of experts here to help :).