Hey all, I was curious to hear from people on some best practices they use or have discovered while creating in Adalo. Anything from design, database structure, pushing data around, etc.
One thing I enjoy doing is keeping a blank screen for designing my elements and page sections, and also keeping reusable elements there such as custom icons, buttons and font sizing and weight guides for different elements to keep consistency. Sort of like a mini library within the editor!
I usually focus on the DB structire first, because it makes it more clear what I put on the screens.
so 1) database 2) screens 3) relationships between DB
We work through the user experience and the actions we want them to take and where those actions take place and then work backward from there. We used to start with the database, and there are some basic points that you can start with, but the workflows often highlight data elements you might have overlooked.
Iāve also found you should really put off from linking all your screens up to eachother and turning UI into custom lists for as long as possible while building and planning out your UI/UX. I donāt have the worst computer (i7-7700 / 16GB RAM / GTX 1060 6GB) but when the editor is filled with a bunch of screens and elements, and then the screens are all linked together, it slows down the editor greatly.
To the point where I need to wait 1-2s seconds before an element is selected, which adds up when youāre trying to select an element to edit which is in a group, and that group is inside a list.
Edit: Iāve seen that you should have as little tabs open as possible which helps, which I usually do. Just the editor, a tab viewing the published URL, a tab for the forums and a tab for LoFi Girl.
I use Edge on my Surface Book and really like it. After a quick search confirming that Edge runs better than Chrome and your recommendation, I think Iām going to bite the bullet and switch to it on my desktop.
You should use Firefox when you have multiple screens 60+ say. The performance is about 5x to 10x better due to the ability of its hardware acceleration.
I was banging my head against the wall for a long time with edge, brave, opera chrome and more. I have a 16gb GPU and 64gb Ram, none of the named browsers can access this level of power, so to an extent PC performance becomes irrelevant.
OH. MY. GOSH. Just loaded up my project in Firefox and I can confirm itās by far the best browser to use.
Iāve only got about 25 screens including basic login and a couple of static screens, but theyāre sized at 1920x1080, maybe thatās why Iāve been struggling on the other browsers?
I went from hardly being able to pan the work area around in the editor and waiting seconds for things to be selected/lag with typed and deleted characters etc. To now everything smooth and fast as if it was a new project with default screens.
I try firefox too, it seems faster, but I donāt like that I have to zoom actual size every time I zoom in.
This counting screens just trigger me, so even I didnāt realize that edge beta can handle 161 screens, and this is after split.
One thing I donāt like edge beta is in fullscreen mode, the tooltip donāt show up, so I usually donāt use fullscreen, but if I need to use fullscreen, I use brave.
Glad it helped. As Yonki has stated there are a couple of drawbacks:
The scroll bar is present when scrolling up and down your previewer phone screen/iPad screen. I copy the preview link and use Chrome/edge etc for viewing my projects. But all Dev is done in Firefox
Scrolling in by pinching the laptop track pad does cause the whole frame to sometimes zoom in, rather than zoom into the intended screen. This isnāt the case though when you use a mouse, so use a mouse instead of trackpad.
You may notice typing long pieces of text into magic text areas, Firefox doesnāt work so well. I type long pieces of text out else where, and copy paste into the magic text areas.
Otherwise, Firefox is literally a no brainer. I tried every browser going, but you will find most browsers will work v poorly for large projects. When Firefox works instantly.
Iāve ran into your 1st and 3rd problems, but I work on desktop for now so 2nd isnāt an issue. The 3rd issue is very annoying. I think Iāll stick to chrome until performance drops off to unbearable then move to Firefox.
Good idea, I have a few Apps with 100ish screens, and Chrome, Brave and Edge etc just are not even a feasible option. You will see that when your project grows to similar size
Adopt an iterative approach when developing an app. Develop (and test!) small bits if functionality at a time. Donāt do it all as a ābig bangā and try to get all the features in at once. I extend this to getting early test builds out in Android and IOS.
I have a ātestbedā application where I can try out stuff without disrupting my main application.
Get a 3rd party (a friend, relative, colleague) to test your app as you develop it. They often provide good feedback on how intuitive and easy to use your app is, and will use your app in ways that you hadnāt anticipated or designed for.
Adopt a methodical approach to testing. Document your test cases somewhere so that you have a list of things you need to test and retest after changes. Unfortunately, Adalo doesnāt have a way to run tests automatically so this can be tedious and time consuming.
