Tools

Bubble.io Intro Guide

Bubble.io Intro Guide

Most of us have great ideas, but we don’t have time to develop them. We know our ideas are better than existing solutions, but we just can’t find the way to convert them into real products that people will love and buy. There’s an easy way out of this dilemma: Bubble the most powerful no-code platform for creating digital products. With Bubble, you can build better and faster, regardless of your level of coding expertise.  

Bubble.io, one of the most popular no-code platforms, has made a name for itself in the application creation space. Bubble is used by over 700,000 users to create applications without coding. Observers anticipate a significant increase in user numbers as the no-code approach spreads. Almost any user can use Bubble to create an app or a website. The versatile possibilities and options benefit both companies and their departments, as well as private users.

Bubble.io has an intuitive structure and several quite complex possibilities that can be used to realize even large projects. The code is cleanly interpretable after the coding is generated by the program. Bubble's offer is essentially free of charge. Various paid levels and packages provide a broader range of services and possibilities.

What Is Bubble and What Is It Used for?

Basically, using a construction kit system to create websites and applications is not a novel concept. However, the functionality of many tools in this field is quite constrained. Bubble promotes the idea that non-programmers can also create sophisticated applications.

As a result, Bubble has a flexible interface, the use of which is covered in several tutorials. Users quickly pick up the fundamentals of using Bubble to create applications thanks to a vibrant community. This makes it simple to start using the many functions.

Bubble customer portal template

The Application Editor, which is accessed through the internet, is used to create, build, maintain, and scale your program. When you develop an app on Bubble, it is hosted on Bubble's cloud infrastructure and can be viewed from anywhere.

In Bubble, dragging and dropping a variety of interactive elements onto the screen is simple. Among these components are buttons, pictures, movies, maps, and lists. The menu in Bubble.io gives you precise control over how the web page or application looks and functions. You can immediately see what the finished product will look like at the time of creation. Like this, you can define how and when an element behaves in a graphical editor. You can access the APIs of various web services through the plug-in menu.  

Bubble allows you to create dynamic, multi-user programs for desktop and mobile web browsers. Some users have successfully wrapped Bubble webpages as native applications and submitted them to the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.

What Are The Benefits of Bubble?

The main advantage of Bubbles is that it makes it possible for non-programmers to build robust websites and applications. The entrance barriers for developing applications are reduced as a result. An advantage of a no-code platform like Bubble is its straightforward architecture. Initial development greatly reduces the application's otherwise considerable complexity. Like how it lowers the complexity of the assistance needed. Because automatic coding keeps the code tidy, mistakes are substantially less likely to occur.

Bubble helps you get things done faster. With a few clicks, you can be up and running with your own app—without any programming experience or expensive design tools. You can launch sooner, iterate faster and lower costs because it's easy to use and powerful. Bubble lets you create interactive, multi-user apps for desktop and mobile web browsers. It includes all the features you need to build a site like in an IDE like coding, collaboration, working in teams on projects etc.

The development of virtually any type of website, application, or app is possible thanks to Bubble's broad range of features and a high degree of flexibility. Bubble can also be used to develop PWAs (portable web applications) and mobile applications. The development of robust web applications is the primary focus of Bubble, though.

You Can Build in Bubble:

  • Creating user accounts;
  • Saving, modifying, deleting and retrieving data;
  • Real-time updates;
  • Connecting to any kind of external services that expose an API (including payments, sources of data, authentication providers, etc.);
  • Building responsive applications, which adjust to the width of the screen.
And much more!  

Bubble does not yet automatically produce native apps for iOS and Android. Some users have been successful in launching apps across the two stores. We advise creating a web version of your software as a one-page application first, then converting it into a native app if you are building native software first and want to use Bubble. Bubble Forum is the best place to do this because other users have already been through it.  

Additionally, the huge flexibility is a benefit. The many distinct parts and pieces may be created essentially at will. As a result, the components can be modified as necessary for the application. At first, sight, starting with an empty page might seem intimidating, but Bubble.io has a challenging user interface.

How Do I Get Started with Bubble?

One of the ongoing challenges for a single entrepreneur or small team is the simple problem of needing to build software in order to validate the concept order to collect the finances needed to produce software in order to validate... you get the picture. Most ideas remain just that without a tech co-founder or the funds to employ coders. But with Bubble the situation is way different. Bubble enables you to design software yourself, fast and cheaply, and test it with actual users. Let's see how you can start working in Bubble and build an outstanding app for your business.

Create a Visual Structure

Although every user who builds on Bubble will have their own habits, the general strategy is to first establish the application's visual structure before defining the workflows that program it. Workflows are events that cause a series of actions to be taken, whereas the visual structure will be the collection of pages and key components you need your users to interact with. A button click is an example of an event. Once you are aware of the buttons and inputs required on the page, it is simpler to think about these events and their reactions.

Make Your Ideas into a Draft

It is typically a good idea to begin sketching out your application's appearance and functionality on paper. According to our experience, it is important to first sketch out a few key screens on paper, placing the relevant components on each one, then draft the processes, one step at a time. Having this will make designing the real application much quicker and easier.

Describe a Simple Data Structure

The data structure is the next component of constructing Bubble. You and your users will depend on a data structure that enables them to create, read, update, and remove data for your app to function. Users and Posts would be included in a basic version of Instagram. Your postings may have a title, a description, and a picture, but your users might only have a name, a description, and a location.

Go over What Else You Need

Finally, it is very likely that your app will rely on third-party services to function, such as payment solutions, data providers, and so on. This is accomplished through plugins or your app's API. These should be addressed when your basic visual and data structure are obvious. It is important to note that developing an application is an iterative process.

Iterate Continuously

Be aware that the process of creating an application is progressive. Many users begin by creating a wireframe of the page with the first parts and a straightforward layout, then go on to the workflow section to establish the basic behavior, before returning to the design section after they have a clearer understanding of the items they want. You will be changing the design, the processes, and the data structure as your app develops and you improve it, add features, etc.

You may probably make some mistakes as you create your application since Bubble is relatively open-ended, much like you occasionally make mistakes in an Excel calculation. This happens throughout the programming phase.

Let's Run Your App

The power of Bubble is not limited to building. Once the initial version has been created, it will be tested using actual users and actual data. You will be able to monitor your app to ensure everything is operating as planned after it is in production, or when it is being used by actual people. To help you with that, Bubble offers a few monitoring tools and logs. Run mode is what we refer to when an app is active.

An Overview of Bubble.io Templates & How to Use a Template

Many Bubble.io templates are immediately usable and can be simply filled with current content if needed. However, this frequently leads to a very generic-looking website or app that provides little advantage to its own users. This is since the recognition value of a web app or website is equally important. As a result, Bubble.io templates are essential foundations for developing one's own app or website. As a result, they serve as the foundation for the creation of the real app or website. Non-free Bubble.io templates are typically ideal for commercial products due to their increased complexity and functionality since less labor is required to invest in the website or app.

Marketplace template on Bubble

Many of the features and capabilities of non-free Bubble.io templates can be immediately used with little alterations. However, with free Bubble.io templates, more significant effort is frequently required to modify them to your own needs and requirements. However, whether form is best is heavily dependent on the present project and the desired features and capabilities. As a result, a broad assessment is impossible. The more intricate the own specifications, the more difficult it is to discover a template that conforms completely to these thoughts and wants.

The large selection of products at Bubble.io templates also make it extremely simple to find acceptable solutions for your own ideas and to be inspired. Only when your goals are so complicated that they cannot be met by Bubble.io templates do it make sense to build a project from scratch. As a result, templates are always a suitable alternative, if the concepts and criteria are not exceptionally unique and justify a higher effort.

Bubble User Interface

The What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) guiding philosophy underpins the Bubble Visual Editor. The elements in Fixed layouts could be placed exactly where you want them to be, down to the pixel, and your program will appear that way in Run-mode. You may combine and combine Container Layout Types to build nearly any layout possible for responsive websites that adjust as the screen size changes. The fundamentals to bear in mind when creating an interface are as follows.

All elements in Bubble have a parent, and some elements can be containers (located in the container section of the New Element palette). All elements on the page will have the page as their parent because it is the top parent. When you move your cursor over a container to draw an element inside of it, you'll see that the edges are highlighted in red. When an element is placed within a container, both in Edit and Run modes, it will behave in the same way as the parent. When you change an element in the editor, for instance, the children will remain in the same location in relation to their parents.

In Bubble, each element is initially positioned absolutely with respect to its parent using the coordinates (X, Y). You may then arrange things on the page anyway you see fit. This is distinct from many visual HTML/CSS editors that force you to position components inside certain boxes on the page. Although it gives you greater freedom, it also implies that your website will display precisely as it is on a web browser. The website layout won't alter to suit changes to the screen size or dynamic content. Use Bubble's Layout options to produce pages that are more responsive or dynamic.

Build UI/ UX in Bubble

Also, bubble pages may be totally responsive. Your website layout may adjust to the width of the screen so that it looks fantastic on mobile devices by combining and contrasting Container Layout options. Row, Column, and Align to Parent are the three container layout types. Additionally, responsive Container Layouts include alignment and scaling parameters for pixel-perfect layouts as well as layout settings for all its child components that influence its responsive behavior. In the following parts, we'll get into each of these Layout choices and explain how to use them.

You may add a new element to a page by selecting it from the visual element panel on the left (the New Element Palette), drawing it on the page, and then choosing the element type you wish to add. Once an element has been created on the page, you may move it by dragging it around and changing its characteristics by double-clicking on it. While Popups are modal containers that show at the top of the page and are always centered on the page, most components may be moved around and resized, with a few exceptions. They cannot be dragged, for this reason. You can edit the element fields in the Property Editor when you double-click an element.

Building Workflows

Bubble is based on a workflow-driven programming framework. When triggered, a workflow executes a set of activities. For example, when a user hits the 'save' button (the event),' something' should happen (the series of actions).

A workflow is made up of an event that initiates the process and a sequence of activities that follow. A workflow is defined by the interaction between an event and a set of actions. A process may be something like, 'When the button Signup is pressed, sign the person up, send an email, and then modify the page.' Workflows are page-specific in the app and are edited under the Workflow tab. If an activity returns information, you may find it under 'Result of previous step.'

To begin, select the event that will initiate the new workflow. Most of the time, it will be when a button is clicked, and you must select the element to which this event applies. You can add conditions to the workflow if it should only be executed under certain situations.

When you create an event, the workflow panel appears, and you may select the various actions one by one. For each one, you must define the few fields required for execution, such as where to locate the email for a Sign the user up action.

Workflows and actions can be copied and pasted by right-clicking on them and choosing the appropriate option. You can copy-paste individual actions, but if you copy-paste an event, the full process will be duplicated. It should be noted that an action will be added before the current action if it is pasted on top of another action.

The order of the steps is important. When you click the arrow, the action menu will appear, allowing you to add an action prior to the one you are now performing.

Some activities can be performed only on the server, just on the client, or both. Actions that publish data or link to external services, in general, will run in both contexts. Client-side actions include going to a page, toggling or scrolling to elements, and establishing custom states. Furthermore, client-side processes will not appear in the server logs of your application.

Or build your workflow via API with Zapier and Make – if you need help, we are happy to consult.

Learn from Bubble Academy

Depending on how comfortable you are with approaching an app in an event-driven manner, learning Bubble can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days. Instead of rushing right into development and expecting to create a functioning app shortly after joining up, we advise approaching Bubble with a learning attitude. You'll become aware of how much and how quickly you can perform without code once you really understand the fundamentals and the tool.

If you're new to the platform, the Bubble Academy is a great place to start. It includes a series of simple interactive tasks meant to help you grasp the fundamental ideas of app development without the requirement for coding.

Overall, there are 12 brief lessons to master. Some of the subjects addressed include data storage, constructing a sign-in system, and transferring data to pages, as well as a final graduating class once the course is completed. Each session is aimed to let you feel at ease using Bubble. All workshops include hands-on experience with the platform, including the creation of mini apps, with the course lasting around 51 minutes. You can, however, divide your time by attending separate sessions.

Final Thoughts from a Bubble Expert and Partner

It makes no difference what kind of business you own. What matters is how effectively you can handle things in order to maintain a secure and smooth workflow inside your company.

Bubble is a fantastic online visual editor that allows you to develop custom web apps. Surprisingly, no prior programming experience or coding abilities are required to utilize Bubble. It is appropriate for everyone, regardless of whether they know how to code. It saves time by putting everything needed for web application development in one location. Beginners can utilize the guidelines to get their hands on Bubble. Expert users, on the other hand, may apply their knowledge to extend possibilities through different Bubble expert features.

0hands can assist you if you need an outside Bubble developer to help you build your unique app quickly. Contact us about your project today if you need to develop a custom, production-grade app!

Automate. Improve. Be successful.

We provide you with independent advice and are happy to offer you our support.

Get  Free consulting