Creating mobile apps

Hey guys, now with the ability to designate a page as native mobile, curious if there will be future features regarding mobile development.

Thanks!

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What do you mean by future features? You can already build an app as a page and submit it in the App Store. It’s still in beta but you can definitely use it. We’ve added some elements for mobile (Ionic Elements, Tinder Element, etc.), so you should be able to experiment. Let us know if something is missing.

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That’s great! Didn’t realize it was ready to be pushed to the app store - is there some documentation on how that whole process works?

Not yet, that’s why it’s still in beta. But there is a popup that tells you how to build the app. When you’ll be ready to submit reach out to us, we’ll guide you.

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Pretty exciting! Do you guys have a way to help us export an apk for google play as well? I assume (hope :)) you’re using cordova or something that will play nicely

Not yet. We’re using cordova indeed, but there is a bit of work on our end. probably toward the end of the summer.

do you have any recommendations for how to show and hide elements efficiently to create a single-page native app?

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I use groups and place all the elements of each mobile screen in there and then hide and show the groups as needed.

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A good technique is to create a field on the user type named “current view” and then use some conditional formatting to show / hide groups based on the value of the current user’s current view. Then you can use some simple workflows to change the value of the field for the current user.

That way hiding and showing elements doesn’t happen in workflows, which is easier and cleaner.

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Great, thanks so much to both of you! I’m using the groups hiding and showing but I will try and switch to the field + conditional formatting.

Hi Emmanuel, I have about 5 layers of groups to show and hide. I’m setting the value for current view as soon as the user logs in. Do I layer each group on top of the other, so that Group A is BELOW Group B and then use conditional formatting to make them progressively visible as the user goes through the flow? Or do I start with them all invisible and then hide the current and show each next group with each step?

Thank you!

Joy

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It’s really up to you, both approaches work. I would recommend hiding all groups but one at any time as it makes things easier to debug, and doing so you don’t have to worry about order of the layers, etc.

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Hey Emmanuel, any updates here? Just curious if you’re still on track with the mobile updates.

I can’t commit on a hard deadline here, but it’s for the fall, early winter I think.

We recently pushed a change that will make this easier. You can now create custom states on some elements instead of creating a field on the user. See the reference.

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Sounds good, thanks Emmanuel.

Hey Emmanuel,
Curious - Any update on the native app development timelines ? Keenly looking forward to it.
Cheers,
Gaurav

We’ve been pushing this back a little bit, and have been focusing on performance, reliability and business stuff. Early winter is probably reasonable, but we can’t commit to that yet.

Any news on this? I’m trying to do a simple instagram like app, but I’ll need it to be in Android and be able to submit early next month. Is this still not possible with phonegap?

No it’s not there yet. We’ve had to push this a little bit, spring 2016 is more realistic.