Over the last four months, I have spent most of my time in Softr building climesumer.com.
While building, I took notes on anything that I noticed, from bugs, over features to general improvements.
Before diving in, I would like to say a huge thanks to the Softr Team! Your support and the speed at which you ship new features is just perfect. Action buttons for example will enable completely new features for my app and I feel like Softr is developing in just the right speed to co-develop our own apps.
Below is my list. (Notion page with supporting images and more details)
Bugs:
- Inbox Blocks: The first item is selected when loaded on mobile screen.
- Inbox Block: Loading multiple inbox blocks is unreliable and fails sometimes. (It does not load all records and all inbox blocks). I have 6 inbox blocks at once. https://www.climesumer.com/actionhub
- List with deletable elements, vertical cards:
When in landscape mode and then back, list block not rendering correctly.- Climesumer.com/resources
- Same happened on Android phone in Chrome or Ecosia mobile app.
- Hero with button and typewriter:
On iPhone 6 in the Ecosia browser, the image is not rendering correctly - Button visibility in list block not working. (I think it has been fixed)
- Some button hover are not working (couldn’t find the example again)
- Filter are unreliable sometimes
- Inbox Block: When clicking the first filter option, the inbox block disappears completely.
- Inbox block and list bock: Filter is showing no results. (Back then without the auto fill from Airtable, checked all possible options and could not find the error)
climesumer.com/podcasts → filter for “Climate Justice, Exploitation & People” - Inbox Block: Rich text not displaying correctly
- Inbox Block: First item detail page link, wrong item (works now)
Features:
- Global / synced blocks: Blocks that update on multiple pages
I have many identical blocks on several pages. Such as my menu (climesumer.com/resources) or my newsletter call to action block.
It’s extremely cumbersome to change text or text size or anything when having to make the same changes across many pages. Turning blocks into global blocks, just like Notion is handling it with its synced blocks. One origin block, and many child blocks. - More advanced themes options
- To include the filters on any block. Super time-consuming having to configure the border, background and hover states for each filter on each block.
- to include styling for mobile. Define heading and paragraph text size for mobile view.
I found myself creating custom mobile blocks with the exact same content, only in smaller sizes. It bloats the building experience and introduces unnecessary complexity.
- Rich text description fields for any block
For many blocks that I used, I wanted to use bold or hyperlinks in my description field in blocks like the “Hero with button and typewriter”. - Ability to add more than one button to some blocks.
For example to the “Hero with button and typewriter” block. - Allow multiple Airtbable fields in one Softr field.
Often, I found myself wanting to combine, for example a people, language and country tag in one field. This saves space and has an overall better UX.
The same is true for dropdown and filter fields. Currently, I have separate City, Country, and Region fields that can feel like overkill as not many options are available yet. Combining these fields in one select list would improve usability. - Toggle to hide all hidden blocks at once | save blocks | block templates.
I have many blocks I created to use for later or that I did not end up using but don’t want to delete as I invested some time into them. As of now, they bloat my actual building experience as they are not used in my live app.
A simple toggle to hide/show these blocks would make building pages much easier. - Hide Desktop / Tablet / Mobile blocks in each view and make them easy to toggle on and off.
Same as above. The more optimised I built my Softr app for each screen size, the more blocks I have. I start losing the overview of which block belongs to which screen size.
It also makes it harder for me to imagine the final look when a mobile block is visible when building for desktop. A toggle would be an easy trick. - Dynamic blocks. Switch Airtable Table source with a built-in button.
I have multiple pages where I have to connect separate Airtble tables to a block that looks the same to the end user.
In the example of climesumer.com/sustainablealternative I have to create three separate pages, only to display the same page with the same block but with a different Table connected (climesumer.com/companies).
This workaround created unnecessary pages, increased the chance of error and made the app unnecessarily complex. With this feature I could save about 10-15 pages in my Softr App without having to create a separate page! - Change filter status on button click
Similar to the dynamic blocks. Here I need several pages and buttons only to change the CONDITIONAL FILTERS of the block.
In climesumer.com/actionhub I had to built four separate pages because of this. They all had to be set up, need to be maintained, have to manually be updated when new block updates arrive and overall add unnecessary complexity to the app. - Action buttons to directly change and update values in specific rows.
Currently, all my upvote, save or review actions on the app are forms with hidden fields.
I use a helper table and set up Airtable automations to change the value of the desired row and column.
Native support that allows to write and delete values directly to a specific row and column would remove many workarounds. - Global update all blocks option
As I have many of the same blocks in my app, it is very time-consuming to update every block that received an update.
UX Improvements:
- Inbox Block: Action Button on Mobile should fold under each other, vs unreadable text
climesuemer.com/sustainablealternative - Inconsistent styling options across blocks. Very noticeable with shadow and hover states of buttons (like the simple text block button, email capture block button, Form submission buttons, inbox block etc.).
- When updating blocks, you have to map or even style them again
The bigger the app and the more of the same blocks you have, the worse it gets. I have 50+ pages, and updating my app to the latest blocks would take a long time! - When changing Softr page name / URL , page link fails
Super time-consuming and complex when you want to streamline your app but already have linked the pages in several places. It would be greatly appreciated if the links would stay intact, just like in Airtable. - Changing Airtable, table or row name causes link loss in Softr.
I happened to me that I wanted to change the naming convention of my Airtable base and its tables. I already had linked 40+ pages in Softr. Because the connections get lost when changing the name, I had to reconnect 40+ pages in my softr app, almost starting from zero again. - Action button only on bottom and not in middle / above content possible
Being able to change the location of the new action buttons would greatly improve UX in some cases and is the reason why I am sticking with the old blocks in some cases.
Especially for the List with horizontal sliding cards and Inbox block.
See climesumer.com/podcasts - Big margins in Blocks
The minimal margins of tags and other fields in multiple blocks like list block could be smaller to make apps more compact. - Edit Profile block, doesn’t pull data from Airtable.
It would be great to see the same options syncing you introduces to the inbox block in the Edit profile block. I have a city and country field and that is way too large to fill in with the current method. - Simple Text block cannot have a heading in one font and a body in the second font, like any other block.
Text fields with multi-font style would add consistency. See my climesuemer.com landing page.
We appreciate it a lot and do our best to constantly improve Softr!