📽 WDC #15 "Show Thunkable"

[domhnallohanlon]

It’s Friday, so it’s time for another #wdc, but (as we recently announced) this time we’re turning the tables

Rather than have us tell you what to build with Thunkable we want YOU to tell us what you’re building with Thunkable. There are three ways to participate this weekend.

1. Use us as an Accountability Buddy!

If you’ve been putting off working on your app for a while, or of you have a looming deadline then simply reply below with what you’re going to build.

For example: “This weekend I’m going to build an app for my local community that …”

or: “This weekend I’m going to finish my app project where I have to …”

Simply saying something out loud make you significantly more likely to actually accomplish it!

2. Use us for Constructive Feedback

Whether you’ve just published your 100th app to the store or you’re trying in add a new feature to your very first Thunkable project it’s always great to get feedback.

Post a reply here if you want feedback on the copy in your app, the design of your logo, or if you need someone to test your app out for you.

Are you planning on posting in #shareyourprojects or in #madewiththunkable? We can offer advice on that! If you’re trying to get your first 10 downloadS or to get your next 1,000 then we’ll try to support you with that too!

There is a staggering amount of app development experience and expertise in this Community and this is your opportunity to tap into that.

Can’t wait to see what every one is working on!

[domhnallohanlon]

Summary Post:

I’m not sure what will go here yet - but I’m looking forward to seeing what comes out of this!

[domhnallohanlon]

Ok, I’ll go first to break the ice!

I’m finishing up the first half of my habit tracker app. It a collection of daily Thunking challenges to help new users get up and running quickly building mobile apps.

v1 will have 12 levels that the user progresses through (getting more and more difficult each day) and a new level will open up each day.

Each level concludes with a quiz and who knows, maybe in a future update there will be a global high score board so we can see the best new Thunkers in the world are?

Anyway - if you’d like to test this out on Android or iOS just leave a “like” on this post.

My goal for this weekend is to get this on to the Play Store and Test Flight for beta testing, and hopefully by the time the next #ShowThunkable rolls around I’ll have a completed app to show you all!!!

[tatiang]

Perfect timing! I’ve been eager to share a Photo Journal app I’m working on. It’s been a haul, learning all about Firebase while improving my cloning and Any Component skills.

More to share very soon…

[human]

Yes, I am working on my app too. It’s a game.

[domhnallohanlon]

@human

It’s a game

Thanks @human - what sort of game is it? Is this something you want to play yourself or are you hoping that others will download and play your game too?

[human]

Sorry, but that information is classified

(like what game it is)

@domhnallohanlon

Is this something you want to play yourself or are you hoping that others will download and play your game too?

It’s a game I hope others can play too. However, I won’t be downloading it.

[catsarisky]

I have two games in progress.

“Poodles to Paris” (originally intended for WDC 13) is closer to done - I’d like to add some images of the poodle’s postcards, but I have no graphics skills and haven’t been able to find something free that really grabbed me. thunkablecompanion - I could use input on what it needs still to be publishable. I’m thinking I’d like to add ‘travel insurance’ (basically a free re-roll for times when the game would otherwise end), but I’m enjoying playing it as-is.

“Plant sitter” (inspired by a misunderstanding of what WDC 14 was going to be) is less far along. I had a stage get bugged, and that set me back a ways, then I decided I wanted to use a different stage image, and I just finished setting up the new layout (more or less) today. It’s not done, and it isn’t close, although you can see the bits that are mostly-functional here: thunkablecompanion

Oh, and I have a half-built grocery list/order app, too. I did all the hard work of getting authentication working with my local grocery store, then decided I wanted to tweak the data structure I was using in Firebase, and um… I haven’t gotten back to it.

I mostly code after 9pm while waiting for my daughter to fall asleep, sitting in the dark on the floor of her room. So sometimes I don’t make much progress.

[tatiang]

@catsarisky

I mostly code after 9pm while waiting for my daughter to fall asleep, sitting in the dark on the floor of her room. So sometimes I don’t make much progress.

A lot of my coding is at 10pm when my two kids are finally in bed.

[tatiang]

Photo Journal

I usually wait to share projects until they’re farther along but this is a good excuse to get feedback and improve my app.

I don’t have a name yet for the app so I’m using the generic “Photo Journal” for now. I love photography, especially close-up nature photography. And it can be therapeutic to create a journal so why not make a photo journal where users can take or upload a photo and then add a description… maybe their mood or observations from their day or gratitudes for self or others.

!

Video Demo:

Photo Journal demo

This has been a lot of work! But I’ve enjoyed getting to know some of the more complicated components and blocks in Thunkable.

Here are the components and services I’m using along with some comments:

1. Firebase - Users can sign up and then sign in to create private journal entries. I’m storing photo URLs, journal entries (text descriptions) and date/time stamps. I’ve given each Firebase journal entry node a name like 2021-05-10_21:06:33 which is formatted as [year-month-day_time] which allows me to use the List sorting blocks to sort all entries by date.

Firebase was a little intimidating at first but it’s actually very powerful and efficient.

2. Cloudinary - Using this to upload and store photos is a piece of cake with Thunkable. But it’s kind of an old stale cake because Thunkable only uploads images in full quality. So it’s a SLOW process and many of the photos I take on my iPhone 11 are too large and create an error when uploaded. Which is why I’m so excited that this feature request has been tagged as planned work.

When I pull the photos down from Cloudinary, I can resize them using Cloudinary’s API and that speeds up the display process in the app considerably.

3. Camera & Photo Library - I’m not going to spend time explaining these but they are integral to my app for obvious reasons.

4. Alerts - also self-explanatory, hopefully.

5. Web API The quotes that are generated randomly (once per day) come from here and require attribution. I’m actually technically not using the Web API at all. I generated quotes (50 at a time) and copied and pasted a bunch into a text block in Thunkable. (I’m not quite sure that’s ethical so I have to either ask permission or just use the API as intended if I publish this app.) Because it’s JSON, I can use my knowledge of JSON to parse the quotes and choose a random one each new day.

6. Any Component blocks I love these suckers! But they drive me a little crazy. I’m cloning the journal entry row for each Firebase journal entry node and then using Any Component blocks and List blocks to fill all of the cloned components with data.

This is probably the part of my app that needs the most work. Not because I haven’t figured out how to do everything (I have! ) but because it’s slow to pull the data from Firebase. It takes several seconds to display the data in half a dozen “journal entry” rows. If I get several dozen, the wait is even longer. I’m not sure why. Maybe that’s just how cloud data works. It seems much faster than Google Sheets or Airtable but as you’ll see in the video above [coming soon!], it’s just not fast enough to feel like a professional app yet.

One thought I had was to have an overlay screen (a little tricky in Thunkable…) that shows until all of the Firebase data has been retrieved. I’m not sure what I would display… maybe a quote or an affirmation or a journal entry prompt (“Write about a time you felt seen.”).

7. Coolors - This website allows you to generate random color themes consisting of five or more complimentary colors. And you can lock in colors you like and then generate additional colors that match the locked ones. It’s great for figuring out colors for buttons, titles and other elements in a project.

Alright, that’s it. And that was a lot. Thanks for reading!

I welcome any suggestions you may have for UI, graphic design, or especially efficiently storing and retrieving photos and text.

[codeswept]

That’s one amazing app @tatiang! I especially love the fact that you get quotes. But I suppose a much, much simpler way to display photos and descriptions would be to use a DVL. That would reduce a lot of Cloning blocks, etc.

[codeswept]

I love it @domhnallohanlon ! I’ve got lots of apps to share, but I’ll do only one this weekend. I’m going to share about ChiPhone, a phone simulation with all the features!

[tatiang]

Right but I was under the impression that you can’t use a DVL (Data Viewer List) with Firebase. I’m really trying to utilize Firebase but maybe Airtable is the way to go.

[jared]

You can use it in conjunction but you need to shift the data to a localDB first; then load the data to the dlv

Get from Firebase
Clear your local DB
Loop the FB data into your local DB
Refresh the list viewer

[tatiang]

Thanks. I actually had that thought but I was focused more on speed than ease of developing and wasn’t sure that would help. Cloning doesn’t seem to be the issue but rather syncing data to the cloned components. Maybe a DVL will be faster though.

Edit: I just tried it with a DVL and it was still pretty slow to load everything. Do you suggest going from Firebase to Lists to the local DB or straight from Firebase to the local DB (which is what I did)?

Edit #2: I think the problem is that my images aren’t getting scaled down from Cloudinary to Firebase. Gonna fix that.

Update: It’s taking about 1 second per item to display the Firebase data in a DVL.

[muneer]

I’m currently working on an app for a hair dressing salon. Due to the pandemic the government instructed salons to work on appointment basis and waiting in the shop is not allowed, therefore my client needed an app for her clients to book appointments.

The appointment is connected with Google calendar and checks available time online. The app also uses SMS API to send reminders to clients.

The app has a gallery of hair styles and the last button is the government precautionary instructions that users has to follow.

The app is still in progress and my client started to change the specs which means I might redo it completely.

[skulamester]

This weekend I’m going to work on my app, which is developed for couples…

The team and I have always wanted to have an app that isn’t just counting the length of the relationship, but also helps remember memories, events and add comments to them. Also, if you have a hard time deciding or figuring out where to go on a date this is a perfect app. In this app you can connect your profile with your partner’s one.
Also, this app can offer numerous features such as timelines, anniversary reminders, date ideas, personal comments and ratings.

My goal for this weekend is to finish the so called “Challenges” screen, where the couple get each day a unique daily challenge to be completed, like go on a date.

If you’d like to test this out on Android or iOS just leave a “like” on this post.

The team and I hope, that the app will be released in 6-8 weeks, but until then here are some screenshots about the current version:

[anush_bh20910]

Hey Thunkers!
it was nice to see what others were working on. so let me tell you guys mine.

DOG CHECK : Its an app which you can use to train your dog as well as keep a record of their Temperature, Weight so that you can easily know what was the, say temp, of your dog and when. It also has a random dog pic generator (can you guys link me a dog quote api, please?).

Updates that may be there

• Personal dog account
• Bog social media
• Badges

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KLIK (Still working on the name) : There is a coin which you have to click under a time limit. the more you click, the more you earn coins. You have outfits which, if you have enough coins, can be bought by you to decrease your time a little and increase your coin income. thats the theory but i am using , and i am having problems with some sizing so, if you like the app idea, you have two options. Either try doing it your self or wait another month or two.

No updates for now

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WHITEBOARD : you may remember this

Whiteboard for teachers ! Please Post your Verdict

I know that teachers are having problem with teaching in this situation , so I created this app for them to use. I hope you Like It. feel free to Remix and tell me more components that i can use to make he app more interactive. Link to the app Stay safe, Stay healthy

well, now i am trying to make it a tiny bit more user friendly.

Updates I am trying to apply

• Undo last drawing
• draw shape
• allow multi device drawing.

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So, thats all.

Excited to know what you guys are working on

Happy thunking (I am hating these auto corrects.)
Anush

[anush_bh20910]

@tatiang

A lot of my coding is at 10pm when my two kids are finally in bed.

@catsarisky

I mostly code after 9pm while waiting for my daughter to fall asleep, sitting in the dark on the floor of her room. So sometimes I don’t make much progress.

Well I am almost 11, so I literally code all the day. but still, Making apps (working plus beautiful) and taking care of your kids, its just awesome.

keep thunking
Anush