This post is long over due.
I want to use Webflow to design the front end of a web app and use the exported code for my developers to build on top of. This will save countless hours of making our web app responsive, styling the product, functionality on every browser - you name it. The benefits are endless.
I need to know what are the best practices to use if I’m planning on going down this route, especially when it comes to forms (or any component that is native to Webflow that won’t function when I export the code.)
Is this even possible? Has anyone does this already? I NEED this to happen! I want Webflow to be my design system but with functional code for a working web-app.
Help!!!
Hey, I was wondering if you ever got anywhere with this?
Hmm yes, I do see why it would be handy to design layouts in WF for use in a front-end framework.
But I think in reality, depending on the scale and complexity the app has - there are serious downsides to this workflow.
Normally, apps are compiled from a source, depending on the framework - css, js and html are encapsulated into components and only after compiling bundled up and optimized. Using the exported code can make this unpractical and hinder optimizations like tree-shaking of unused code/css.
The WF interactions are bundled inside the webflow.js and require jquery and other dependencies. This is basically 90% bloat when creating your own app and reduces performance in various ways.
When it comes to data-binding and reactivity of components, even re-usability of components you will have to manually edit the html. This will offset any time savings you’ve had with building the layout.
Also if you use frameworks that are based on jsx you will have a bad time because you’ll have to edit almost every bit of html!
That’s just my two cents 