Webflow has secured $76m in funding, are we going to see any improvements in your dev team?

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They are. And that doesn’t block other minor features to see the light. There isn’t one path of development, also important features need the appropriate ground to be developed, I’m sure things are being refactored all the time to avoid bugs and to guarantee a healthy, steady future for new features.

It is not as simple as taking one request and make it, it’s never been, it will never, and that should be easy to understand. Because reading what OP and you are writing, it seems that they hold the new, important, desired features on purpose. How come that be true?

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Allow me to add water in my wine. I write here with my real identity, it costs me to be furious and engage in this as I could just brush it away. You just have a nickname, no risk.

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Yeah if that’s your take I’m done in this topic lol. I guess we all just simply don’t understand.

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This is pretty close, what an assumption.

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I am super impressed!

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I think it’s still there. There are just more messages that are just request for help, and mathematically more users that are only here to solve their issue and not engage more with the community. I guess that’s okay, not everyone is prone to do that, appreciate it, take advantage of it.

This forum is poised to grow as Webflow get more audience, is going to lose some of its soul. That’s okay too… we’re free to join or create new, smaller, more focussed communities. There are some already, over Slack, on Discord, etC… I don’t participate too much in them but I wish I had the time. The amount of people I met here and that I still talk to on other platforms is high, and something that’s important to me.

I joined in 2014 shortly before IX1 too :—)

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Table is a difficult topic. I guess it’s not that hard to bring it, but should they? tables have been used a lot for layout on visual designers in the past. table was the game tool of any designer using Dreamweaver, and that’s a period in time we all want to forget.

Table isn’t an HTML deprecated feature, it’s still there and alive, but, it’s old, and technically disputable, as any content you put in tables is baked in. A cell is a cell and the content that’s in it stays there. tables are handeled by screen readers but they’ve never been an accessibility victory.

On the other hand, technologies that organise the display of data using CSS is more interesting, design wise and a11y wise. Because you can craft many different displays, but the HTML code doesn’t change. i’m thinking Flexbox and Grids. Grids can be (may already be) a good candidate for table data.

Now, why could it be slow? Because a decision made in wf’s development has to be a good, definitive one. Webflow isn’t like a graphic software that has versions and produce baked content. Webflow has to mind, at every step, how to not break the hundreds of thousands of sites that are hosted and/or are in active development state. There is only one thing that have been put to legacy, it’s IX1, and mind you, it’s still there for us to use. So a decision taken today about adding a feature is a decision that they’ll need to support and maintain for long years, that they’ll have to carefully make sure works on the long run without breaking anything and deceiving anyone. This situation doesn’t apply to all the online softwares. It’s easier for Figma to discontinue a feature or modify it a lot, it’s not going to break production things.

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@vincent I agree, it’s difficult to design software like this, which is why most of us are requesting existing features get resolved first, before adding complexity to the mix by throwing in things like eCommerce.

I don’t really thing citing the wishlist is demanding- we didn’t build it- Webflow did, and it’s our only glimpse into the development of a tool we love.

I’ve brought several companies on-board and some that I personally manage and it isn’t as easy as just moving on (not that I want or plan to!). We are buried in deep in the Webflow ecosphere in some projects so going back now is not an option, so there is definitely a vested interest in keeping up with Webflow news.

At this point, Webflow isn’t a tool, it is an investment.

Precisely why the wishlist should be abolished and replaced with a dependable roadmap so we can all plan accordingly, rather than “demand” (request) features when they don’t appear.

In closing, I think this thread boils down to just needing a clear, simple to understand roadmap. It would go far in helping us formulate a strategy going forward. Agree we can choose the right tool now, but some of us are overly-committed to the platform for some clients/projects.

The OP could have used different language to express his/her needs, though let’s all agree that at this current moment in time we are all just a little bit stressed. Perhaps a mod could simply erase the bit about the “staff being slow” as I can see why that might cause some to become emotionally charged.

Lastly, where there is success, criticism naturally follows. It’s a natural cycle. It doesn’t mean any of us dislike Webflow. Quite the opposite.

PS- @Vincent much respect!
Edit: I also do understand how a roadmap can be dangerous- so a bit of a rock and a hard place.

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Webflow potential is huge but new functionalities development pace is really slow. Please focus on product and existing users, not on marketing.

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Honestly I don’t really care about new features, just fix the things that are already there.
Responsive images are broken, the site looks very different on tablet and mobile view than on actual tablets and mobiles. My site uses the desktop view on some tablets, because they are simply too big and there’s no way to move the breakpoint.

I don’t care about some fancy logins, which are obviously difficult to create and manage, but there are basic things needed to make the website work properly in any device and Webflow is still lacking in some places.

I understand that there are priorities and backend stuff, but at least we could get some short term fixes. If we can’t get custom breakpoints - let us upload css files to the assets, so we don’t have to host them elsewhere or add them by javascript. If we can’t get a fix for the responsive images problem, at least let us disable them on the problematic sizes, it’s just one line of code that needs to be deleted.

I’m working my second webpage and I just feel like there’s no way to finish it in Webflow without creating workarounds.

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I have the same thing with pretty much every site I’ve ever built. I end up having to write a huge amount of custom CSS and JS to “finish” the site and work around limitations and to build features that Webflow doesn’t support.

I think this is mainly because my work situation is such that I don’t personally do any design, I only do Webflow development of other people’s designs. So maybe they aren’t as aware of Webflow’s limitations.

I certainly do not expect Webflow to deliver a code free solution to every single possible eventuality in web dev. That is neither feasible nor a reasonable expectation to have. But I do believe that there is low hanging fruit that could be tackled before major new features that would make more of an impact to Webflow’s usablity.

In the last couple of projects I have worked on here are some things I can remember that I wrote custom code to solve:

  • Custom CSS breakpoints to handle very large monitors.
  • Custom CSS breakpoints to handle large tablets in portrait like iPad Pros.
  • Custom JS to hide tab links for tabs that have empty content.
  • Custom CSS for child selectors (eg on div hover, select child <p> and change color). You could do this with Webflow interactions but it’s such overkill.
  • Custom JS to allow a user to dynamically filter CMS content on the page.
  • Custom JS to allow to user to search through a list of CMS content on the page.
  • Custom JS to place images from a multi reference CMS field into a slider.
  • Custom CSS and JS slider as I needed more slider functionality than Webflow’s default slider allows for.
  • Custom CSS to allow me to style CMS items differently on the page to acheive a randomized tile look.
  • Custom JS to make elements draggable.
  • Custom CSS to use backdrop-filter.
  • Custom JS and CSS to build modals to handle CMS content.

There are many, many more but you get the gist of it. Often I find that it’s quicker, cleaner, easier, and more repeatable to write a custom code solution that to hack a Webflow solution together. Animations are a great example of this, I have found that the designer menu turns into an absolute mess on larger projects with many animations. Custom CSS is cleaner.

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I think it’s pretty clear the community is disagreeing with you here.

And I also think it is clear that we all love Webflow, it really is an amazing tool. But you have to understand why people are frustrated when features take years and years to be released, or have been in backlog for years with NO UPDATE.

Of something like adding in tables takes 3 years to do (I highly doubt that), then fine. Let us know.

A simple comment on the post “We are looking to add this feature and expect it to be live in 18-24 months” OR “we get the community wants tables added in, but we are currently working on a few other features right now, so unfortunately we have to put tables in the backlog for at least 18-24 months”

It is not difficult. At least then the community knows. Instead of just being left unanswered.

And no, I would never expect them to do this for every single item on the wishlist, but things that have hundreds/thousands of votes from the community (their PAYING CUSTOMERS), yes I 100% would expect updates there.

Nothing I have said is unreasonable.

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I have spent the last three years rebuilding my business as an agency around Webflow. I’ve been advocating for it towards fellow designers, my developers and my customers.

As much as I love it, I really have to agree with the general opinion in this thread. Moving thousands of dollars a year from my pocket to this company I feel they have the obligation to at least keep the wish list a little bit more informative from their side. I get that releasing a roadmap is dangerous. But right now it’s literally a black box.

But I think the real problem is another one: there are some professional developers using Webflow and then there are all those people who just upped their game a little on their own website, coming from wix and other website builders. Obviously Webflow has to decide between the two groups. The 5% of serious developers and agencies or the 95% of people who just want a fairly simple website.

And this whole new claim about “democratizing the web” pretty clearly communicates where all of this is going.

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I never get involved on the forum, but this has triggered me. If I were webflow, I would not even consider a reply to you with your atrocious tone and attitude. You must think you’re being clever, but you’re really not.

your development team moves at snails pace

You think starting out with an insult is acceptable on a public forum and then expect a response? Do you think that is a kind thing to say to engineers that work all day every day to support customers and develop new features as well as maintain current features?

You guys need to step it up, plain and simple.

Wow. Who ARE you? There’s around 150 human beings, male, female and non-binary defined humans working on a product, not “guys”. I met them at No-Code Conf in Novemeber, and I can tell you with certainty that they are not moving at a snails pace.

You think they were sitting around scratching their butts until you came along to order them otherwise? Just because they’re not working on what you want?? I’ll make my own, possibly incorrect assumption you’re a spoilt only child who’s used to stamping his feet to get his own way.

The issue is most definitely not what you’re asking for, but the awful attitude in which you’re going about it.

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I was really triggered too but afraid to say anything, thanks for raising this.

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It’s not about working on what WE want, it’s about the direction it’s heading in. There are threads about problems with breakpoints from 2015. It’s absolutely cruicial to have a website display properly on any device. This is a non negotiable for any buyer.

Meanwhile we got Animations 2.0, Lottie integration and other flashy features. Why do we have three different ways to do animations, but no way to display our site properly on tablets?

This is not a problem of not working fast enough, this is about having the wrong priorities.

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Every reasonable person knows he and the others are talking to Webflow, the company who we are paying for their services, and the direction it’s going in, not the individual programmers. The people at the top are making the decisions.

Come on. His tone could be better, but this parenting behaviour is kinda lame. His points are valid.

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This is a really interesting post. One that could be taken a lot of different ways, which is apparent by the responses here. It’s pretty direct and seems mostly stemmed from a bit of frustration with Webflow and the way they manage user feedback via the Forum or Wishlist. I totally get that.

I think if anything it comes from a deep appreciation or optimistic foresight of how Webflow could continue and grow to be even greater with each passing year. Ironically I think that’s where the frustration comes into play. “Ugh, they gave us e-commerce, but why no user login for customers?”

I think some (not all) may forget or simply not know what comes along with releasing a new feature, such as documentation, testing for all kinds of different use cases, making sure it’s scalable, training support for those new features, making sure these new features are built in a way that makes adding to them much easier and faster for the future once they are released and much more. Understanding all this, it’s important to take into consideration prioritization. Which Webflow has to do obviously.

Which leads me to the point of this post which is the Wishlist and the forum but mainly the Wishlist. Could Webflow do better job at being a bit more transparent with the future of Webflow and its features? Sure! I wouldn’t disagree there. I would argue the age of Webflow being roughly 6 years old. Webflow has so many different areas to it. Not just the designer. The dashboard, hosting, designer, documentation, Webflow university, E-Commerce, client billing, showcase, public profiles, their own website updates, marketing, blog, forum, support, documentation for support… so much! Now, I think a priority that sits pretty high is customers. Communicating with customers.

Webflow is not perfect but definitely striving to be, always. I think we can all respectfully voice ways that may be more constructive as to how Webflow can improve on communicating it’s plans for features, roadmaps etc. Anyhow, I hope we can start to see more input in this post/thread on ways you may like to see Webflow improve on how they can communicate with customers. Whether it’s a roadmap instead, or simply just replying more frequently on highly voted Wishlist items with status updates or even other ways we may not be thinking of yet.

Hope everyone is staying safe out there!
Have an amazing week! :slight_smile:

-Noah

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Multi-language & User login and so on are “mega” features. I also find a problem with micro-features.

Some of my micro-features ideas added to webflow wishlist (No way to get votes on Webflow wishlist for “micro-features” = shipped maybe on 2040 hh).

CMS

Add a way to filter collection list by ref-field (Basic/useful for clients)

image
image1281×342 85.6 KB

SEO

Add site name as globally avaibale var (Great for SEO titles - Don’t repeat yourself). Basic feature.
image

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There’s a place and time for specific stuff like that - and this ain’t it.