Not ready for prime time.
Update:
While I appreciate a response from the founder. Trying to gaslight me on several points is a wild way to respond. You think I'd go to the trouble to write a review mentioning your login page was not filling correctly in Safari, if I didn't have autofill turned on? Did you get Chat GPT to write this response? You completely ignored my points around navigating the canvas and instead mention unrelated shortcuts. Did you just tell me to go and read your privacy page instead of addressing the feedback that your notification was insanely vague? How about you put more information and context into your notification? If you were focused on addressing these issues specifically, I would absolutely modify my review positively because it would show that as a developer you know how to handle constructive feedback. What you're building has so much potential, but your response was a bad take. What a shame, my rating stands for now.
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I went into this very optimistically but there were just too many flags that indicate this product isn't ready for prime time yet, in my opinion.
Firstly, if you or your users use Safari (25% of web users use Safari) this platform isn't regularly tested against it so buyer beware if that's your target audience. Trying to establish an account I faced some crazy issues and I found that the login and sign up process is incompatible with Apple Keychain / Safari Autofill. The login fields are not correctly labeled nor filled in automatically. Every time I login to the service I must manually enter my email as only the password correctly autofills. I don't understand how any one at this company could miss this - surely at least on of them uses a Mac or Safari in order to test out the iOS/macOS functionality?
Then there is the extremely concerning "You agree we're allowed to monitor your usage" notification upon signing in to the designer. I'm sorry, can you be any more vague? Do you mean resource statistics like storage usage or are you freely accessing our clients information and data whenever you want? Where is the opt-out for this? Really unacceptable.
Lastly, and this is just a personal preference (coming from tools like Bubble/Figma/Whimsical etc) but in Safari you cannot click to drag the canvas with the mouse.
You must use your mouse scroll wheel to go up and down or shift+scroll wheel to go left and right. This is so strange and obtuse to me given the story board should be something you can move around in easily.
Common shortcuts don't work either, for example, a lot of tools like Figma let you click and drag by holding a modifier key like Space Bar or Shift and they simply don't exist here.
With those features missing, it would have made sense to include zoom and pan controls to the canvas area, but once again, in Safari at least. Nothing.
I'm going to assume it is a "me" problem, but unfortunately as someone invested in the Apple eco-system and market, these shortcomings make it a deal breaker. Conceptually, I love so many things about what these guys are trying to do.. so I guess if you're an Android developer, you live in Windows and you use Chrome, this could be a really good deal for you.
anas_nowa
Nov 29, 2024Hey,
Thanks for sharing your feedback here. I would in general say if you have a feedback or a problem our team is egar to hear you out and fix stuff if there's a bug or a problem. However I would like to comment on your points so I can help you out.
1. Nowa is actually tested on Safari. We always recommend using Safari or Chrome as the browser for the apps. The auto-fill is actually not something related to us; it's your browser settings. You need to check it to enable auto-fill for username and password. Also, if you log in, you will then be automatically logged in without having to do it every time.
2. The usage is simply we monitor which features were used and which ones were not so the team knows what to focus on. We monitor those anonymously and it's never related to any personal data you have. You can simply read our privacy policy for more: https://www.nowa.dev/privacy-policy
3. We do have shortcuts, check out this page on our docs: https://docs.nowa.dev/shortcuts For example, if you click alt and drag, you duplicate a widget (as Figma). I would recommend checking our tutorials as well to see how we use them in action.
4. You can move around easily in the design board by holding the mouse wheel and moving if you are using the mouse or by using two fingers on the mouse pad. For zoom in/out, you can do it with your fingers or by holding cmd/alt and moving the mouse up and down.
If you need any help or have any questions please feel free to search our docs/tutorials, or simply use our communities to ask there. We and the entire community will help you out.
If you tried them out and they work as you expect, I will be grateful if you modify your review :) Wish you all the luck