My 2 cents on IX 2.0

After switching back to legacy interactions several times in the past I finally managed to stick to Interactions 2.0 for a project that needs some basic interactions.

My current workflow (windows user):

Design in Figma → Interactions in Protopie → Build final design and interactions in Webflow.

I was a big fan of Webflow about 2 years ago but the more they’re evolving to a “brighter future of visual development” I feel left behind.

My thoughts:

hint: some people take straight forward feedback like this personal, just want to let you know that I’m still a happy customer and I believe in Webflow but at some point “sugar-coating” is not helpful if you really want to improve

  • Webflow feels like the dribbble of UI design.
    Nice for silo’ed fancy stuff (a single screen, interaction, idea) but always a bit of a struggle on real world projects.
  • the UI layout feels outdated
    Feels like IX 2.0 got cramped into this tiny little sidebar but honestly, just by adding 2-5 basic interactions you have to scroll, collapse, back&forth when managing stuff. Put IX2.0 into a separate window in front of the designer!!
  • Interaction preview lags horribly on my ultrabook
    always have to publish to check the actual interaction smoothness and flow…feels so wrong
  • It’s not like an enjoyable playground anymore
  • Good interactions is about fine-tuning timing, movement, easing…whoever tried doing this with the new IX2.0 might understand why this is not possible inside of Webflow anymore (also the main reason I switched to Protopie for all things movement)
    Even basic interactions need a bunch of clicks
    To get started, make sure to provide “presets” for fast integration. Boil down the top10 interactions from agency websites and you’ll have like 10 presets that are enough for 80% of work. Setting up a simple fade-in on reveal from scratch everytime you build a new project is so 2015 :slight_smile:

I could go into detail about this stuff, providing screenshots, ideas…useless at this point as we know :frowning:
Webflow still is a website builder for businesses around the world, don’t mess it up trying to be the fancy beer friend! Hard work (also UX wise) is still needed in here!

Your main goal should be to make it easier for the user to build interactions!

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I haven’t seen Protopie before, but your post got me interested. Could you explain your workflow in that regard? I’m looking through their website but it’s… a little less than helpful.

Sorry this is off-topic.

Your post was extremely timely written since right after reading it I noticed the newly implemented templates for the basic interactions, haha!

Thanks for your feedback @Marci! Don’t worry I haven’t taken anything personally, but I’d love some clarification.

Webflow feels like the dribbble of UI design - Nice for silo’ed fancy stuff (a single screen, interaction, idea) but always a bit of a struggle on real world projects.

Can you elaborate on this? Sites like Heco builds world-class sites for clients | Webflow use interactions to showcase content in a more unique and expressive way. How are you differentiating real world projects from a simple interaction?

the UI layout feels outdated - Feels like IX 2.0 got cramped into this tiny little sidebar but honestly, just by adding 2-5 basic interactions you have to scroll, collapse, back&forth when managing stuff.

That was intentional. We didn’t want to build a traditional and super complex timeline-based animation tool. It’s a simpler UX but the tradeoff is that overlapping of different actions isn’t intuitive. We were okay with the tradeoff and have it fit in our UI. As for all the collapsing and scrolling, we decided on that UX because it fit with patterns that worked well in IX1 and are simple for most users to pick up.

Put IX2.0 into a separate window in front of the designer!!

This can be true for any panel actually, especially the navigator panel which many users have asked for. Being able to detach and rearrange the panels is something we’re considering for future iterations of the Designer.

Interaction preview lags horribly on my ultrabook - always have to publish to check the actual interaction smoothness and flow…feels so wrong

Yeah we’re aware that the preview buttons in the panel are not performant and we’re looking into it. Preview mode is much smoother so I’d rely on that. Sorry about that and thanks for being patient with us!

It’s not like an enjoyable playground anymore - Good interactions is about fine-tuning timing, movement, easing…whoever tried doing this with the new IX2.0 might understand why this is not possible inside of Webflow anymore (also the main reason I switched to Protopie for all things movement)

Can you elaborate more on the type of controls that are missing? Are you referring to things like motion paths and more fine-grain easing controls?

Even basic interactions need a bunch of clicks - To get started, make sure to provide “presets” for fast integration. Boil down the top10 interactions from agency websites and you’ll have like 10 presets that are enough for 80% of work. Setting up a simple fade-in on reveal from scratch everytime you build a new project is so 2015

You should check out the new presets! This is very common use case for interactions so we wanted to make sure to get it to our users before moving the interactions team to other projects. Let me know if you have any other feedback!

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@thesergie where can I find these new presets? I didn’t notice an announcement, nor can seem to find them in the designer. Or are they being gradually rolled out to users?

Thanks!

Hi @justin_c

I just went to check too - pick an element, add a trigger, and then where you would click ‘start an animation’ - there are pre-sets now!

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We’re doing a soft rollout to see if users run into anything before we make a full announcement.

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Is this a available to everyone now? Or limited to certain users? Thanks

Not sure - I didn’t receive any special email or notification - just tried it out as a result of this thread…

This one can’t come too soon :slight_smile:

http://vincent.polenordstudio.fr/snap/pnntd.jpg

He he, been there :grinning:

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Hehe, made me think, the Navigator is 240px wide, and anytime you add a Dynamic List, you shift everything by 54 pixels (because it’s 3 elements nested).

:smiley:

I was thinking that it don’t have to shift to the right that way. Maybe another visual way to show nesting, maybe a accordion like UI is better. So much unused space this way.

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Wow, logged in this morning and the Presets are available for me now as well - perfect :smiley:
(From feature request to delivery in under 24h, hehe)

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My mockup is bad and redesigning like this is unfairly easy, but I was just trying to see if room could be saved. Here going from a shift of 18px per level to 5px per level.

http://vincent.polenordstudio.fr/snap/342sc.jpg

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Hereby nominate @Marci as chief feature update negotiator :wink:

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@vincent we’re getting off topic here, but yeah we’ve had some ideas around how to make the navigator panel more condensed and have nesting easier to track. Note: This stuff is super experimental and we have no ETA on implementing it since it’s not one of those must-have enhancements for Webflow designers. :slight_smile:

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I found a really nice IX 2.0 shortcut to tweak your interactions:

The flaw: If you return from Preview Mode (inside designer) your layer/element loses focus and you have to click 4-5 times to select the correct element again and get back into the interaction settings to tweak it.

The solution: Simply UNDO your last step and it jumps right back into the Interaction sidebar where you can tweak things.

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To clarify - this will NOT actually undo your last edit so that’s a nice little hack indeed.

Sergie, would it be possible for the webflow team to add a selector for easing (and perhaps duration) alongside the offset and delay on these presets? That would be great…