Bad newbie experience - tutorial broken and other issues

I wanna create my first mobile app and have been referred to FlutterFlow. My first impression was really great - but after signing up and some initial tests I hit a couple of really annoying problems.

  1. The In App Tutorial "Build your first app in 10 min" is broken. - It is not possible to navigate to the profile page! Basically, the profile Icon is not clickable. I searched the web but did not find any solution, just 2 links which proof that the problem already exist for more than 2 month and has not been fixed yet!

    1. https://community.flutterflow.io/troubleshooting/post/buttons-not-working-in-a-stack-i82BzQW3VHhRmYV (Page not found!)

    2. https://community.flutterflow.io/discussions/post/there-is-a-new-logic-about-the-stack-component-or-it-s-just-me-5W

  2. Can't delete an item -> I created new items in the test layout but was unable to delete them. I had to google to figure out that I need to select the item and then press the DEL key. It is really annoying that there is no delete option to click on. -> Bad UX.

  3. Barcode Scanner not working in demo mode. - The core feature of my app is a barcode scanner. Unfortunately, I cannot integrate it directly in a page. Instead, I need to add a button with an action that open the barcode scanner app. I could live with that for now, but when I open the app in demo mode and click on the button nothing happens - also no error message. Again, bad UX and again more googling for the problem, just to figure out that it is a long standing issue to get better barcode scanner support.

    1. https://github.com/FlutterFlow/flutterflow-issues/issues/1379

  4. Complicated login to community -> At first I was not able to login to the community pages. I click on login and was presented with the login screen, I clicked on "Login with FlutterFlow" and ended up in my project. Nothing else happened, no redirect to the community and still not logged in to the community. I did it three more times with no success until I realized that there was a community link in the project space sidebar. Doh! why not use a redirect or cross-tab authentication? -> Bad UX.

  5. Can not deploy to mobile phone for testing - The broken links in the tutorial and the barcode scanner issue seem to occur only in Preview and Demo mode. However, I cannot deploy to my device with the free account. This was not obvious when I signed up.

Other

  1. FlutterFlow wrap 2023 -> there is this prominent animated icon in my project space. But when I click on it I end up on an empty page with a spinner. Nothing else happens!

  2. Page GenAI does not work - I tried the AI page generator but it always give me an error, like server error or something wrong with an element. I understand that AI is in alpha state but these error messages are not helpful at all. Bad UX.

Although I was really hyped before starting my evaluation of FlutterFlow I have to say that I'm quite frustrated now. A tutorial and other core features that are not working properly. Hence, I don't get the impression that FlutterFlow is a mature solution yet and I feel that the money is better invested otherwise. But I'd be happy to hear from other people's experience if this is really worth the money and effort.

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