One-page vs Multi-page which is better?

Building a One-Page App in Bubble

When building a Bubble app, should you be building a one-page app just like this where if I click I go through different views I share and hide different groups but all on the same page or should I build a multi-page app? Well in this Bubble tutorial video I'm going to describe my personal perspective on the pros and cons of each but before I launch into that if you're learning Bubble you're watching this video and if you want to watch more videos like this head over to our website planetno-code.com to become a member and gain access to our complete library of Bubble tutorial and no code tutorial videos but let me describe what I've got here first which is an app that I've built in a previous tutorial and if I bring up the address bar we can see that I'm on the page one page and then view is currently settings and if I click through to orders then I scroll along now the view is orders and if I go into my app just to show how I've got this working into body orders.

Using URL Parameters for Navigation

Orders is visible when the view parameter in the URL is orders and when one of these buttons is clicked let's have a look here we go to view and we put the current cell's view display I'm using an option set to get my display values in there and to be honest this is the best way that I've found to run a one-page app because I get a really quick response there's no page reload there's no flicker as I go between the different pages here but I actually have a URL with Datronit that if I were to share with another user I mean imagine someone asks a question about your app and you want to take them to a specific point you want to be able to send them a link that takes them to that specific point so this is my personal favorite way of doing a one-page app the other way would be custom states we've got videos covering that but yeah this is basically using URL parameters and the go-to action to do that.

Downsides of One-Page Apps

Now downsides of a one-page app are that in the editor you can end up with many many more groups and basically views for your app and that can scale poorly I mean you if you've got a lot of content being loaded in and you're Bubble Lutter on the same page then you might find that the editor becomes a bit unresponsive you can also just simply find it's really hard to find the bits that you're trying to work on and that can slow down your development time and don't underestimate how much that can add up.

Multi-Page App Preference

My personal preference with this question of should I build a multi-page app or one-page app is that unless you are going for a mobile like a native mobile life experience I personally would always go for a multi-page app meaning that my settings page would be a page here now this is really classic because this is an app that I use for a lot of demos but I'd have a settings page in here and I would have what the other options I'd have an orders page so that when the user clicks it actually loads in a new page and I don't think that that's a bad thing I think if you look at even like enterprise level SaaS applications they are not seeming to be so concerned about whether a user feels like they're using native software compared to using a website if they're accessing it through a web browser I think most users are accustomed to a page load taking place now if you're building a mobile app like experience maybe you are going down the wrapper route to try and get it into an app store personally I think that that's risky might have a video or two on that coming out soon if you if you get on that route then yes you're gonna want to give your users that experience of when they click on a menu item things change instantly and you can do that with a one-page app but I would say any other reason if you're building it for desktop first for example or mobile it's gonna behave like a website if you're okay with that then I would go with a multi-page view because I think that makes it easier to offer support your customers and it makes it easier for you to develop it in a nutshell only go in my opinion only go for a one-page app if you are trying to create a native mobile app like experience if you're not trying to do that personally I would go with a multi-page app but I'd love to hear your thoughts and opinions please leave a comment down below tell us what your thought process was between building a multi-page app or building a one-page app.