Introduction

What is Canvas?

Canvas is a development framework based on Bubble that combines 3 things:

1. Starter template: This app template contains features that almost every application needs - things like a homepage, user management, and much more.

2. Pages & modules: These are smaller UI & UX components that can be added to the Starter Template in order to build almost anything that you might imagine. They also provide consistency to your app's design, so pages you add to the app don't look out of place.

3. Standards & best practices: These will help you make sure that your application's functionality, design, and integrations are properly built and result in the best product possible.

Why Canvas?

First a bit of background: there is a major shift happening that's changing both how software is built and who builds it. Specifically, no-code tools like Bubble now allow non-coders to build complex software applications without writing a single line of code.

At AirDev we've spent years building software without code for companies ranging from one-person startups to Fortune 50 enterprises. Through our work we've identified common patterns that exist in applications and turned those into this framework. Here's what the framework helps us do:

1. Build and launch faster: Because large parts of both functionality and design are templatized, we don't have to spend time reinventing the wheel and instead focus only on the parts that are different about a particular application.

2. Build better products: We've spent a lot of time thinking through and iterating on our templates and standards. When we use them we can be sure that the application will look good and work well.

3. Build in a transferrable way: Because our products follow the same framework, they're much easier to transfer between developers who know the framework. This is critical for long-term projects that require lots of people to be involved.

We're excited to share the Canvas framework with people and teams outside of AirDev, we hope you find it useful!

Certain features of Canvas, such as custom email verification and any email sending capability through our API Workflows, require users to be on at least a Personal Bubble plan. You can build and test apps without these features, or build workarounds using Bubble's built-in emails.