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Show HN: I made an open-source Typeform/Google-Forms alternative (dorf.vercel.app)
24 points by matt34 on June 20, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 15 comments



Man I really don't spend enough time doing ui.

To op, the following is my thoughts on this whole thread, as well as a few other unrelated threads I've seen since starting to catch up on ui dev/web dev. It's not really related to your project at all.

This is like when I first started programming, all the made up words are overwhelming. Is it a language, a library, a framework, an approach like MVC. Except in web world instead of a ton of 3las (or 3lis to be precise) you also get fun made up words.

Hey guys, I made blurgheq it's an open source version of a cbkeorf. Cool, but what's the point of open source if you use vlurfirrb. Vlurfirrb is optional, you could use garblewch. The important thing is that now ffbtjfuf is available to all. True but it's only really useful for shfjrjr and I usually use ehgrrheyyyu for my shdhwss needs. Oh, well version 3 of eiueyed does frbtjfuf really well.

Lol.


Some feedback:

1. It looks like "Menu" is the name of the company. Opening the menu just has your logo. Don't do this on your homepage.

2. You spend more sentences on your homepage talking about the code of the site and how it was built and where it is hosted than you do about what the service is. Zero sentences are dedicated to features.

3. Your privacy policy just says "Privacy" which isn't a good look for something that collects user data.

4. The email field in your demo doesn't support autocorrect (type=email isn't enough, you need to set the autocomplete attributes)


Great feedback, thank you so much! 1. fixed 2. you are so right. Will improve the landing asap! 3. WIP - very important, you are right! 4. Very good catch! Just pushed an update including autocorrect for email, phone & url.

Do you have anything else you would like to see implemented?


All these form builders are not usable for me because it is only designed for simple cases in mind. One exmaple is that have a simple select list. In real world cases, most master data is select is pretty long so you need to search and filter, so there must be an autosuggest search box for select. It needs to enable single /mulitple select as well.


You are absolutely right! Its definitely one of the most requested features and will be shipped soon. Can you give an example so we can make sure it fits your needs?


Not the parent poster you're replying to, but this is the component library we use at work and it's awesome:

https://mui.com/material-ui/react-autocomplete/#multiple-val...

We typically hook it up to Formik or react-hooks and compose complex forms out of it, but would love to see a form builder with similar power.


Would be more to my liking if I could build a form, or even see the builder, without having to sign in.


agree with the need for screenshots of the build process and more.. I was semi-startled when I thought I was going to jump into a demo-build and immediately got the 'sign up / sign in' screen.

after bouncing around to the git and back I found the one semi-demo which was a survey - (not super easy to know it's a form example) -

Yet the features sound like this is exactly what I need and many others. I filled out the survey and noted that logic is a needed thing.

I recently searched through typeform and many similar for wordpress and was stunned that basically every single one has a fairly high monthly / yearly fee to use.

I started working on a blog post about how all these relatively simple things are getting too expensive like streaming service monthly fee creep - and then WP just added a feature to filter plugins that do not offer a pro/paid upgrade for features - so many others must be seeing the same issue.

Super thanks for making this and releasing it like this, looking forward to suggesting it to others.


Thanks for your feedback! There is a lot of room to improve the landingpage and the demo experience. I will work on that soon! Also „conditional logic“ for fields is a often requested feature, is this what you are looking for? Do you have any „must have“ features you use in all forms you built in the past or are there any pitfalls besides the pricing?


the logic and the few fields then next page thing that typeform does well is nice - I also discovered they are hippa compliant this makes is usable for some clients especially - but the pricing is off the charts imho.

I lean into the form builder that wpmudev offers, forminator pro - which allows for logic and tuns them into polls and more.. but the styling is not as friendly as it could be.

If anyone was to have samples to pull and use like penpot has on there templates / libraries, (code that's usable and styling that is nice) I think they would have faster / broader adaption, making it faster and easier to deploy.


Im looking forward to make the builder accessible without signing in for demo purposes. But at some point we definitely want you to register before the form could be published. This is due to privacy reasons because otherwise everybody could see the submissions.


What's the point of it being opensource when it depends on vercelkv service?


Vercel kv is optional and there is no need to use it. Dorf just works fine if you don’t. We choose this option due to simplicity, maybe we will replace it later on.


Looks cool to me, I might give shot to demo by today or tomorrow.


Awesome! Looking forward for some feedback




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