Hi,
pretty basic question: Is the website for dash (https://dash.plotly.com/) written in dash? Or is dash embedded inside the tutorials?
I came to that question, because my app is kind of growing and going through some growing pains. I now started to build a Django-backend, leaving behind my old csv shenanigans with which I came up in my prototyping phase. As you (might) know, you can use Dash with Django using another library. I started wondering, whether this is the right call for me, or if I have to begrudgingly leave Dash behind and get myself to learn ‘proper’ React.
So the question is also a question to creators and the community about the limits and purposes of Dash. For a dashboard? Yes, any day. For an interactive website? I want to say yes to that as well, but I’m not sure.
What would be the most complex web app that you guys and gals would be confidently building in Dash? Would you rather build components for Dash if needed or just switch to native React instead of creating a number of components?
Hi @ZBN_FREEGHOST,
I’ve been using Dash for the past two months, and it has been a great experience. I’m currently working on creating my portfolio website using Dash, but I’ve had a similar question… I’ve been wondering whether I can continue building websites exclusively with Dash or if I should start learning CSS and JavaScript. It’s a question I’ve had on my mind as I explore the capabilities of Dash for web development. I’d greatly appreciate any suggestions and advice from those with more experience in the field
P.S. I am a student with no experience in web development using HTML and CSS.
It’s been a while since I’ve posted this question and unfortunately, I didn’t have a lot of time to write Dashboards, as we’re busy with something else right now.
I have to say that it’s always amazing to come back to dash and see it develop, I think the team is doing lots of good stuff regarding usability and convenience. For the question at hand, my (current!) opinion is, that while it’s probably possible to build any React app in dash, it would most likely be either cumbersome, or require great knowledge in React, in order to really know what’s happening under the hood. In essence, the more you would rely on dash as a cookie cutter solution for web development, the more you’d need to know about it’s inner workings and thus about React.
My personal advice to you: If you want to become a web developer by trade, dash alone most likely won’t cut it. Dash is a great tool because it makes certain webapps faster and easier to develop. But you still need to know what’s happening in the browser if you want to tackle inevitable problems that arise. So knowing basic Javascript, some CSS and some HTML-stuff will likely come in handy rather quickly.
I built a robust dashboard with Dash integrated into my Django backend, and it worked seamlessly. However, as my app is expanding beyond its initial scope, I’m grappling with some limitations in terms of interactivity and customization. I’m contemplating whether to stick with Dash and find workarounds or make the leap to native React for more control over complex user interfaces and real-time updates.
Could you please elaborate on the issues that you are encountering?
I’ve found Dash fairly customizable, and using Dash components to send info back to the backend is built in, no need to customize a fetch request, etc. Hopefully sometime soon, the setProps function will be exposed to allow for JS functions to directly manipulate Dash components and trigger callbacks, increasing the flexibility I would think by quite a lot.
