HACKER Q&A
📣 filmic

Way to convert native UI code into WebViews for PMs to edit?


For context, I'm working on a mobile app with a few friends. So far it's going well, and one of them is a non-technical "growth" type of person and wants to make a lot of changes on a few specific parts of the app (like the paywall screens, and some of the onboarding messages) to help us make money.

Right now I'm using SwiftUI for all of these, but I'm wondering

- Is there a way for me to convert some of these views into WebViews so that the PM can edit/experiment on stuff as they see fit? This seems like it'd give me more visual control but it would be annoying to migrate code into webviews and then test it on diff device types/resolutions/etc.

- Alternatively, should I just hook stuff up via Firebase or some CMS so they can config from there? This seems like it'd play nicer with a/b testing but maybe is more limiting in terms of how much stuff you can stick into a config blob.

I'm not really an expert on growth so not sure what the best approach is here. Any suggestions or tools to help with this problem are well appreciated.

  👤 KMnO4 Accepted Answer ✓
The typical way I’ve seen it done in the industry is to build the UI in Figma. No, you won’t be able to directly use that in your app, but I’m assuming rebuilding the finalized UI in Swift will be one of the least complex parts of the process.
👤 proc0
For full interactivity, I think the easiest way is for someone to use a desktop mobile emulator. Otherwise to actually convert it to be used in a browser the best bet is using webAssembly, but it probably needs to have a lot of glue / translation code. A third option, not sure how likely it is, but maybe someone made a mobile emulator with webassembly, and so you could emulate it that way.