Experience Builder Lite

berniejconnors — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 16:47:03 GMT

Many end users expereince poor performance with an ExB app on their old or weak hardware. Even if the ExB app is only using a basic 2D map interface.

My idea:

Add an option for publishing an "ExB Lite" app. The resulting app would not have the higher hardware requirements of a standard ExB app.

The justification:

Many apps do not require the additional capabilities provided by WebGL and GPUs. Unfortunately, ExB apps require a GPU, WebGL support, and 8 GB RAM. WAB apps do not require WebGL support and run very well on older computers with low resources and no GPU.

Feature	Web AppBuilder	Experience Builder
JS API	3.x	4.x
Rendering	DOM/Canvas (2D)	WebGL (GPU)
Depends on GPU	Minimal	Heavy
Browser requirements	Lower	Higher
Typical weak point	CPU	GPU / VRAM / drivers
Compatibility	Older browsers fine	Needs modern GPU and WebGL support

My web traffic shows over 10% of our users are still using our WAB app even though an ExB version of the same app have been available since Decmber 2024. We tried to encourage all users to use the ExB app:

We made the ExB version the default app, the WAB app is only avaialble via a new URL.
We labelled the WAB app as "Deprecated".

I strongly suspect 10% of our users are running older and weaker hardware that cannot support an ExB app. All our apps are available to the Public. We have no control over their hardware choices.

Implementation:

Perhaps the best implementation might be through some ExB templates that are limited to features that will not require GPU and WebGL2.0 support.

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Experience Builder Lite