Microsoft suspends development of touch-friendly UWP Office apps for Windows • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft suspends development of touch-friendly UWP Office apps for Windows

#81

Post by cptskippy » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 4:32 PM UTC

013a wrote: post #58

Just 4 months ago they announced they were suspending development of OneNote Win32 in favor of just the UWP version [1] Moreover, they have (had?) an entire multi-year roadmap planned around UWP, including the eventual release of a version of windows which was supposed to substantially reduce day-to-day reliance on Win32 for lower powered devices, codenamed Project Polaris [2], in an attempt to compete with Chromeboo…

The UWP version of Office has never really made sense. Office is a massive project and a moving target from a features perspective. It seems like a monumental task to reimplement it from scratch.

It makes more sense to gradually rewrite portions of it but that doesn't work well with the annual release model. It does however work with the O365 continuous release model they adapted from Windows 10.

Just as they're gradually porting Control Panel and other legacy Win32 apps to the Settings App. I could see them gradually convert Office to modern cross platform frameworks.

Re: Microsoft suspends development of touch-friendly UWP Office apps for Windows

#82

Post by cptskippy » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 4:43 PM UTC

maxxxxx wrote: post #79

013a wrote: post #58

Just 4 months ago they announced they were suspending development of OneNote Win32 in favor of just the UWP version [1] Moreover, they have (had?) an entire multi-year roadmap planned around UWP, including the eventual release of a version of windows which was supposed to substantially reduce day-to-day reliance on Win32 for lower powered devices, codenamed Project Polaris [2], in an attempt to compete with Chromeboo…

"If Microsoft can't even release their marquee apps on it, why should anyone else feel confident in developing on the platform?" That's why I avoid any kind of Windows desktop development. They release a new framework every 2-3 years and developers are expected to adopt it. But then they drop support for that framework quickly and release a new incompatible one. In the Windows environment choice is bad. You only have…

Except that's not what Microsoft does at all. The .NET Framework is forward compatible and very rarely breaks compatibility. You can select multiple compilation targets for .NET and have a single piece of code that compiles to multiple frameoworks concurrently.

I currently am maintaining a handful of Projects that build Nuget packages compatible with .NET Core, .NET Standard and .NET Framework.

If you do have compatibility issues you can easily set preprocessor directives and implement platform specific work arounds just like in C or C++.

Re: Microsoft suspends development of touch-friendly UWP Office apps for Windows

#83

Post by maxxxxx » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 4:46 PM UTC

cptskippy wrote: post #82

maxxxxx wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If Microsoft can't even release their marquee apps on it, why should anyone else feel confident in developing on the platform?" That's why I avoid any kind of Windows desktop development. They release a new framework every 2-3 years and developers are expected to adopt it. But then they drop support for that framework quickly and release a new incompatible one. In the Windows environment choice is bad. You only have…

Except that's not what Microsoft does at all. The .NET Framework is forward compatible and very rarely breaks compatibility. You can select multiple compilation targets for .NET and have a single piece of code that compiles to multiple frameoworks concurrently. I currently am maintaining a handful of Projects that build Nuget packages compatible with .NET Core, .NET Standard and .NET Framework. If you do have compati…

We aren't talking about .NET in general bit about desktop UI frameworks. If you started with ASP.NET MVC years ago you still are on the main platform that's in full development. With desktop development you have several frameworks that are either in support mode or not fully featured.

Re: Microsoft suspends development of touch-friendly UWP Office apps for Windows

#84

Post by Const-me » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 4:50 PM UTC

maxxxxx wrote: post #79

013a wrote: post #58

Just 4 months ago they announced they were suspending development of OneNote Win32 in favor of just the UWP version [1] Moreover, they have (had?) an entire multi-year roadmap planned around UWP, including the eventual release of a version of windows which was supposed to substantially reduce day-to-day reliance on Win32 for lower powered devices, codenamed Project Polaris [2], in an attempt to compete with Chromeboo…

"If Microsoft can't even release their marquee apps on it, why should anyone else feel confident in developing on the platform?" That's why I avoid any kind of Windows desktop development. They release a new framework every 2-3 years and developers are expected to adopt it. But then they drop support for that framework quickly and release a new incompatible one. In the Windows environment choice is bad. You only have…

> They release a new framework every 2-3 years and developers are expected to adopt it. But then they drop support for that framework quickly and release a new incompatible one.

Doesn't matter, as a developer you're free to pick whichever you like. You can run VB6 apps on Windows 10. A software I've made on my first job with MFC for NT4.0 still runs on Win10. WPF is awesome, I still pick it now in 2018 when I need compatibility with older Windows.

Re: Microsoft suspends development of touch-friendly UWP Office apps for Windows

#85

Post by dragonwriter » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 4:50 PM UTC

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #7

hfdgiutdryg wrote: post #5

I wonder what the overall adoption rates are for UWP. As someone who's written Windows software since the 90s, I can't shake the feeling that Microsoft just churns out completely new development stacks every few years.

This is exactly what is holding back Win32: there has not been any serious development of the desktop developer story since WPF in 2005 (WPF only received token updates since then, the last major update was in 2010 when they finally added a DataGrid control, lol) - but WPF is not well-suited for many types of software which have to fall-back on “pure” Win32 and the story there is nothing but depressing. Apple got it…

> The story is so bad Microsoft’s own flagship software has to build their own UI frameworks

The story is so bad because the Microsoft units making flagship desktop apps aren't productizing their UI frameworks (not suggesting that this is their choice), instead leaving the firm with public UI framework offerings not tightly grounded in that kind of use experience.

Good frameworks don't lead to internal flagship use, internal flagship use leads to good frameworks through tight feedback between real-world use and framework development.

Re: Microsoft suspends development of touch-friendly UWP Office apps for Windows

#86

Post by seanmcdirmid » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 4:53 PM UTC

Const-me wrote: post #84

maxxxxx wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If Microsoft can't even release their marquee apps on it, why should anyone else feel confident in developing on the platform?" That's why I avoid any kind of Windows desktop development. They release a new framework every 2-3 years and developers are expected to adopt it. But then they drop support for that framework quickly and release a new incompatible one. In the Windows environment choice is bad. You only have…

> They release a new framework every 2-3 years and developers are expected to adopt it. But then they drop support for that framework quickly and release a new incompatible one. Doesn't matter, as a developer you're free to pick whichever you like. You can run VB6 apps on Windows 10. A software I've made on my first job with MFC for NT4.0 still runs on Win10. WPF is awesome, I still pick it now in 2018 when I need co…

WPF hasn’t been seriously upgraded for a long time now. I love WPF, but it is beginning to feel like WinForms.

Re: Microsoft suspends development of touch-friendly UWP Office apps for Windows

#87

Post by maxxxxx » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 5:04 PM UTC

Const-me wrote: post #84

maxxxxx wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If Microsoft can't even release their marquee apps on it, why should anyone else feel confident in developing on the platform?" That's why I avoid any kind of Windows desktop development. They release a new framework every 2-3 years and developers are expected to adopt it. But then they drop support for that framework quickly and release a new incompatible one. In the Windows environment choice is bad. You only have…

> They release a new framework every 2-3 years and developers are expected to adopt it. But then they drop support for that framework quickly and release a new incompatible one. Doesn't matter, as a developer you're free to pick whichever you like. You can run VB6 apps on Windows 10. A software I've made on my first job with MFC for NT4.0 still runs on Win10. WPF is awesome, I still pick it now in 2018 when I need co…

I think it matters a lot. If I develop an application that's supposed to be in development for many years I want to use a framework that has a forward path to the latest OS features.

Re: Microsoft suspends development of touch-friendly UWP Office apps for Windows

#88

Post by SyneRyder » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 5:06 PM UTC

hfdgiutdryg wrote: post #5

I wonder what the overall adoption rates are for UWP. As someone who's written Windows software since the 90s, I can't shake the feeling that Microsoft just churns out completely new development stacks every few years.

> As someone who's written Windows software since the 90s, I can't shake the feeling that Microsoft just churns out completely new development stacks every few years.

That's the theme behind one of Joel Spolsky's old essays, Fire And Motion:

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/01/06/fire-and-motion/

"Think of the history of data access strategies to come out of Microsoft. ODBC, RDO, DAO, ADO, OLEDB, now ADO.NET – All New! Are these technological imperatives? The result of an incompetent design group that needs to reinvent data access every goddamn year? (That’s probably it, actually.) But the end result is just cover fire. The competition has no choice but to spend all their time porting and keeping up, time that they can’t spend writing new features. Look closely at the software landscape. The companies that do well are the ones who rely least on big companies and don’t have to spend all their cycles catching up and reimplementing and fixing bugs that crop up only on Windows XP. The companies who stumble are the ones who spend too much time reading tea leaves to figure out the future direction of Microsoft."

Re: Microsoft suspends development of touch-friendly UWP Office apps for Windows

#89

Post by microtonal » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 5:11 PM UTC

stiGGG wrote: post #23

simongray wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually kind of impressive how much transitional stuff Apple has introduced and then removed with Mac OS X and how right many of their decisions turned out. I guess Cocoa itself was an extension of the legacy NextStep API too. They also had Classic for running old Mac apps directly in OSX and later Rosetta for running PowerPC binaries on Intel (I guess the same tech was used for the 32->64 bit transition). So m…

I don’t think you really can compare Apple’s and Microsoft’s situation here. Think of the extreme bigger amount of software that was written for Windows including all that custom made business software for small companies. Apple was always in the situation that a lot of their 3rd party developers were also „fans“, who are more willing to keep up with their transitions, where however most the Microsoft tech developers…

Apple was always in the situation that a lot of their 3rd party developers were also „fans“, who are more willing to keep up with their transitions,

That's true, but Apple also got behemoths like Adobe and Microsoft to port over their applications to modern APIs (Cocoa and Cocoa Touch).

Re: Microsoft suspends development of touch-friendly UWP Office apps for Windows

#90

Post by JDWolf » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 5:11 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #86

Const-me wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They release a new framework every 2-3 years and developers are expected to adopt it. But then they drop support for that framework quickly and release a new incompatible one. Doesn't matter, as a developer you're free to pick whichever you like. You can run VB6 apps on Windows 10. A software I've made on my first job with MFC for NT4.0 still runs on Win10. WPF is awesome, I still pick it now in 2018 when I need co…

WPF hasn’t been seriously upgraded for a long time now. I love WPF, but it is beginning to feel like WinForms.

Didn't realize, I really like WPF too, hope that executives aren't trying to push too many efforts towards whatever they think the trends might be, I tried Xamarin for mobile but ended up switching to Android Studio and just targeting there.

"Preparrrre for Q#........" (jk on that....for now)