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Microsoft Confirms UWP Is Not the Future of Windows Apps

thurrott.com

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Re: Microsoft Confirms UWP Is Not the Future of Windows Apps

#31

Post by tasdev »

The comments on this post really make me wonder how many people have actually written a UWP app or tried using the API?

I have experience across a heap of stacks... Cocoa, Cocoa Touch, Android, Win32/WinForms/WPF, Web, Xamarin Forms etc... I love UWP. It was pretty ordinary in the first few releases but it has matured well, has great documentation and the UI framework is developed in the open on GitHub.

I am by no means suggesting you could write something like Autocad or Photoshop in UWP; perhaps you could with a rethink of the UI. But UWP is an excellent choice for probably 70-90% of desktop applications, including enterprise LOB that are just forms over data or integrating with an online service of some kind.

If you're drawing your own conclusions based on what you read from others writing (who are likely doing the same) - actually try the framework, you might be pleasantly surprised.

Finally, I think Thurrott has lost the plot. He has been waging this war against UWP for many years now - to the point of a crusade - I just ignore any statement he makes on this.

Re: Microsoft Confirms UWP Is Not the Future of Windows Apps

#32

Post by techntoke »

crispinb wrote: post #28
techntoke wrote: post #21

Xamarin isn't either. It really is whatever open source cross-platform UI leads the pack. I am really impressed by Qt Apps, but I also am not happy with their licensing. I would like to see something new with Vulkan desktop integration. I think Microsoft really needs to reconsider what is important, and I believe them working on open source will have to be a better commitment. They should pay some of their Kubernetes…

> I see more and more great apps for Linux Bit of an aside here, but what for example? I'm using Linux these days as the least-worst option, but I wouldn't have claimed app quality as one of its advantages. It has the best terminals (matched perhaps by iTerm on mac), and most of the important cross-platform apps are perfectly fine (VS Code, IntelliJ, Firefox, Chrome etc). Could you list some of the linux-specific app…

Telegram works great, Slack works fine as does Discord. LibreOffice is descent, there are a few Money Manager apps. I'm not a huge fan of GTK or KDE-based apps, but ones developed in React Native and Qt with static binaries, then I really enjoy the quality and having the latest version integrated into my package manager. It is much cleaner to install and remove overall. Containers would help isolate this even more. I really also enjoy having most of my dotfiles in a single location to manage application settings that can be shared for other installs.

Re: Microsoft Confirms UWP Is Not the Future of Windows Apps

#33

Post by maxxxxx »

chrisseaton wrote: post #19

What is the current recommended API if you want to build a big new desktop GUI application for Windows today? Something demanding like a CAD application, perhaps. Something you'd have built using MFC or pure Window API in the past.

I would probably do qt or WPF. For CAD probably a large part in Directx or Win32. But in general the picture for windows desktop apps is very murky. There is no option that really stands out.

If I had to do a windows app I would seriously consider electron. Which is very sad...

Re: Microsoft Confirms UWP Is Not the Future of Windows Apps

#34

Post by mises »

nick_ wrote: post #25
techntoke wrote: post #21

Xamarin isn't either. It really is whatever open source cross-platform UI leads the pack. I am really impressed by Qt Apps, but I also am not happy with their licensing. I would like to see something new with Vulkan desktop integration. I think Microsoft really needs to reconsider what is important, and I believe them working on open source will have to be a better commitment. They should pay some of their Kubernetes…

What issues you've encountered with installing GUI apps with chocolatey?

I'm rather curious about this as well. Maybe he is saying that it is not as user-friendly because it is command-line-based? I have had no issues with it, and it seems it would be simple to make a graphical front-end.

Re: Microsoft Confirms UWP Is Not the Future of Windows Apps

#35

Post by maxxxxx »

FigBug wrote: post #7
chongli wrote: post #5

Is it just me, or does Microsoft create a whole new Windows API with every release? How are people supposed to build anything without a stable API? No wonder everyone has switched to Electron.

The API is very stable. Any Win32 app from the last 24 years will still run. 16 bit apps will still run on the 32 bit version of Windows. They promote the cool new thing every so often, but all the old stuff still works and eventually gets the access to the new features.

Win32 is super stable. The .NET Ui toolkits churn every 3 years or so without much improvement. Very frustrating.

Re: Microsoft Confirms UWP Is Not the Future of Windows Apps

#36

Post by maxxxxx »

throwawaywindev wrote: post #11
SigmundA wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They just can't seem to settle on a UI framework. They have like 5 at this point. They really need to just figure out how you make a GUI app on windows. I want to make a GUI app in the same framework the Office team uses, if its good enough for them then good enough for me, see "eating your own dog food".

Coincidentally office is adopting more and more UWP controls in their Win32 app using these publicly available interop technologies.

That’s probably why Office 365 freezes a lot when you unplug screens and also sometimes renders a little blurry. They haven’t made it better.

Re: Microsoft Confirms UWP Is Not the Future of Windows Apps

#37

Post by techntoke »

nick_ wrote: post #25
techntoke wrote: post #21

Xamarin isn't either. It really is whatever open source cross-platform UI leads the pack. I am really impressed by Qt Apps, but I also am not happy with their licensing. I would like to see something new with Vulkan desktop integration. I think Microsoft really needs to reconsider what is important, and I believe them working on open source will have to be a better commitment. They should pay some of their Kubernetes…

What issues you've encountered with installing GUI apps with chocolatey?

It is incredibly slow, buggy, most packages aren't up-to-date and the packaging is far more complex overall, lots of bad or missing documentation about silent installs. The package manager itself doesn't really offer a lot. I've seen more spyware in their apps. Windows app installs by default leave configuration files all over your system and registry entries. It is near impossible to cleanly manage an install. There are a lot of tricks for viruses on Windows. Linux is open source and much easier to improve collectively. There is a lot more thought put into these objectives from a system administrator perspective, hence why they use it all over their cloud.

Re: Microsoft Confirms UWP Is Not the Future of Windows Apps

#38

Post by segphault »

zaat wrote: post #13

I'll be really happy if UWP will die. I don't care for the visual side it offers at all, and the UX is simply terrible compared to the good old Win32. Maybe I'm missing something, but the feeling I got regarding UWP is that it is an effort to unify the UX across all platforms and devices by aiming to lowest common denominator of all platforms. It meant that simple and useful utility like calc became a visually bloate…

This comment is spot on. UWP apps feel gratuitously non-native on Windows, have terrible keyboard accessibility, and exhibit a ton of interoperability issues with third-party utilities like xkeymacs that hook into platform functionality. Even Electron apps that use standard buttons and text inputs end up feeling more native.

The lack of good keyboard accessibility is particularly frustrating, because the ribbon paradigm and even the menu accelerators in old-school Win32 apps both had outstanding, highly discoverable keyboard control.

Re: Microsoft Confirms UWP Is Not the Future of Windows Apps

#39

Post by techntoke »

mises wrote: post #34
nick_ wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What issues you've encountered with installing GUI apps with chocolatey?

I'm rather curious about this as well. Maybe he is saying that it is not as user-friendly because it is command-line-based? I have had no issues with it, and it seems it would be simple to make a graphical front-end.

Not at all. I prefer CLI based tools for system administrators. They are easy and quick to automate. It is just a pretty terrible package manager compared to Homebrew and far worse than Arch.

Re: Microsoft Confirms UWP Is Not the Future of Windows Apps

#40

Post by Paraesthetic »

tasdev wrote: post #31

The comments on this post really make me wonder how many people have actually written a UWP app or tried using the API? I have experience across a heap of stacks... Cocoa, Cocoa Touch, Android, Win32/WinForms/WPF, Web, Xamarin Forms etc... I love UWP. It was pretty ordinary in the first few releases but it has matured well, has great documentation and the UI framework is developed in the open on GitHub. I am by no me…

I concur, It has been a very easy and fast platform for me, and it seems like not a lot of developers have caught on to the fact that UWP is great for the end consumer, its snappy and can be updated without having to load the application or an update application first. But hey, developers don't like it so I guess thats forced Microsoft's hand.
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