Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The web is swallowing the desktop whole (2017)

char.gd

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 256 posts

Re: The web is swallowing the desktop whole (2017)

#131

Post by thrower123 »

gobookdev wrote: post #42
vmladenov wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electron’s user experience is atrocious even on recent hardware. It falls right into the uncanny valley of superficially appearing native and while not behaving natively.

VS Code is my fav piece of software of all time, it's an Electron app

VS Code is the most frustrating piece of software I use, because it is very good, but it's UX is terrible because they refuse to make any allowances for native platform standards.

I don't use it enough to have any of the hotkeys that aren't bog-standard memorized, and the refusal to add menu options or toolbar buttons makes discoverability really bad.

Re: The web is swallowing the desktop whole (2017)

#132

Post by MontagFTB »

boomlinde wrote: post #127
hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #68

It is exactly the failure of Microsoft and Apple to propose any meaningful cross-platform API. Both are fighting to increase vendor lock-in - it is in their best interests that apps written on Windows don't work on macOS/iOS and the other way round. Linux/OS folks themselves are unable to solve this problem on their own and it becomes a mouse-and-cat game. The popularity of web apps helped to reduce the problem, but…

I don't get this. I've used GTK, Qt, Tk and FLTK software in OSX, Windows and Linux. The rest is usually covered by standard libraries and third party libraries. So I take it this approach is disqualified on your terms for not being meaningful, which raises the question about what "meaningful" means. My own guess is that it's a matter of convenience of distribution: enter an URL and you can start using the app.

Isn’t it that most software written today has to target the web? So you have two distinct platforms to write to: web, and non-web. Even if Microsoft and Apple came up with a brilliant, singular API, that’s still one more API that has to be coded to. With solutions like Electron, you have a very fast time-to-market with a “desktop” app, and your engineering team only needs to target the web. Customers will only notice the fundamental issues with the solution after it’s too late (or they won’t care.)

Sadly, the solution seems very business-driven. The ROI threshold to making a desktop-native app is quite high.

Re: The web is swallowing the desktop whole (2017)

#133

Post by sakarisson »

HWR_14 wrote: post #85
hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #68

It is exactly the failure of Microsoft and Apple to propose any meaningful cross-platform API. Both are fighting to increase vendor lock-in - it is in their best interests that apps written on Windows don't work on macOS/iOS and the other way round. Linux/OS folks themselves are unable to solve this problem on their own and it becomes a mouse-and-cat game. The popularity of web apps helped to reduce the problem, but…

I don't know what you are talking about. Microsoft built a Linux compatible subsystem for Windows and also built (well, acquired) .NET VMs for OSX/Linux. It's trying hard to keep people on the desktop - any desktop.

Microsoft is also driving the development of React Native for Windows and MacOS.

Re: The web is swallowing the desktop whole (2017)

#134

Post by dalmo3 »

riezebos wrote: post #111
hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're kidding, right? WSL is not related to cross-platform GUIs we're talking about, and .NET Core doesn't support Windows Forms/WPF - and probably never will, for the reasons mentioned above.

That's not completely true, while WSL doesn't help Windows GUI apps to be more cross-platform, it does help Linux GUI apps to work on Windows[0] So to refer back to the top comment we could say that Microsoft is proposing WSL as a cross-platform API for GUI apps. [0] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/tutorials/gui-a...

W11 only, sadly.

Re: The web is swallowing the desktop whole (2017)

#135

Post by alkonaut »

hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #68

It is exactly the failure of Microsoft and Apple to propose any meaningful cross-platform API. Both are fighting to increase vendor lock-in - it is in their best interests that apps written on Windows don't work on macOS/iOS and the other way round. Linux/OS folks themselves are unable to solve this problem on their own and it becomes a mouse-and-cat game. The popularity of web apps helped to reduce the problem, but…

Microsoft made .NET platform cross platform years ago but a UI has been missing. They have a cross platform UI project now too https://github.com/dotnet/maui

Re: The web is swallowing the desktop whole (2017)

#136

Post by ivanhoe »

The last desktop app I wrote was in Delphi 5, so I guess it was around 20 years ago. Back then my impression was that it's already a done deal, desktop is no more - so I'm a bit surprised that someone waited until 2017 to write this text?

Actually last few years I think desktop is having a bit of a come back with a plethora of cross-platform tools like electron becoming more usable and popular...

Re: The web is swallowing the desktop whole (2017)

#137

Post by whywhywhywhy »

jeswin wrote: post #33
smackeyacky wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't help that for the major consumer platform (Windows), Microsoft can't make their mind up about how to replace Win32 or WinForms. It seems like every other week there is some new framework announced, so even if you have a need to make a native app, choosing how to do it has become near impossible. Is it .NET Maui? Should I try Electronize? or take a huge punt on Avalonia? It's easier just to wrap up a web ap…

That train left long back; nobody wants a Windows-only app when half the management are using Macs. Unless of course you're taking about pro apps like AutoCad or Photoshop; but they have never been electron and unlikely to ever be.

The app that kills Photoshop will run on Electron. Figma has 100% convinced me of this, if you can make an app where the UI remains responsive and fluid like Figma and graphics heavy lifting is done in a way that doesn’t choke the UI I think you’ll pretty much eat their lunch like Figma did to Sketch, Illustrator and XD.

You have to remember that Photoshop is pretty poorly optimized for modern hardware, a ton of it is single core constrained and they just haven’t cared about regressions, on Windows at least the whole app chokes for a second every time you drag the window around, it’s laughable.

Re: The web is swallowing the desktop whole (2017)

#138

Post by TeMPOraL »

dalmo3 wrote: post #134
riezebos wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not completely true, while WSL doesn't help Windows GUI apps to be more cross-platform, it does help Linux GUI apps to work on Windows[0] So to refer back to the top comment we could say that Microsoft is proposing WSL as a cross-platform API for GUI apps. [0] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/tutorials/gui-a...

W11 only, sadly.

The parent's link? Maybe. But I guess this only means that W11 ships with an X server, right?

On Windows 10, you just need to install your own X server. I'm using VcXsrv with great success to use GUI software running on WSL1.

Re: The web is swallowing the desktop whole (2017)

#139

Post by golergka »

boomlinde wrote: post #127
hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #68

It is exactly the failure of Microsoft and Apple to propose any meaningful cross-platform API. Both are fighting to increase vendor lock-in - it is in their best interests that apps written on Windows don't work on macOS/iOS and the other way round. Linux/OS folks themselves are unable to solve this problem on their own and it becomes a mouse-and-cat game. The popularity of web apps helped to reduce the problem, but…

I don't get this. I've used GTK, Qt, Tk and FLTK software in OSX, Windows and Linux. The rest is usually covered by standard libraries and third party libraries. So I take it this approach is disqualified on your terms for not being meaningful, which raises the question about what "meaningful" means. My own guess is that it's a matter of convenience of distribution: enter an URL and you can start using the app.

> GTK, Qt, Tk and FLTK

Aren't all of those C/C++? There's time and place for manually managing memory, figuring out UB and segfaults. If you're trying to render a frame full of AAA graphics in under 15 milliseconds, or go through a million requests a second, then I don't mind it. But if I'm just writing an email client...

Re: The web is swallowing the desktop whole (2017)

#140

Post by mrighele »

hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #68

It is exactly the failure of Microsoft and Apple to propose any meaningful cross-platform API. Both are fighting to increase vendor lock-in - it is in their best interests that apps written on Windows don't work on macOS/iOS and the other way round. Linux/OS folks themselves are unable to solve this problem on their own and it becomes a mouse-and-cat game. The popularity of web apps helped to reduce the problem, but…

I don't think that's the reason. Webapps got widespread when the Internet was still mostly consumed on the Desktop, which essentially meant Windows. The main reason in my opinion is ease of distribution: it has always been painful and full of friction for the end user on Windows, and the web made it much easier.

You can see how on mobile platforms, where app distribution is not a big problem, native applications are still doing well.

Post reply on HN