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The web is swallowing the desktop whole (2017)

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

#231

Post by mikewarot »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #190
mikewarot wrote: post #186

All of the replies here seem to agree that the desktop market was shattered because it wasn't in any one parties interest to be cross platform, even Linux has multiple GUIs. All of the solutions that are web based are resource hogs. Mobile users are going to be stuck using "apps", and thus shouldn't be considered as part of general purpose computing. All of this tells me there is a market opportunity for a capability…

The sandboxes would have to be both secure and transparent enough normal users can get their work done. Hardware support would also be a huge factor. I doubt it's possible by anyone less than a FAANG company, and there isn't much money in the prospect, IMO. Still, it could be marvelous.

It's possible, and for 15 years I've been saying it'll be here in 20... so 5 more to go.

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

#232

Post by creshal »

selfhoster11 wrote: post #222
creshal wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have plenty of Windows-only customers. We're still giving them wrapped web apps when they ask for desktop applications. Because even if the customer is all-Windows, developers sure aren't (unless you're a C#-exclusive sweatshop, maybe?), and stuff like Bootstrap+jQuery is more stable than Windows GUI toolkits these days. Lower development costs and lower ongoing maintenance costs, win-win.

There are cross-platform toolkits that render using native controls. Bootstrap+jQuery and Win32 are not the only two possible options.

GTK, which we can't use easily due to licensing headaches and deprecates useful widgets faster than we can try to use them, or Qt, which we can't use due easily to licensing headaches and with QtQuick is just web apps in more complicated, or smaller frameworks, which already looked terrible when they were new?

And outside a hard, but small core of Mac users, native controls also aren't a selling point to end users. They're harder to work with, more difficult to style, to no advantage to an end user who more often than not couldn't even tell you what the native controls of Windows are. (And I suspect most Microsoft employees can't either, if Windows 10/11 is any indication.)

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

#233

Post by littlecranky67 »

boomlinde wrote: post #192
littlecranky67 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of those UI libs work on Android or iOS.

Qt does.

It is very niche, and again only if you go with C++. For most Apps that are not games, using C++ is probably overkill on mobile just so you can use Qt. And you will still have to come up with a mobile optimized UI, as a standard desktop UI layout will just not work on 5" screens.

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

#234

Post by hdjjhhvvhga »

skrtskrt wrote: post #215
_nhh wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jetbrains cares. https://github.com/HumbleUI/JWM

I love JetBrains products and their approach. If I had any interest in writing Java (or desktop) I would love to work there and be part of the mission.

I like their approach, too. Just by looking at this project GitHub page, one can clearly see the list of supported features and not yet working/planned, which is essentially all I need from such a project. Seems obvious, but very few projects realize this/care enough to make it crystal clear like JB did.

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

#235

Post by hdjjhhvvhga »

spaetzleesser wrote: post #228
lostmsu wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they always had a Windows-only UI project going until they abandon it and start a new one. Having a cross-platform UI project going until they abandon it and start a new one is something new under Satya.

Satya seems a true visionary and disrupter :)

I'm not sure he's a visionary. He's more into going with the flow, mimicking successful competitors. Amazon went big with AWS? Let's try to do the same! Google and FB are tracking everybody? We can do it, too! Apple is pushing updates on their mobile devices? We can do it on our desktops but in a way that makes everyone mad! All phone manufacturers add fluff to their devices? We can bundle adware, too! People love Linux? Let's add it to to Windows! They also like open source? Well, we can't buy that, but we can buy GitHub!

The list could go on but the point I doubt Nadella is a visionary, he's just following others. Not necessarily a bad thing for the company and its shareholders, it's a fairly safe approach. I miss the days when they actually had original ideas, like the Kinect.

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

#236

Post by jcelerier »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #177
jcelerier wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Qt works in more places than chromium and is much more native - it's even the native platform for multiple OSes

Case in point: Qt works on Haiku, Chrome doesn't.

Qt also since recently started working on Serenity :)

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

#237

Post by boomlinde »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #233
boomlinde wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Qt does.

It is very niche, and again only if you go with C++. For most Apps that are not games, using C++ is probably overkill on mobile just so you can use Qt. And you will still have to come up with a mobile optimized UI, as a standard desktop UI layout will just not work on 5" screens.

https://wiki.qt.io/Language_Bindings

> And you will still have to come up with a mobile optimized UI, as a standard desktop UI layout will just not work on 5" screens.

No tool will magically solve this problem for you. Qt has excellent support for responsive design if that's how you'd propose to solve it.

And no, Qt is not very niche.

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

#238

Post by beardyw »

torginus wrote: post #207
_fat_santa wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might be wrong here so someone correct me but I believe it's because every time you open a new electron app, you are opening another instance of Chrome. So if you have Chrome, VSCode and Figma running, that's 3 instances of Chrome each eating their respective 2-3GB of memory and associated CPU cycles.

You are not wrong, but there are multiple billion dollar companies that build their products on top of Electron. Presumably they could afford to hire engineers or Google could step in and optimize Chrome's renderer for Electron's use cases. I may be wrong, but as things are now, Electron, more or less packages an unmodified, headless Chromium.

Yes, and if you allow it, an Electron app can just open the chrome debugger you know on the browser part of the app. There is a messaging system between that and the node part, to provide stuff like file access.

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

#240

Post by lenkite »

skc wrote: post #101
spaetzleesser wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft has destroyed the Windows desktop singlehandedly on their own. Since Win8 and “Metro” they moved away from having consistent UI widgets like it was in Windows 2000 or XP but instead made the Windows desktop a Wild West if different UI paradigms. Even the ribbon introduced a new UI paradigm that wasn’t available to third party devs. If even MS themselves doesn’t bother to be consistent then developers certai…

Well that's all well and good but it doesn't explain why even Mac OS devs are moving en masse to building for the web.

SwiftUI keeps breaking stuff constantly.
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