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Closing a 30 pixel gap between native and web

blogs.windows.com

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191–200 of 313 posts

Re: Closing a 30 pixel gap between native and web

#191

Post by pjmlp »

mdmglr wrote: post #176
n8cpdx wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Traditional Windows apps all use system provided common controls, because they are good, and therefore they have a consistent look and feel, even through OS updates. This hasn’t been consistent since at least Vista and the release of WPF, which does totally custom control rendering. Circa 2006. I think web is taking over on Windows because any of 10 or 15 different design systems can get you to a better app than th…

> Even Office and Visual Studio (not Code) are using web technologies to render substantial parts of the UI. Any more details on what web technologies are being used in Visual Studio and what parts of the UI are done with web?

You just have to peek into what is running as child process from VS, as node.exe instances.

Mostly related to Web stuff, Blazor or VSCode plugins that they are "porting" into VS.

Re: Closing a 30 pixel gap between native and web

#192

Post by pjmlp »

c0mptonFP wrote: post #172
GuB-42 wrote: post #86

> installed desktop web apps are really starting to look and feel like native apps I think we are having the opposite problem: native apps are really starting to look and feel like web apps, and in many cases, they are. The problem: the web has a terrible UI toolkit for desktop apps. It has clickable links and basic forms, that's all. It was made for documents, not apps. If you want better than that, you have to rewr…

> The problem: the web has a terrible UI toolkit for desktop apps. It has clickable links and basic forms, that's all I think you're not giving credit to the best part about the web: CSS. I've been programming GUIs with Java AWT, Swing, and Qt for years. Nothing comes close to CSS when it comes to defining layouts.

Swing Layout managers, XAML styles and control templates, QML.

Re: Closing a 30 pixel gap between native and web

#193

Post by anilakar »

dmitriid wrote: post #171
bigyikes wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This misses the point. A trillion dollars goes a lot further when the software is cheaper.

But VSCode isn't cheaper. They had to pour millions of dollars and countless man hours into it. And none of those translated into any meaningful improvements of the platform.

It isn't cheap wrt hardware requirements either. My 2.5 year old work laptop becomes unbelievably sluggish if I have to keep multiple Electron apps open.

Re: Closing a 30 pixel gap between native and web

#194

Post by akmittal »

kajaktum wrote: post #167
bigyikes wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The word “cheaper” here is doing a lot of work. Yes, it’s cheaper, meaning that it allows you to ship more stuff faster. You could make the argument that this results in lower quality, but this isn’t always the case. (For example, VS Code feels great!) Still, I’d often rather have twice the features at 80% the quality, instead of an extremely high quality product that doesn’t have the features I need. Cheapness leads…

VSCode is adequate, not great. The bar for responsive and minimal application is so bad these days thanks to web apps.

VSCode replace Sublime, Visual Studio(full) and IntelliJ IDEs for so many developers. It has all the features >90% of developers and it is faster than VS and IntelliJ IDEs

Re: Closing a 30 pixel gap between native and web

#195

Post by redbell »

n8cpdx wrote: post #90
GuB-42 wrote: post #86

> installed desktop web apps are really starting to look and feel like native apps I think we are having the opposite problem: native apps are really starting to look and feel like web apps, and in many cases, they are. The problem: the web has a terrible UI toolkit for desktop apps. It has clickable links and basic forms, that's all. It was made for documents, not apps. If you want better than that, you have to rewr…

> Traditional Windows apps all use system provided common controls, because they are good, and therefore they have a consistent look and feel, even through OS updates. This hasn’t been consistent since at least Vista and the release of WPF, which does totally custom control rendering. Circa 2006. I think web is taking over on Windows because any of 10 or 15 different design systems can get you to a better app than th…

> This hasn’t been consistent since at least Vista

Yes, I believe the Windows UI (at least until 10 since I haven't tested 11 deeply) is becoming increasingly inconsistent because of the many UI frameworks out there. And, while I understand that each app's developer is free to choose whatever framework UI they feel is right for them, I find it hard to understand why Microsoft is not sticking with a consistent framework for all of its apps, it went even far by using Electron for its Teams app! However, the thing that I might never get is: Why is Windows itself (and its system apps, i.e Calculator, Notepad) isn't sticking to a single framework? Yesterday, at night, I turned "Dark Mode" on and was surprised to see that "Task Manager" keeps its Light theme. It's weird how Notepad++ has a "Dark" theme while Task Manager has not!

To "gratifies one's intellectual curiosity", check https://youtu.be/hn5QjtpjW_U

Re: Closing a 30 pixel gap between native and web

#196

Post by drekipus »

Falkon1313 wrote: post #170
drekipus wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

super+h minimises. pretty sure you can make it anything you want. if you're looking specifically for "alt-spc n" to minimise I'm sure you can find a way to make that work - but why? to retain muscle memory between windows and gnome?

My keyboard doesn't have a 'super' key. What does that translate to on a normal keyboard?

Windows key, but like I said you can change it to anything you want.

I'm pretty sure there's an option to emulate the windows key somewhere too

Re: Closing a 30 pixel gap between native and web

#197

Post by lozenge »

redbell wrote: post #195
n8cpdx wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Traditional Windows apps all use system provided common controls, because they are good, and therefore they have a consistent look and feel, even through OS updates. This hasn’t been consistent since at least Vista and the release of WPF, which does totally custom control rendering. Circa 2006. I think web is taking over on Windows because any of 10 or 15 different design systems can get you to a better app than th…

> This hasn’t been consistent since at least Vista Yes, I believe the Windows UI (at least until 10 since I haven't tested 11 deeply) is becoming increasingly inconsistent because of the many UI frameworks out there. And, while I understand that each app's developer is free to choose whatever framework UI they feel is right for them, I find it hard to understand why Microsoft is not sticking with a consistent framewo…

I didn't think it's a good video. If Microsoft s latest apps don't have a consistent design, they have spent more money on designing each of them separately. Each of those hover effects and custom title bars needed to be coded separately. That undermines the idea that MS "hasn't prioritised spending on design because it won't help their enterprise customers" and shows it's just an organisational problem.

Re: Closing a 30 pixel gap between native and web

#198

Post by lozenge »

akmittal wrote: post #194
kajaktum wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VSCode is adequate, not great. The bar for responsive and minimal application is so bad these days thanks to web apps.

VSCode replace Sublime, Visual Studio(full) and IntelliJ IDEs for so many developers. It has all the features >90% of developers and it is faster than VS and IntelliJ IDEs

And it doesn't support window and monitor layouts that were possible and useful in Visual Studio 2003, or probably earlier.

Re: Closing a 30 pixel gap between native and web

#199

Post by Asmod4n »

bigyikes wrote: post #113
tablespoon wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think web is taking over on Windows because any of 10 or 15 different design systems can get you to a better app than the native (whatever that means) toolkits in much less time. It is easier to get a decent color picker in a web app than a WPF, WinForms, UWP, WinUI, or Win32 app (assuming you have a reasonably high expectation for UI/UX, as I do). I'll grant you that it's probably easier and cheaper to get a wor…

The word “cheaper” here is doing a lot of work. Yes, it’s cheaper, meaning that it allows you to ship more stuff faster. You could make the argument that this results in lower quality, but this isn’t always the case. (For example, VS Code feels great!) Still, I’d often rather have twice the features at 80% the quality, instead of an extremely high quality product that doesn’t have the features I need. Cheapness leads…

VS Code isn’t a web app. The first release was and since then most of it has been rewritten to be a native app.

Re: Closing a 30 pixel gap between native and web

#200

Post by muspimerol »

szastamasta wrote: post #183
c0mptonFP wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem: the web has a terrible UI toolkit for desktop apps. It has clickable links and basic forms, that's all I think you're not giving credit to the best part about the web: CSS. I've been programming GUIs with Java AWT, Swing, and Qt for years. Nothing comes close to CSS when it comes to defining layouts.

I also spent quite some time building desktop and mobile apps (5, maybe 6 years) and also more than 10 years of building web apps and don’t really share this sentiment. My feeling is exactly opposite. CSS is messy and hacky way to build layouts (the famous “how to center a div”, etc.) while with UI toolkits it tends to be much more straightforward and standardized. (Edit: fixed a typo)

When is the last time you used CSS? "How to center a div" has not been an issue with CSS for many, many years. Flexbox and now CSS Grid have overwhelming adoption and most layouts can be achieved with a few lines of CSS.
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