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

Closing a 30 pixel gap between native and web

blogs.windows.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 313 posts

Re: Closing a 30 pixel gap between native and web

#211

Post by mixmastamyk »

p1necone wrote: post #101
marcosdumay wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Windows style for bars (both title and status) is way too large. Ditto for the task bar. It's no wonder people are tempted to not use status bars, and shove as much as possible at the title. If applications could exploit the task bar, they would too. (Anyway, you don't need an entire bar for system interaction. But applications aren't designed in a way that allows this.)

Pretty sure it's even bigger on Windows 11, same with the taskbar. Gnome 3 has the same issue.

Used to be able to specifically set the size of the title bar in Windows 9X and NT 4-XP or so.

Re: Closing a 30 pixel gap between native and web

#212

Post by mixmastamyk »

sedatk wrote: post #61
jolmg wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> alt-space -> s -> down -> right > alt-space -> m -> any arrow Are those keybindings default on a particular OS/DE/WM/WC or are they just your personal config?

Alt-space menu is Windows specific IIRC.

Motif/CDE, +/- 1990.

https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19683-01/806-4743/6jdq6q20i/inde...

Re: Closing a 30 pixel gap between native and web

#213

Post by girvo »

Sankozi wrote: post #205
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.

Before flex and grid CSS had most complex, least friendly and (probably) least powerful layout definition system compared to everything I knew. Creating unecessary elements just to trigger primitive CSS mechanisms was commonplace as was having >3 methods to do some primitive layout task (like centering) depending on where that task was needed. Tables were popular so long because you could do 80% of what CSS could do…

Adobe Flex is one of those things that while I really enjoyed it, Adobe just isn't a good steward of projects/products like it. I do wonder what it would be like if some other large tech company either invented, or took it over.

Flex could be used on mobile through Adobe AIR, but it was slow, and felt all kinds of wrong. This was one of the downsides to Flex, too, in my experience.

Re: Closing a 30 pixel gap between native and web

#214

Post by Cthulhu_ »

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…

I think you're not being very fair when it comes to web apps; I think they're a much lower barrier to entry in these days than native applications, especially if you want to target developers who will demand Windows, MacOS and Linux apps from day 0. There are no good cross-platform alternatives out there, with as big a pool of developers or as big an ecosystem.

I mean webapps suck, cross-platform mobile apps suck, and native apps on both desktop and mobile are vastly superior and I will die on that hill. But I understand the tradeoff.

Re: Closing a 30 pixel gap between native and web

#215

Post by [deleted] »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #214
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…

I think you're not being very fair when it comes to web apps; I think they're a much lower barrier to entry in these days than native applications, especially if you want to target developers who will demand Windows, MacOS and Linux apps from day 0. There are no good cross-platform alternatives out there, with as big a pool of developers or as big an ecosystem. I mean webapps suck, cross-platform mobile apps suck, an…

[deleted]

Re: Closing a 30 pixel gap between native and web

#216

Post by pjmlp »

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…

Office is using web technologies because they don't want to rewrite their code for Office 365, so native users get the Web stuff on a Web widget instead of a proper native UI.

Which is kind of tragic, given how Office was the testing ground for many Windows UI components.

Re: Closing a 30 pixel gap between native and web

#217

Post by pjerem »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #214
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…

I think you're not being very fair when it comes to web apps; I think they're a much lower barrier to entry in these days than native applications, especially if you want to target developers who will demand Windows, MacOS and Linux apps from day 0. There are no good cross-platform alternatives out there, with as big a pool of developers or as big an ecosystem. I mean webapps suck, cross-platform mobile apps suck, an…

> I think they're a much lower barrier to entry in these days than native applications, especially if you want to target developers who will demand Windows, MacOS and Linux apps from day 0.

Let's be honest, we had multiplatform apps well before desktop-web apps. We are in this situation because GAFAMs pushed very hard the paradigm of always connected web applications (because they had no control over applications running solely on your computer). And since they won this ideological battle, there is not any more investment on multiplatform toolkits.

I really think that all of this is due to political reasons and it have never been about the superiority of the web technologies.

Re: Closing a 30 pixel gap between native and web

#219

Post by madeofpalk »

zeta0134 wrote: post #162

I am reminded very strongly of the line of death: https://textslashplain.com/2017/01/14/the-line-of-death/ Now, don't get me wrong, I love the idea of progressive web apps, but the web is also easily the very least secure thing I do with my computer on a regular basis. The last thing I want is yet another way for a web page to pretend to look like a native app. Even with my decades of experience, I am liable to be fo…

In other ways, web environment is the most secure part of your OS. Download and install an .exe and it's essentially completely unsandboxed and has free reign over your computer. These 'PWAs' are much more limited and scoped.

Re: Closing a 30 pixel gap between native and web

#220

Post by [deleted] »

mkoubaa wrote: post #65
_gabe_ wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this all the time, and I honestly do not get it. As someone that has ported a game written in C++ for Windows to Linux... its not that hard. It took me 2 days, about 4 hours of work total, and most of the ports I had to make were because I'm an obstinate developer and didn't use the std lib functions that would handle the OS wrapping for me. Now, I've never ported an app to mobile, and that may be entirely diff…

Porting a large-scale windows desktop app to linux takes engineer years.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN