Closing a 30 pixel gap between native and web • Hacker News Board

Re: Closing a 30 pixel gap between native and web

#291

Post by fian » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 12:28 AM UTC

asoneth wrote: post #266

fian wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Java Swing apps were portable across Windows, Mac and Linux desktops waaayy back in 2004 and probably earlier. Write once run everywhere _was_ very much possible back then. The biggest complaint was they didn't look native. From working on a Swing application back then, management and marketing would often ask if we could make it look more like other Windows applications, because looking like a native Windows XP appl…

I worked on Java apps around that timeframe. Despite spending a lot of effort refining our widgets and using some animated transitions (ref the "Filthy Rich Clients" book) the applications generally felt more dated and cheaper-looking than native apps. For enterprise apps with no strong competitors these minor aesthetic issues didn't impact revenue so those UIs remained in Java. But for everything else it was worth i…

Yep, we did some deep customisation of a couple of key UI widgets and found it very time consuming. Changing the Look and Feel to Nimbus was a major improvement, but that came with semi-regular breakages when performing minor version JVM updates. I vaguely remember us overriding a couple of Nimbus defaults but finding that could have unexpected consequences elsewhere in the UI (ie LaFs are complex), so we didn't go down that path much.

While Swing styling support wasn't that great, I miss the flexibility of nesting layout managers for composing complex, resizable UIs.

When Java FX was first announced, I started learning it to see how we might use it for our applications. At the time it lacked a lot of widgets we needed, but it had much better support for styling. Sadly I didn't keep up with Java FX. While I have no direct need for it in my current job, I still get the itch to whip up the occasional desktop app, so I plan on getting back up to speed soon.

Re: Closing a 30 pixel gap between native and web

#292

Post by Dalewyn » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 12:51 AM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #288

Dalewyn wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're telling me I can't afford an 8 pixel wide scroll bar on a fucking 1920 pixels wide monitor? Meanwhile nearly every article nowadays has a useless header image that takes up the entire screen, pushing the content out of view until scrolled down. Give me nice and thick title bars and window borders, give me wide scroll bars, give me ginormous buttons with proper borders and textual descriptors. Minimalism is non…

I am telling you people don't need 80 pixels of vertical space spent on title and application switcher, and can use those better with actual content. But if you want to put words on my mouth, go ahead.

I do, because big and easy-to-handle title bars and taskbars make for easier and quicker usage of the interface.

I also have 15 layers of tabs in one of my Pale Moon windows, but that's beside the point.

Re: Closing a 30 pixel gap between native and web

#293

Post by chpmrc » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 1:23 AM UTC

LtWorf wrote: post #72

chpmrc wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What difference does the runtime make to the (average) end user? I love that I can create shortcuts of some web apps that have their own window, menu bar etc. (this is already possible in Chrome) and I don't really care they are "web" apps.

> What difference does the runtime make to the (average) end user? "Incredibly slow and draining the battery 3x as fast" vs "regular"

That has nothing to do with the runtime, rather with the implementation. Barrier to entry of web development is low so average quality is also low. On the opposite side of the spectrum you have products like Figma, Notion, Google apps etc.

Re: Closing a 30 pixel gap between native and web

#294

Post by kajaktum » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 4:01 AM UTC

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

Have you tried Lapce? It's way snappier than VSCode.

Re: Closing a 30 pixel gap between native and web

#295

Post by Sateeshm » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 5:01 AM UTC

anonyme-honteux wrote: post #175

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 don't know I tried to understand CSS many times but never managed to get it: I'm a backend developer nowadays.

Deep understanding of css can take years. But understanding boxmodel, flexbox and grid won't take long and is enough for must use cases.

Re: Closing a 30 pixel gap between native and web

#296

Post by tlavoie » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 6:31 AM UTC

Semaphor wrote: post #278

jcelerier wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry for you if it's the best that you have ever experienced. It is very subpar and slow.

It's the best electron app I've ever used. It's so much faster than anything else I've seen use electron.

That's quite the back-handed compliment though, isn't it?

Re: Closing a 30 pixel gap between native and web

#297

Post by Semaphor » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 6:37 AM UTC

tlavoie wrote: post #296

Semaphor wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the best electron app I've ever used. It's so much faster than anything else I've seen use electron.

That's quite the back-handed compliment though, isn't it?

Not really, I’d say VS Code is the only electron app that can stand up to native apps. It’s not the best, but it’s pretty good.

Now, for electron, it’s certainly not a compliment. From electron apps I’ve used, only VS Code is great, Discord is good, and everything else is just really, really bad. It’s apparently extremely hard to use electron and have something close to decent performance.

Re: Closing a 30 pixel gap between native and web

#298

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 7:33 AM UTC

vasvir wrote: post #238

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…

Also the deployment makes much more sense in the web. Users are always in the latest version of the software with no install / update shenanigans. This has other implications as well. The application may change internal formats since it doesn't have to worry about older instances of itself etc. And if you build an updater in your app like chrome / firefox then it needs to be disabled for Linux distributions that have…

[deleted]

Re: Closing a 30 pixel gap between native and web

#299

Post by tlavoie » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 4:02 AM UTC

Semaphor wrote: post #297

tlavoie wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's quite the back-handed compliment though, isn't it?

Not really, I’d say VS Code is the only electron app that can stand up to native apps. It’s not the best, but it’s pretty good. Now, for electron, it’s certainly not a compliment. From electron apps I’ve used, only VS Code is great, Discord is good, and everything else is just really, really bad. It’s apparently extremely hard to use electron and have something close to decent performance.

Right, sorry, I meant back-handed for Electron. I have used VS Code a bit for a class, but am usually an Emacs user.

Re: Closing a 30 pixel gap between native and web

#300

Post by hulitu » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 8:18 AM UTC

ryukoposting wrote: post #166

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…

I think I agree with you, but I need a clear definition of "cheaper." To me, "cheaper" means that companies are putting fewer resources into Windows-specific app development. That's not unexpected, given large portions of their user base are using MacOS, Android, or iOS. Why would I hire 8 developers to make 4 apps, when I could hire 6 developers to make make 3 or even 2 apps? Oh, as an added bonus, now my app can al…

> I think I agree with you, but I need a clear definition of "cheaper."

I think the best definition of MS products in regard with quality and usability is "cheaper" as in "he is cheap". (i.e. only using the lowest quality crap available)