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Writing GUI apps for Windows is painful

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Re: Writing GUI apps for Windows is painful

#181

Post by triedthat »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #11
markasoftware wrote: post #9

More accurately: + "portable" (single exe with no automatic unzipping of dlls or anything) + commercial and unwilling to redistribute compiled object files (which together with the "portable" requirement, means no LGPL) + dark mode Windows GUI apps is painful. Drop any one of these requirements and there are good established options. Specifically I think most "portable" applications use win32 because, usually, portab…

Anyone can compile a static binary with FLTK and have the binary size start under 100KB.

I've used FLTK for an application. It relies heavily on opaque pointers and convention. The compiler will not help you out if you mess up.

https://github.com/gammasoft71/Examples_FLTK/blob/c6f630eaa3...

Re: Writing GUI apps for Windows is painful

#183

Post by userbinator »

jenadine wrote: post #177
EvanAnderson wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's not a problem, it's a feature. 1000 times this. I want software I'm running to look like the rest of the OS (and every other application) and respect my OS-level UI preferences. In the case of Win32 using the OS primitive controls mean that your application gets tons of accessibility and preference features "for free" (albeit Microsoft has done a good job in later Windows releases of removing the functionali…

You seem to be in the minority with that thought. The evidence is that most apps nowadays comes with their own style, often packed in a HTML frontend. Users are used of websites which all have their own designs, and don't seem to mind if all apps have different look and feel.

Most users have just developed a learned helplessness. It doesn't mean they don't like it.

Re: Writing GUI apps for Windows is painful

#184

Post by userbinator »

jenscow wrote: post #150
userbinator wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'll get dark, light, rainbow, whatever the user has set. This was a feature since at least Windows 3: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25871787

Those colour settings are not aware of Windows 11's "Dark mode"

Not surprising. Typical "modern" Microsoft. Reinventing things poorly is so common these days.

Re: Writing GUI apps for Windows is painful

#187

Post by Kuraj »

neonsunset wrote: post #86

The author would have been served extremely well by AvaloniaUI with NativeAOT target if they were willing to drop their assumptions regarding C# that are no longer true. (I wonder how well Uno Platform fares in comparison? It targets native controls first and foremost but is supposedly NativeAOT compatible too)

Uno is closer to a full stack rather than front-end in comparison with Avalonia.

Re: Writing GUI apps for Windows is painful

#189

Post by wiseowise »

Aurornis wrote: post #6
api wrote: post #2

Writing GUI apps is painful period, and it’s become more so not less in the last two decades. Go back in an emulator some time and try Visual Studio or even old Borland from the 1990s. Point, click, add code, set style, and the result was not bad at all. The whole UI looked consistent too with uniform controls, shortcuts, etc. Today UI apps use 100X more memory, are slower, and are harder to use with little to show f…

> Today UI apps use 100X more memory, Larger memory footprints aren’t just from the GUI. There is a lot more functionality to deal with everywhere. Just handling modern security, encryption, and certificate checking stack can take up more space than entire executables from the early 90s. I also have literally 100X more RAM now. > are slower, Im fairly certain everyone who says this has simply forgotten how slow mecha…

> There is a lot more functionality to deal with everywhere. Just handling modern security, encryption, and certificate checking stack can take up more space than entire executables from the early 90s.

What does this have to do with bloated GUIs?

> Im fairly certain everyone who says this has simply forgotten how slow mechanical hard drives were. I occasionally have to pull out a very old laptop, hope that it still boots, and do something on it. Everything is so painfully slow in ways I forgot about. It’s refreshing to return to my modern PC.

I remember 98/XP running circles on mechanical harddrives compared to modern PCs on ultra fast SSDs. The fact that despite thousand times faster hardware we have slower performance is disgusting.

> If you don’t think modern apps have more functionality, I don’t know what to tell you.

Care to provide an example what modern applications have that older ones lack? Except for always—on connection and artificial bullshit imposed by modern OSs.

Re: Writing GUI apps for Windows is painful

#190

Post by Kuraj »

dmitrygr wrote: post #104

“Stylized” Let me stop you right there. No. Leave the OS to style controls how it does, for consistency. There is no reason to be inconsistent. This is not 1994 and you’re not writing a warez keygen

Styling functionality doesn't have to imply introducing a new look and feel, it might just be needed for extensibility.
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