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Microsoft is open sourcing Windows 11's UI framework

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Re: Microsoft is open sourcing Windows 11's UI framework

#11

Post by bloomca »

genter wrote: post #10
bloomca wrote: post #3

I really hope they do and the rendering engine is decently decoupled, I'll give a try building a framework on top of it. I wish all platforms gave access to their rendering engine similar to DOM on the web, imo SwiftUI/WinUI (or WPF, but they are very similar) are not that good. Haven't built anything native on Linux, though, no idea how good those are.

What's wrong with Skia? Chrome, Firefox, and OpenOffice all use it, and it works on Windows, Linux, MacOS, and Android.

Nothing wrong with it, just want something a bit higher level and ideally with at least some native components/styles.

Re: Microsoft is open sourcing Windows 11's UI framework

#12

Post by incrudible »

genter wrote: post #10
bloomca wrote: post #3

I really hope they do and the rendering engine is decently decoupled, I'll give a try building a framework on top of it. I wish all platforms gave access to their rendering engine similar to DOM on the web, imo SwiftUI/WinUI (or WPF, but they are very similar) are not that good. Haven't built anything native on Linux, though, no idea how good those are.

What's wrong with Skia? Chrome, Firefox, and OpenOffice all use it, and it works on Windows, Linux, MacOS, and Android.

It is a ton of C++ for what is essentially something that an OS like Windows/MacOS/Android/iOS or the browser would provide anyway. Apps that use it ship with a substantial minimum amount of bloat, e.g. Flutter for web.

Re: Microsoft is open sourcing Windows 11's UI framework

#14

Post by bloomca »

jamil7 wrote: post #9
bloomca wrote: post #3

I really hope they do and the rendering engine is decently decoupled, I'll give a try building a framework on top of it. I wish all platforms gave access to their rendering engine similar to DOM on the web, imo SwiftUI/WinUI (or WPF, but they are very similar) are not that good. Haven't built anything native on Linux, though, no idea how good those are.

What do you mean by access? APIs to program against or fully open sourcing the rendering engine? Because you can mix SwiftUI with a few different rendering frameworks at varying abstraction levels that it itself renders to (AppKit, UIKit, Core Graphics, Metal etc.)

Basically I want an API available to build my own SwiftUI. Definitely not on the Core Graphics level :)

But good point, I actually think AppKit might be a good abstraction level. I'll play with it a bit and see if I can abstract it behind a good component model.

Re: Microsoft is open sourcing Windows 11's UI framework

#15

Post by daemin »

Last I evaluated it WinUI3 was a terrible developer experience. The application had to be literally installed on the system to even debug it, which means you end up with a large number of useless start menu entries, not to mention registry entries and such. Another thing was that the example programs crashed when I clicked on a button.

All I want is something simple to work with to make applications for Windows, and so far I'm still using Win32 with WTL.

Re: Microsoft is open sourcing Windows 11's UI framework

#16

Post by bloomca »

bobsmooth wrote: post #7

What "UI framework"? Windows is a Frankenstein's monster of different UI elements.

Rendering engine + set of native components + APIs to make your own components.

Windows definitely shot themselves in a foot with building multiple renderers while building them on top of each other.

Re: Microsoft is open sourcing Windows 11's UI framework

#17

Post by bloomca »

daemin wrote: post #15

Last I evaluated it WinUI3 was a terrible developer experience. The application had to be literally installed on the system to even debug it, which means you end up with a large number of useless start menu entries, not to mention registry entries and such. Another thing was that the example programs crashed when I clicked on a button. All I want is something simple to work with to make applications for Windows, and…

> The application had to be literally installed on the system to even debug it

I think that's because you chose "packaged" application, these apps need to be installed so that capabilities are handled correctly.

To be fair, macOS has the same issue, although they won't show in Launchpad, they still can be indexed by Spotlight.

Re: Microsoft is open sourcing Windows 11's UI framework

#18

Post by wild_pointer »

Springtime wrote: post #8

I hope this leads to having a native vertical taskbar, which has been absent in W11 despite being a taskbar feature dating back as early as Windows 98. Third-party tools have tried to reimplement it but it's either been by bastardizing the native W11 horizontal taskbar to be vertical (eg: Windhawk) or just restoring the old W10 taskbar code (eg: StartAllBack).

How will making the UI framework open source lead to taskbar changes? For third party contributions in this area, they need to open source the taskbar, not the UI framework.
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