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Microsoft hasn't had a coherent GUI strategy since Petzold

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Re: Microsoft hasn't had a coherent GUI strategy since Petzold

#142

Post by pragmatic »

int_19h wrote: post #88
markus_zhang wrote: post #5

Steven Sinofsky wrote this piece a couple of weeks ago about the same topic: https://x.com/stevesi/status/2036921223150440542

It's very amusing to see Sinofsky of all people all but dumping on .NET and (still?!) not understanding why developers so proactively jumped ship from Win32 & MFC hell to WinForms. Or why the HTML/JS app model in Win8 never really took off. I was in DevDiv during his great WinRT push and the overall feeling I remember was that the guys in Windows had zero clue as to what the devs actually wanted, but were hell bent o…

How is he dunking on .net?

I think one of his main points is server .net was (and is) great.

But the UI part of it was cloudy.

I see it as complimentary to the post not contradicting it.

Re: Microsoft hasn't had a coherent GUI strategy since Petzold

#144

Post by MarcelinoGMX3C »

The deeper problem is that Microsoft keeps trying to solve GUI consistency at the framework layer instead of the design system layer. WinForms, WPF, UWP, WinUI -- each one a new framework, each one eventually abandoned.

Apple solved this by treating the design system as the product and letting the framework be invisible. Microsoft has it backwards every time.

Re: Microsoft hasn't had a coherent GUI strategy since Petzold

#146

Post by hacker_homie »

hacker_homie wrote: post #145

I feel this so hard. It's all win32 underneath except for UWP, which is now deprecated. so the answer is win32, raw winproc. The issue is they haven't made a new GUI API (only frameworks) since win32.

To add the UWP APIs were always less than the win32 ones in the name of security.

The issue was they didn't give you an alternative they just said don't do that.

so inevitably at some point you decide to just write it in win32, don't ship in the store, etc so you can get things done.

Re: Microsoft hasn't had a coherent GUI strategy since Petzold

#147

Post by lunar_rover »

dev1ycan wrote: post #93

Starting with Metro every Windows UI framework has been beyond ugly. there's just something so backwards over how nice the UI was in Windows 7, I simply can't understand it.

Metro was created partly to run smooothly on cheap Atom tablets and Windows Phones. Then Microsoft shifted their focus elsewhere and iOS 7/OS X Yosemite happened so they have all the reasons to stay flat.

Updated apps look fine, but the majority aren't. And with that bizarre "Show More Options" nesting in the Windows 11 context menu it almost seemed like Microsoft is no longer capable of upgrading old components in place.

Re: Microsoft hasn't had a coherent GUI strategy since Petzold

#148

Post by dartharva »

Here's how I think Microsoft can get a quick and sustained longterm win in GUI (/s but only partially) -

1. Drop all its GUI stacks apart from legacy Win32

2. Port KDE Plasma to Windows (with aliased bindings to support traditional explorer.exe calls so as to not break user apps)

That's it. There really aren't many significant apps that use the rest of Microsoft's stack apart from Win32 that won't recover from this, and Microsoft itself will just see a massive drop in its own costs with a massive rise in user satisfaction.

Re: Microsoft hasn't had a coherent GUI strategy since Petzold

#150

Post by gunsle »

MarcelinoGMX3C wrote: post #144

The deeper problem is that Microsoft keeps trying to solve GUI consistency at the framework layer instead of the design system layer. WinForms, WPF, UWP, WinUI -- each one a new framework, each one eventually abandoned. Apple solved this by treating the design system as the product and letting the framework be invisible. Microsoft has it backwards every time.

Insightful comment
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