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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

#341

Post by alkonaut »

The roadmaps look messy if you look at them as coming from one company. But if you remember that windows and .net (or DevDiv) are more like competing companies then it makes more sense. Then for one side it’s Win32, MFC, WinSDk and for the other it’s Win32 (WinForms), WPF, MAUI

If Microsoft hadn’t been preoccupied with a failed mobile bet then this wouldn’t have happened. It’s a lost decade followed by a (much more successful) cloud pivot. The reason desktop is ignored is because it can be. No one is eating their lunch on desktop.

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

#342

Post by ZuLuuuuuu »

2 things Microsoft failed to do in the last 15 years are:

1) They abandoned their mobile phone, tablet, and wearable strategy. So, today if you develop a native Windows application, it will only work on desktops and laptops. That is it. It is not attractive for a developer to learn a whole new UI framework just to target a single form factor. And I don't know if there is any solution for this at this point, they shouldn't have completely abandoned those markets.

2) They did not back 1 UI framework for a long time (I mean 10 years+), instead they did significant changes to their UI framework strategy every 3-4 years. It takes a huge time for developers to trust, learn and develop complex and polished apps in a UI framework. Also it takes a long time for a UI framework to become mature. If you change your UI strategy every few years, you will never have complex and polished apps written with it.

To be honest I am not sure if Windows will ever be able to recover in the long term and keep its market share. The only reason it seems to be alive is because enterprise runs on Windows and it is hard to change that.

I feel like an Apple + Google dominance will be more likely in the long term for desktop operating systems. I am not sure if Google will be able to avoid the first mistake I wrote above but they are working on bringing Android to desktop. It is a good idea but it requires at least 10 years of supporting and polishing it despite not getting much traction. But if Google persists, we might be all using MacOS and Android on desktop 20 years from now.

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

#343

Post by ShroudedNight »

Zardoz84 wrote: post #196
bombcar wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple had been doing GPU-accelerated GUIs since the early NeXT days; it was certainly possible on hardware weaker than what Vista required.

Windows 3.1, with the aproppiated drivers and modern SVGA card, had accelerated 2d graphics. Accelerated GUIs don't even need GPU or 3d.

What does "GPU" mean here? Previous uses of the term seemed to imply "dedicated hardware for improving rendering performance" which the SVGA stuff would seem to fall squarely under.

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

#344

Post by [deleted] »

super256 wrote: post #21
furyofantares wrote: post #3

> Dead silence. One person suggested WPF. Another said WinUI 3. A third asked if they should just use Electron. The meeting went sideways and we never did answer the question. > That silence is the story. These LLMs are just awful at writing.

I felt fatigued after the second paragraph. All these LLM tropes chained together are horrible to read.

[deleted]

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

#345

Post by jen20 »

rigonkulous wrote: post #333
iamcalledrob wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've ended up in a world where power users have been forgotten. Not out of malice, but out of a misguided aim to reduce complexity and achieve consistency with the web. I would argue that desktop is the platform for power users, and its future depends on them. The keyboard shortcuts, the micro-interactions, the window management -- this stuff is all important when you're using a system for 8+ hours per day. Yet we r…

>We've ended up in a world where power users have been forgotten. I think its more like the OS vendors have stopped being operating system vendors, and are now - instead - vendors of eyeballs to advertisers . The less the user is GUI'ing, the more they are just watching, placid, whatever else is on their screen. For native apps to survive, they need to not be platform-specific - i.e. web apps, which require a browser…

> I have the most respect for apps I can use on MacOS, Windows, and Linux - with the same hotkey/user experience on all platforms, equitably - and the least respect for apps which 'only run on one of them', since that is of course nonsense in this day and age.

No. I want things like keyboard shortcuts to reflect the platform norms of where the app is running (macOS in my case). A shared core is fine, but the UI framework must be native to be acceptable. Ghostty is a "gold standard" there.

This is why most web apps are lowest-common-denominator annoyances that I will not use.

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

#346

Post by sizeofdouble »

9dev wrote: post #311
cedilla wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be how JavaScript started, but unless your claim is that JavaScript hasn't changed at all in the thirty years or so since then, your argument is a complete non-sequitur.

Yeah, thank you. Also, JavaScript today means TypeScript—an arguably extremely capable type system actively developed by Microsoft—and several, modern runtimes with a big standard library and solid asynchronous primitives. There are a lot worse scripting languages out there.

Folks misunderstand the whole point just because I mention TypeScript. Sure it’s a capable and elegant language. Doesn’t change the fact that it’s a bloated monstrosity on the desktop.

Think about it: it transpiles to JavaScript. Even if it’s the most elegant language in the world doesn’t change the fact that it’s a world of bloat.

Stacks on stacks on stacks. And yet people are complaining about .Net? Come on. Lol

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

#347

Post by liendolucas »

iamcalledrob wrote: post #317
shiandow wrote: post #277

What I find must puzzling is that everyone seems to just be violating basic rules that had been in place for ages. Things like: - If you can't respond to a UI event wait until you can - Menus should be tree structures - Pressing alt should underline the hotkeys you need to access anything clickable As well as just basic responsiveness or predictability. A 2000 era windows application may not have been pretty, and may…

We've ended up in a world where power users have been forgotten. Not out of malice, but out of a misguided aim to reduce complexity and achieve consistency with the web. I would argue that desktop is the platform for power users, and its future depends on them. The keyboard shortcuts, the micro-interactions, the window management -- this stuff is all important when you're using a system for 8+ hours per day. Yet we r…

If you become a power user you realize that nothing matches the power of the command line. And at that point you also realize that are better OSes that allow you to fully explode the true computing power that is terribly limited and constrained by a GUI.

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

#348

Post by rigonkulous »

SyneRyder wrote: post #336
rigonkulous wrote: post #330

My coherent GUI strategy: just use JUCE. Invested in it, shipped it, seen it solve the cross-platform problem beautifully. Can just write C++, and see it running everywhere. The JUCE GUI capabilities are more than adequate for many, many things. There are other platform-scaffolded cross-platform frameworks. JUCE is cromulantly FNORD.

That sounds intriguing - are there examples of desktop apps (eg productivity apps) that are made with JUCE? I'm already very familiar with JUCE in VST plugins, I have hundreds of VSTs made with JUCE and I love their UIs. But I don't think I've ever seen it for a standalone business application? The JUCE pricing is certainly far more reasonable than Qt.

>desktop, productivity apps

You can configure your JUCE project to build to any of the standard audio plugin formats, or for it to build a standalone app for the target platform (i.e. plugins, desktop, mobile, embedded) or indeed to build all of these targets, at once, in one build.

However, during app (i.e. non-plugin) development I often switch between linux and macos environments as part of my workflow, and during testing after I've pushed to the proper branch, the build server plops out the .exe/.pkg/.app/.tar.gz bundles as needed for the test group to crack at it.

JUCE, being at heart a C++ framework intended to be the engine of a very diverse swath of different OS, plugin, and packaging standards, does all the glue to get you there - how you use it, is up to you. (All of this can happen in github actions, btw, really easy to set up..)

Yes, there are 'business'/'productivity' UI elements in JUCE app targets, and yes they are consistent across all platforms. And yes, you can for example build a UI from an .xml form, with cross-platform datastore and so on, easily enough.

Here's a nice place to start, if you wanna understand JUCE capabilities from a 'productivity'-app perspective:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IaMjH5lBEY

David Rowland, a core JUCE developer, explaining the guts of things.

Basically, the scope is high performance applications, and there are no really good reasons for why a high performance application cannot also be a productivity app - the distinction is arbitrary - except of course you ask, for the GUI!

But: JUCE' GUI is pretty darn good, I have to say, in face of the onslaught of platform vendor fuckery. You can embed a WebView if you really need it, and wire it up to the rest of the cross-platform event handing system, etc. But I think its not really needed, given the plethora of 'normal' UI controls, out of the box.

If you're serious about looking at JUCE for a variety of application types, then a lot of the questions you're going to have about JUCE' GUI suitability for standalone business applications can be answered by running the DemoRunner application that's built-in to the JUCE codebase.

Clone the repo, build the DemoRunner project for your platform (or all of them), and you'll see - there are plenty of business-like cross-platform UI elements in the kitty. A huge collection of business-/productivity- like UI elements, right out of the box. (High-performance plugin UI's are there with the business UI stuff, too.)

And .. once you've marvelled at the glory of DemoRunner(.exe,.app,.apk)[etc.] .. please do yourself a favour and spend an extra hour parsing the awesome-juce list:

https://github.com/sudara/awesome-juce/

JUCE is marvelous, and awesome-juce is awesome.

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

#349

Post by rigonkulous »

jen20 wrote: post #345
rigonkulous wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We've ended up in a world where power users have been forgotten. I think its more like the OS vendors have stopped being operating system vendors, and are now - instead - vendors of eyeballs to advertisers . The less the user is GUI'ing, the more they are just watching, placid, whatever else is on their screen. For native apps to survive, they need to not be platform-specific - i.e. web apps, which require a browser…

> I have the most respect for apps I can use on MacOS, Windows, and Linux - with the same hotkey/user experience on all platforms, equitably - and the least respect for apps which 'only run on one of them', since that is of course nonsense in this day and age. No. I want things like keyboard shortcuts to reflect the platform norms of where the app is running (macOS in my case). A shared core is fine, but the UI frame…

Indeed, if the framework is sensible, keyboard shortcuts reflecting platform norms is entirely attainable in a manner that developers don't have to bother with it, much, if they don't want to.

There are plenty of examples of cross-platform UI's surviving the hotkey dance and attaining user satisfaction. There are of course poor examples too, but that's a reflection of care, not effort.

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

#350

Post by sizeofdouble »

cedilla wrote: post #285
sizeofdouble wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, things like Electron are quite literally the problem! All of people’s modern desktop woes begin and end at the browser. Here’s why: the late 2010’s push into the cloud made JavaScript all-the-rage. A language the creator made in pretty much a weekend coding session. There naturally is major business incentives powering this. SaaS made things MUCH easier for delivering software. Fast forward 15 years and MSF…

That may be how JavaScript started, but unless your claim is that JavaScript hasn't changed at all in the thirty years or so since then, your argument is a complete non-sequitur.

Doesn’t matter how it changed if every desktop app ships its own browser.

Remember we’re talking about GUIs. Typescript is great for the browser but it should stay there.

Now, JavaScript can be okay for example: Qt Quick/QML it works quite well in the desktop. But that’s purpose-built scripting.

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