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Microsoft is open sourcing Windows 11's UI framework

neowin.net

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

#3

Post by bloomca »

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.

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

#4

Post by politelemon »

BoorishBears wrote: post #2

Seasons may come and go, but one thing will never change. Windows and an absolutely baffling array of UI frameworks with various pitfalls, uncertain futures, and no clear winners. (honorable mention to WinForms though.)

And I still give them points for trying, a rarity among the tech giants.

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

#8

Post by Springtime »

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).

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

#9

Post by jamil7 »

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.)

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

#10

Post by genter »

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.
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