Dumb question from somebody who doesn’t do gui stuff: is this like a Window Manager, or more like GTK or QT or whatever?
Microsoft is open sourcing Windows 11's UI framework
101–110 of 308 posts
Re: Microsoft is open sourcing Windows 11's UI framework
#102Microsoft has a long history of releasing numerous UI frameworks: VB, MFC, WTL, Silverlight, WPF, WinForms, and others. Yet despite this abundance, many of the core components Microsoft used in its own applications were never available to developers. They rarely ate their own dog food, and desktop UI development relied on third party components. For the past two decades, native desktop UIs have steadily declined in favor of web-based components, so it's unclear what the real benefit of another native framework would be today.
Re: Microsoft is open sourcing Windows 11's UI framework
#103Dumb question from somebody who doesn’t do gui stuff: is this like a Window Manager, or more like GTK or QT or whatever?
It’s a UI framework like QtWidgets but closer to QML
Re: Microsoft is open sourcing Windows 11's UI framework
#104[dead]
The answer to this question depends on the knowledge and quality of engineers working on the kernel and the overall Executive. These continue to evolve with more advanced technologies, like VBS or the future usermode endpoints for EDR and possibly anti-cheat, pushing those out of the kernel, which presumably requires kernel work.
David Cutler is still there but working on other stuff, last I understood.
That does lead to the question of 'would they do it the same way and/or follow the NT OS/2 spec' to get a functionally identical Windows today.
Re: Microsoft is open sourcing Windows 11's UI framework
#105> Alignment with Microsoft Goals > We are being thoughtful about resourcing. This effort is happening alongside other critical responsibilities like security, platform stability, and support for existing products. Our current focus is on foundational work that unlocks value for contributors and increase transparency. We are aligning this work with Microsoft’s broader business priorities to ensure long-term support an…
> passionate losers This is unduly meanspirited. Your passion projects are not even considered to probably the vast majority of the world; that doesn't make you a loser. I have zero interest in the Win11 UI, and am even on board with the cynical view that this is purely a bean counter cost savings for MS rather than some benevolent outreach. But I respect the people that take this on and want to keep it going.
> Your passion projects are not even considered to probably the vast majority of the world; that doesn't make you a loser.
Not OP but I understood this as "contributing for free to a project owned by a corporation worth more money than you could realistically spend in a lifetime is what makes you a loser".
Re: Microsoft is open sourcing Windows 11's UI framework
#106> Alignment with Microsoft Goals > We are being thoughtful about resourcing. This effort is happening alongside other critical responsibilities like security, platform stability, and support for existing products. Our current focus is on foundational work that unlocks value for contributors and increase transparency. We are aligning this work with Microsoft’s broader business priorities to ensure long-term support an…
> passionate losers This is unduly meanspirited. Your passion projects are not even considered to probably the vast majority of the world; that doesn't make you a loser. I have zero interest in the Win11 UI, and am even on board with the cynical view that this is purely a bean counter cost savings for MS rather than some benevolent outreach. But I respect the people that take this on and want to keep it going.
Thanks for calling it out. I get OPs passionate disdain for Microsoft but one must remember that the world is built on contributions from such people. Take the whole Linux and GNU ecosystem for example. We’d be lost without them.
Maybe the biggest beneficiary will be AI/LLMs - which will become way better at creating Windows UX after this.
Re: Microsoft is open sourcing Windows 11's UI framework
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Flash was never a web standard, what are you talking about? It was a commercial browser plugin developed by Macromedia and later Adobe.
True, and at one point it had an installed base of like 90% of all browsers, and was incredibly common on all kinds of websites. I said it was a closed standard, and I stand by that.
> The most important thing the web standards get right is their insistence on never ever breaking backwards compatibility. HTML, CSS, and JS accumulate a lot of cruft, but they do move forward into the future without leaving anyone behind.
This is the comment you originally responded to. Flash never had anything to do with web standards, which do indeed strive for backwards compatibility, it's why that classic space jam website still works.
The comment was not that the "web" as a whole strives for backwards compatibility. If that were the case we would also be running ActiveX controls and Java web applets.
Re: Microsoft is open sourcing Windows 11's UI framework
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
So the source is a twitter meme?
Featuring a screencap of an MS engineer's talk from some React conference, yes.
the talk is linked as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44125217
Re: Microsoft is open sourcing Windows 11's UI framework
#109No one in Windows development community cares about WinUI, other than those with sunken costs that bought into the WinRT/UWP dream and now are stuck with a dead technology. Too many burned bridges since Windows 8 came out. If anything, this is Microsoft confirmation that they are unwilling to fix all the broken issues, and hoping the community will somehow still care.
Honestly at this point who would seriously use any Microsoft UI framework? They've abandoned 100% of their previous UI frameworks unfinished when they get distracted by a new, shinier framework.
Why use a busted incomplete framework missing basic features when there's entire ecosystems of open source cross-platform frameworks being actively maintained and which actually have all the features you need?
Really this is just another UWP destined to be forgotten and scorned.
Re: Microsoft is open sourcing Windows 11's UI framework
#110> Alignment with Microsoft Goals > We are being thoughtful about resourcing. This effort is happening alongside other critical responsibilities like security, platform stability, and support for existing products. Our current focus is on foundational work that unlocks value for contributors and increase transparency. We are aligning this work with Microsoft’s broader business priorities to ensure long-term support an…
> passionate losers This is unduly meanspirited. Your passion projects are not even considered to probably the vast majority of the world; that doesn't make you a loser. I have zero interest in the Win11 UI, and am even on board with the cynical view that this is purely a bean counter cost savings for MS rather than some benevolent outreach. But I respect the people that take this on and want to keep it going.
> I have zero interest in the Win11 UI [...]
As has the rest of the world, and we will just put it on the list of UI frameworks Microsoft did not completly implement, fully support or considering "the default".
So we stay stuck with the status quo: There's no official UI for Windows, still.