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Writing GUI apps for Windows is painful

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Re: Writing GUI apps for Windows is painful

#111

Post by ricopags »

userbinator wrote: post #85

Problem: It is extremely hard to stylize native Win32 controls. That's not a problem, it's a feature. I am absolutely bloody sick of apps that go out of their way to reinvent the standard UI controls in perplexing ways and behave unexpectedly. Following the system UI preferences is what you should do, and it irritates your users if you don't. There is a “hidden” dark mode for Win32 controls used by Windows File Explo…

Never coded a GUI app but speaking of regressions:

As a heavy windows KB user, losing the ability to alt+letter all the things to /quickly/ navigate windows apps is incredibly frustrating.

I've read that Mac OS envy infiltrated the WinUI time and while some may prefer the aesthetics, on Windows 11 apps like mspaint I can no longer navigate anywhere near as quickly.

From milliseconds to multiple seconds.

I'm incensed at this change personally, and I feel totally confused by it from the perspective of MS. In the era of AI and automation, slower screen draw times will make a significant impact to performance and energy use. I hope someone like Mark Russinovich, Kevin Scott, or Satya Nadella will notice and change course.

Re: Writing GUI apps for Windows is painful

#112

Post by StarterPro »

ogoffart wrote: post #38

I'm working on a GUI toolkit that should match the requirements: Slint - https://slint.dev Can be compiled statically in a single .exe that is smaller than 40M. Has a license that allow proprietary on desktop for free. Has dark/light styles. Even comes with a (work in progress) drag and drop WYSISYG editor.

I'm going through the documentation right now, and I'm a bit confused. How would I integrate it to use for the WInforms UI?

Re: Writing GUI apps for Windows is painful

#113

Post by serial_dev »

userbinator wrote: post #85

Problem: It is extremely hard to stylize native Win32 controls. That's not a problem, it's a feature. I am absolutely bloody sick of apps that go out of their way to reinvent the standard UI controls in perplexing ways and behave unexpectedly. Following the system UI preferences is what you should do, and it irritates your users if you don't. There is a “hidden” dark mode for Win32 controls used by Windows File Explo…

As a mobile dev, it should be the same for mobile apps?

If you are on iOS, you could just use what Apple gives you with very little customizations. The app would feel right, dark mode, font sizes, screen traders, etc. accessibility would "just work" 98% of the time, the app would be fast.

On Android, things are a tad bit more complicated, but it still applies that the closer you are to the OS, the better things work out of the box.

But for some reason, companies, their designers, product owners, developers want to get creative, use their brand but eventually they always run out of time to implement things properly, so apps are slow, user's font scale settings are not respected, dark mode is a feature, and the app doesn't feel like part of the same phone / OS.

Re: Writing GUI apps for Windows is painful

#114

Post by Sakos »

userbinator wrote: post #85

Problem: It is extremely hard to stylize native Win32 controls. That's not a problem, it's a feature. I am absolutely bloody sick of apps that go out of their way to reinvent the standard UI controls in perplexing ways and behave unexpectedly. Following the system UI preferences is what you should do, and it irritates your users if you don't. There is a “hidden” dark mode for Win32 controls used by Windows File Explo…

It's even worse.

> Those were only a few options that I considered. After a very long time trying out all sorts of different libraries and at one point even writing my own MFC styles, I figured out that for simple apps there is simply nothing better suited than Dear ImGui.

They decided to go with the option that deviates the most from the standard Windows UI, where there are no native controls at all, and it's a nightmare for accessibility (see https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/issues/4122). I use it for prototyping privately, but I'd never make anything I want to release into the world with it.

Re: Writing GUI apps for Windows is painful

#115

Post by synergy20 »

write a cross platform GUI is even more painful.

It's pretty much either paying for Qt or use the bloated Electron.js. Looks like the latter won the market.

I failed to see other practical options, flutter was an option, but its strength is not on desktop so far.

Re: Writing GUI apps for Windows is painful

#116

Post by hobs »

ricopags wrote: post #111
userbinator wrote: post #85

Problem: It is extremely hard to stylize native Win32 controls. That's not a problem, it's a feature. I am absolutely bloody sick of apps that go out of their way to reinvent the standard UI controls in perplexing ways and behave unexpectedly. Following the system UI preferences is what you should do, and it irritates your users if you don't. There is a “hidden” dark mode for Win32 controls used by Windows File Explo…

Never coded a GUI app but speaking of regressions: As a heavy windows KB user, losing the ability to alt+letter all the things to /quickly/ navigate windows apps is incredibly frustrating. I've read that Mac OS envy infiltrated the WinUI time and while some may prefer the aesthetics, on Windows 11 apps like mspaint I can no longer navigate anywhere near as quickly. From milliseconds to multiple seconds. I'm incensed…

It's funny that you mentioned apple because their system shortcuts are integrated as hell and they even let you map them in the OS -> App level, way better than anything MS has ever shipped.

Re: Writing GUI apps for Windows is painful

#117

Post by [deleted] »

IshKebab wrote: post #80
ogoffart wrote: post #38

I'm working on a GUI toolkit that should match the requirements: Slint - https://slint.dev Can be compiled statically in a single .exe that is smaller than 40M. Has a license that allow proprietary on desktop for free. Has dark/light styles. Even comes with a (work in progress) drag and drop WYSISYG editor.

> Can be compiled statically in a single .exe that is smaller than 40M. That's... quite a high bar. Last I checked even a QML app was only like 20 MB. Why so big?

[deleted]

Re: Writing GUI apps for Windows is painful

#118

Post by userbinator »

elpocko wrote: post #55
Aurornis wrote: post #19

This is a good overview of some of the options, but the author’s specific requirements push it in a specific direction that eliminates a lot of options. Specifically, the requirement for completely custom GUI styling without writing his own render functions means it’s really a task of selecting easy, customizable GUI libraries rather than generic GUI work. The requirements to be self-contained executables and under a…

Dear ImGui is for development/debug tools, not an UI for the end-user. It's great for small projects as long as you don't care about accessibility, or proper keyboard support, or adherence to standard UI conventions, or support for devices without GPUs, proper font rendering, etc. ...

It's also suited to games, where "non standard" UI is expected and part of the experience.

Re: Writing GUI apps for Windows is painful

#119

Post by MaxBarraclough »

serial_dev wrote: post #113
userbinator wrote: post #85

Problem: It is extremely hard to stylize native Win32 controls. That's not a problem, it's a feature. I am absolutely bloody sick of apps that go out of their way to reinvent the standard UI controls in perplexing ways and behave unexpectedly. Following the system UI preferences is what you should do, and it irritates your users if you don't. There is a “hidden” dark mode for Win32 controls used by Windows File Explo…

As a mobile dev, it should be the same for mobile apps? If you are on iOS, you could just use what Apple gives you with very little customizations. The app would feel right, dark mode, font sizes, screen traders, etc. accessibility would "just work" 98% of the time, the app would be fast. On Android, things are a tad bit more complicated, but it still applies that the closer you are to the OS, the better things work…

They also often want to use web technologies and/or cross-platform GUI toolkits, to avoid reimplementing their UIs.

Re: Writing GUI apps for Windows is painful

#120

Post by symisc_devel »

Open source GUI libraries are lacking behind the gate locked, closed ones like Adobe. Even Macromedia UI back in the days 20 years ago looks way more appealing and polished than the current open source offering. The only polished open source UI in my opinion is Blender but apparently they have their own rendering engine built from scratch just like Adobe.
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