171–180 of 234 posts
I like html/dom/svg/css. There are a couple rough edges. Half of them are from the last time someone tried to rewrite the whole thing (all the namespace aware dom methods)
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What I mean is, I dont see why browsers even exist. There should be a singlular framework for creating desktop apps.
Ah. One difference is a normal desktop can access a lot more or even all of your system. Otherwise cross platform UI toolkits exist: GTK, Qt, Swing, SWT, etc. They could be great but they aren't, not because it can't be done well just no one has managed to do it well. They could technically be sandboxed but they aren't, or not well. Java applets tried long ago and a lot of systems got owned. You'd never design from t…
WPF was an amazing UI toolkit. Heck Silverlight was a great UI toolkit.
Even Swing was nice to code in, it just ran horrible on machines of the time.
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Much of this complexity comes down to primitives being too primitive for the use case of web apps. They’re fine for documents, but for web apps it’s like trying to build a building from grains of sand instead of concrete blocks. Rube Goldberg machines are unavoidable when you’re doing that. The browser should be doing most of the heavy lifting by providing a full suite of minimally themed but capable widgets that req…
> a full suite of minimally themed but capable widgets that require little to no JavaScript and can be skinned entirely with CSS. It already does literally that. Have you heard about ? These common widget libraries seldom last, and that's because people want to differentiate on style in ways that go beyond a CSS skin.
> people want to differentiate on style in ways that go beyond a CSS skin.
And the reason this is a problem is due to shortcomings in current widgets, which is part of what I was getting at. There’s no technical reason why everything can’t be skinned with CSS, as we’ve seen with modern versions of GTK+ which rely on it entirely for styling. It’s fixable, but there’s little work being done to actually fix it.
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Ah. One difference is a normal desktop can access a lot more or even all of your system. Otherwise cross platform UI toolkits exist: GTK, Qt, Swing, SWT, etc. They could be great but they aren't, not because it can't be done well just no one has managed to do it well. They could technically be sandboxed but they aren't, or not well. Java applets tried long ago and a lot of systems got owned. You'd never design from t…
Plenty of great UI toolkits exist. WPF was an amazing UI toolkit. Heck Silverlight was a great UI toolkit. Even Swing was nice to code in, it just ran horrible on machines of the time.
Eg Swing has all those problems, in addition to ugly themes. The uncanny valley resulting from trying to mimic native UI was bad. At least nowadays users don't necessarily expect native looking UI, even browsers don't do it.
It's not a question of can you make a nice UI with it. You can drive a nail with a rock. The high pain needed to be productive with bad tools leads to Stockholm syndrome. People would rather stick with what they know than go through such pain again to learn something new, and rightly so when the new one is likely just as bad in new ways.
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I totally agree. I don't get why people feel so strongly that native apps are better. The web technologies we have are great both from a developer experience perspective and a UX perspective. People hate on electron apps but I think this is mostly due to bloat from electron. I hope Tauri closes the gap it's been great for me so far.
The UX is nowhere near close to native apps, particularly on platforms that take UX seriously like macOS, iOS or Gnome.
People often overlook some of the functional UX the web brings to the table. For example: on the web I get consistent search and text highlighting behavior, consistent notifications, consistent navigation behavior (back buttons, history), I can tab to focus (usually), and I can use plugins to customize the content. Even the idea that you can reset the application state with a refresh is something I wish I had on some native apps.
People often lament how DOM, HTML and CSS are becoming more and more complicated: the difficulty with simple and/or common tasks like vertical centering or virtualization, 600+ CSS properties, so many JavaScript methods, leaky abstractions, { contain: size }. I agree on many issues, but equally I struggle to imagine how it could realistically be not complex. If it was a result of a single very well thought through vi…
The DOM cannot assume that it's just for building declarative applications, it needs to support imperative functionality too... IMO, the custom Web Components API solves the declarative problem very neatly, much more neatly than React or any other declarative framework I've come across.
I think it's wonderful how the DOM API has evolved slowly over time to meet user needs and it would be foolish to think we can just redesign it better from the bottom up without sacrificing some gems.
I think the people complaining about it are stuck in some utopian mindset. They have a specific frame of mind and they look at the DOM through the lens of a limited number of use cases which are relevant to them. They hold rigid, blanket beliefs around concepts like "Functional programming, side effects, reactivity" but these beliefs are siloed around each concept; they neglect the fact that the intersection of multiple approaches can transform the problem and radically alter the equation... For example, the modularization of Web Components and associated lifecycle methods, greatly reduce the dangers of imperative programming within component boundaries.
It's good to be aware that both strong acids and strong alkaline solutions are dangerous on their own, but one should recognize that mixing them together could completely change this fact.
People often lament how DOM, HTML and CSS are becoming more and more complicated: the difficulty with simple and/or common tasks like vertical centering or virtualization, 600+ CSS properties, so many JavaScript methods, leaky abstractions, { contain: size }. I agree on many issues, but equally I struggle to imagine how it could realistically be not complex. If it was a result of a single very well thought through vi…
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What I mean is, I dont see why browsers even exist. There should be a singlular framework for creating desktop apps.
Ah. One difference is a normal desktop can access a lot more or even all of your system. Otherwise cross platform UI toolkits exist: GTK, Qt, Swing, SWT, etc. They could be great but they aren't, not because it can't be done well just no one has managed to do it well. They could technically be sandboxed but they aren't, or not well. Java applets tried long ago and a lot of systems got owned. You'd never design from t…
Regardling difficulty: HTML/CSS is essentially already cross platform UI toolkit. Yes its hard, but Im saying if one were to make it, I dont see why the same UI framework shouldnt work for a desktop application.
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I totally agree. I don't get why people feel so strongly that native apps are better. The web technologies we have are great both from a developer experience perspective and a UX perspective. People hate on electron apps but I think this is mostly due to bloat from electron. I hope Tauri closes the gap it's been great for me so far.
The UX is nowhere near close to native apps, particularly on platforms that take UX seriously like macOS, iOS or Gnome.