Microsoft is open sourcing Windows 11's UI framework • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by reactordev » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 9:21 PM UTC

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #145

reactordev wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you understood the power struggles within Microsoft and the cut throat office politics, you’d understand. Orgs are fighting orgs trying to over throw one another.

>the power struggles within Microsoft and the cut throat office politics That's most old large orgs who have been around for ~5 decades. Nothing special about Microsoft.

It’s as if it’s taught in business school or something, how to throw colleagues under the bus. I’ve seen it at every large corporation except for one.

My take on why not ui? though is because they are so busy trying to justify saving their own skins. How could they possibly look outward into the future when they’re busy recreating lord of the flies?

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

#192

Post by solid_fuel » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 9:21 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #186

tough wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so microsoft gave up and the web won? swift ui apps have some webkit views like the app store, music app etc

Well, to be fair, Microsoft decided to kill the Windows API that everybody knew, and spent about a decade and half creating a replacement every few years that couldn't actually replace the original thing. It's hard to survive that. Honestly, I don't even know what the GP is talking about when they say the devs don't know "Windows".

Yup. I remember 4 or 5 different frameworks that were supposed to be the future of native UI on windows, but each one after WinForms was harder to use, slower, and less capable than what came before.

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

#193

Post by octo888 » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 9:44 PM UTC

muhehe wrote: post #20

I already lost count how many UI frameworks are in windows. It looks like complete chaos and mess. I really wonder what they expect from open-sourcing it. Just to pretend how open they are? Or is there any real benefit to developers who target windows?

I genuinely thought a lot of these sibling comments were satire at first! The acronyms, the lengthy and confused explanations of versions, frameworks etc:

> WinUI is an evolution of UWP which is an evolution of WinRT

> WinUI 3

> WinUI 3 still supports WinRT

> XAML

> Shell UI

> Avalon

> WPF

> WPF = WinUI 1.0

> Project Reunion

> UWP

> Win2D

> ATL/MFC

> Just go for MFC FTW

> wxWidgets as it is kinda MFC-y

> Or go with Qt

> MFC/Win32 + XAML Islands

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

#194

Post by qayxc » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 9:47 PM UTC

Disposal8433 wrote: post #69

bobsmooth wrote: post #7

What "UI framework"? Windows is a Frankenstein's monster of different UI elements.

I haven't used Windows for a long time but I'm sure they still have the moricons.dll of Windows 3.1 somewhere.

   PS C:\Windows>  get-childitem -path . -include "moricons.dll" -recurse

    Directory: C:\Windows\System32

    Mode                 LastWriteTime         Length Name
    ----                 -------------         ------ ----
    -a---          01.04.2024    09:22          12288 moricons.dll

    Directory: C:\Windows\SysWOW64

    Mode                 LastWriteTime         Length Name
    ----                 -------------         ------ ----
    -a---          01.04.2024    09:22           2560 moricons.dll

Yep.

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

#195

Post by specproc » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 9:47 PM UTC

I get there are old people and stuff, but why should anyone consider Windows these days?

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

#196

Post by signal11 » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 9:56 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #135

tough wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so microsoft gave up and the web won? swift ui apps have some webkit views like the app store, music app etc

What to expect when new interns have no clue about Windows, have been educated with macOS and ChromeOS, and the design team carries Apple devices? Windows 98 introduced Active Desktop, and still, not as many webviews all over the place. MSHTML was the first Electron.

Yes, mshtml was insanely powerful. As an undergrad I was surprised how easy it was to build capable UIs with powerful visual effects[1] using mshtml and JS. Even for C++ Windows apps.

It took a long time for this to become a cross-platform reality, but it did inspire me to ignore distractions like XAML and focus on the web.

[1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/...

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

#197

Post by daft_pink » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 9:58 PM UTC

I want to spam them with pull requests every day to remove onedrive. (sarcasm)

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

#198

Post by zigzag312 » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 10:08 PM UTC

deaddodo wrote: post #161

zigzag312 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to be able to create self-contained GUI application that are relatively small and can be just copied and run on another computer. Installation should be an option, not a requirement. From my evaluation, WinUI3 doesn't offer that.

WinUI3 offers that, it's just not the recommended way of building+deploying. What you are looking for is "unpackaged, framework-dependent". This will build an application like an old-school WinAPI executable, one which expects the relevant DLLs to be installed on the host system (or distributed in the same directory).

Size of hello world app that includes relevant DLLs is over 150 MB. Which is almost like including a web engine.

What I'm looking for is old-school AOT compiled executable where UI framework dependency is statically compiled and trimmed.

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

#199

Post by timeon » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 10:17 PM UTC

duped wrote: post #176

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They only won because developers stopped giving a shit about anything except their own ease of work. There's no such thing as a good UI built with web tech, so anyone who cares about the user's experience will use a native toolkit despite the difficulties. But very few do, turns out.

That's extremely uncharitable. I think slack and discord have pretty great UIs, and that's all "web tech." Figma just IPO'd at a $58 billion valuation - is that not proof their UI is good? If it wasn't good, no one would use it. VS code became the preeminent text editor and IDE over the last decade - all web tech.

Not sure about others but VS Code and Discord are slow and eating too much RAM for what they do.

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

#200

Post by MrZander » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 10:29 PM UTC

tekdude wrote: post #148

I kind of wish Microsoft would just continue development of WPF. I've used it for years for various projects, and there is a learning curve but I've since enjoyed working with it. XAML, data bindings, ViewModels... all of it I actually like. But, WPF needs a few improvements to really make it perfect. I tried several of Microsoft's newer frameworks and the open source ones (Avalonia, Uno), but I either couldn't get t…

It would also allow for assembly trimming, which would be a huge boon if you are trying to do a self contained deployment. Right now you either do framework dependant or have like a 200MB+ deployment.