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Boden cross-platform framework: Native C++11, native widgets, no JavaScript

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Re: Boden cross-platform framework: Native C++11, native widgets, no JavaScript

#21

Post by 0xcde4c3db »

Signez wrote: post #2

> Native widgets: Instead of drawing widgets that look nearly identical to the platform's design, Boden uses native OEM widgets ensuring that your app will always have a truly native look and feel. While I fully understand the underlying concept, I don’t understand why so many people seems to be bothered by that anymore; I used to care about that as an Android user, but most of the apps I use everyday on my phone (Tw…

I might be totally off base here, but I get the sense that native widgets have become a skeuomorph for following the common UX conventions of the platform you're running on, with the latter being what brings the real value. The equivalent conventions for web apps and their desktop derivatives are much looser and don't yield as much consistency on which to build effective user expectations and habits. People who experienced the shift can tell something is missing, and the most obvious correlate is the disappearance of native widgets.

Re: Boden cross-platform framework: Native C++11, native widgets, no JavaScript

#23

Post by nicoburns »

nkozyra wrote: post #16
GutenYe wrote: post #11

Is `no JavaScript` a thing now?

It draws a comparison between electron, probably the leading contemporary approach for cross platform (albeit not for mobile)

And ReactNative and Cordova which are probably the leading contemporary approaches for cross platform mobile.

Re: Boden cross-platform framework: Native C++11, native widgets, no JavaScript

#25

Post by captainbenises »

saagarjha wrote: post #22

A couple of questions I had that I didn’t seem answered in the README: * How is view positioning handled? Does Boden only allow for “list” layouts? * Can I use my own native components? * Can I call platform APIs?

Yeah - if this was using something like flexbox for layout that'd actually be pretty neat.

Re: Boden cross-platform framework: Native C++11, native widgets, no JavaScript

#26

Post by nfin »

saagarjha wrote: post #20
asituop wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially when Google itself is promoting Flutter which in a way is a non-native UI framework. I think as long as a framework is performant and implements well the design guidelines of the OS this is what really matters

Except that Flutter is pretty bad on anything that isn’t Android. The “Cupertino” theme needs significant work; it’s significantly worse than even Ionic is.

v1.0 final is not even out yet...

Re: Boden cross-platform framework: Native C++11, native widgets, no JavaScript

#27

Post by zapzupnz »

Signez wrote: post #2

> Native widgets: Instead of drawing widgets that look nearly identical to the platform's design, Boden uses native OEM widgets ensuring that your app will always have a truly native look and feel. While I fully understand the underlying concept, I don’t understand why so many people seems to be bothered by that anymore; I used to care about that as an Android user, but most of the apps I use everyday on my phone (Tw…

Native widgets don't just mean "look". They can also mean "feel". This is particularly true on macOS.

On macOS, I expect certain widgets in order to accomplish certain tasks. I expect that they will respond to mouseover and button presses in a certain way. I expect to be able to use certain key combinations to cause certain widgets to do certain things, I expect keyboard combinations to be able to be redefined in System Preferences.

On the accessibility front, I expect VoiceOver to be able to read what's on screen, I expect it to be able to tell me what a widget's behaviour will be, I expect to be able to get back to where I was using a standard key combo, I expect images to respect colour inversion settings, I expect text to scale according to the system's Dynamic Type settings.

When it comes to handling text; I expect fonts to have the system's native rendering; I expect that Unicode support is complete, I expect macOS' emoji picker to show up; I expect system-wide text replacements, smart quotes, and orthography checking to work as expected, I expect selectable text to show a list of system-wide Services in the context menu, I expect all text to be draggable and handled correctly by the receiver of the drag action.

There are plenty of other things that I can't think of, but this list could get quite long. Suffice to say, Apple put a lot of default behaviours into Cocoa, and apps that (A) don't use Cocoa, or (B) only use Cocoa for drawing but not inheriting behaviours, they don't just look a bit off, they feel _wrong_.

I think we may be immune to this to some extent on mobile, and Windows users haven't known anything other than complete inconsistency, even with Microsoft's own built-in interfaces. But for some of us, if the interface feels wrong, the app goes straight into the Trash.

Re: Boden cross-platform framework: Native C++11, native widgets, no JavaScript

#28

Post by zapzupnz »

nfin wrote: post #26
saagarjha wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that Flutter is pretty bad on anything that isn’t Android. The “Cupertino” theme needs significant work; it’s significantly worse than even Ionic is.

v1.0 final is not even out yet...

I don't call that a defence when it's already out in the wild, and people are already talking about it like it's "good enough" when we are already able to use its version number as justification when it's clearly not.

Re: Boden cross-platform framework: Native C++11, native widgets, no JavaScript

#30

Post by saagarjha »

zapzupnz wrote: post #27
Signez wrote: post #2

> Native widgets: Instead of drawing widgets that look nearly identical to the platform's design, Boden uses native OEM widgets ensuring that your app will always have a truly native look and feel. While I fully understand the underlying concept, I don’t understand why so many people seems to be bothered by that anymore; I used to care about that as an Android user, but most of the apps I use everyday on my phone (Tw…

Native widgets don't just mean "look". They can also mean "feel". This is particularly true on macOS. On macOS, I expect certain widgets in order to accomplish certain tasks. I expect that they will respond to mouseover and button presses in a certain way. I expect to be able to use certain key combinations to cause certain widgets to do certain things, I expect keyboard combinations to be able to be redefined in Sys…

Cocoa Touch, while being slightly simpler and less arcane than Cocoa, still has a lot of semi-hidden behaviors that are nonobvious to cross-platform UI framework implementers.
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