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The Web Is Eating the Desktop (2017)

adamierymenko.com

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Re: The Web Is Eating the Desktop (2017)

#21

Post by VoodooJuJu »

hrififjkrjr wrote: post #16

The usual retort is "people use Electron because they only know web technologies". No, it's not only that. I've been programming GUI apps for 30 years, going through TurboVision, Delphi, MFC, WinForms, wxWidgets, Qt, WPF, native Android/iPhone, and probably 2 more I forgot about. They all suck terribly when compared to React/Vue/HTML/CSS. Creating a GUI app with web tech it's just so much more productive. It's like c…

Completely agree. I'm developing a desktop app with Qt and while the API is pretty nice for most of the logic, there's just so much friction when it comes to the GUI design, I feel like it's working against me. Compared to designing in HTML/CSS, it's night and day.

Re: The Web Is Eating the Desktop (2017)

#22

Post by ahartmetz »

MattGaiser wrote: post #7

When there was a single platform (Windows), native made sense as either way it was one codebase. You now need to support at least two desktop platforms and some computers now only support web stuff (Chromebooks). The only argument for native is if resources are such that make a web app impractical for most people (high performance GPU intensive stiff). Otherwise, sure, Electron isn't that efficient and takes up relat…

With a cross-platform native toolkit, there is also one codebase.

Re: The Web Is Eating the Desktop (2017)

#23

Post by ridiculous_fish »

Electron is a large step backwards in usability and software quality. Spotify has its own context menus which don't support arrow keys or type select. GitHub Desktop has a "Select All" which doesn't actually Select All, only what's been paged in. VSCode doesn't confirm key equivalents by highlighting the menu bar. All of them blink the cursor even without typing focus. All of them steal focus at launch.

Our UI vocabulary is shrinking. Undo support used to be table stakes, but now I'm surprised when it works. The web is not only eating the desktop: it's eating what it means to be an expert computer user.

Re: The Web Is Eating the Desktop (2017)

#25

Post by Mountain_Skies »

How does security factor into this? Seems like we keep exposing more and more data to networks while at the same time collecting more and more data on everyone. It doesn't seem like a great combination for those who have to protect this data nor for those who will be the most harmed if it gets out (the folks the data is about, not the companies that leaked it).

Re: The Web Is Eating the Desktop (2017)

#26

Post by bernardv »

The webification of Desktop app GUI’s is the result of a total disregard for usability .. from a user’s point-of-view (not a developer’s point-of-view of what users >shouldAs a user, I don’t care about the dev’s challenge of supporting multiple OS’s. These best experience comes when I load up a new application and can intuitively navigate it without the mental overload required trying to decipher a GUI layout which doesn’t adhere to any standard.

Web frameworks are great, but have their limitations.

The blame is not so much with the new generations of devs, but with the likes of Microsoft and Apple who have ditched standards and are encouraging the Desktop to turn into the wild-west. Or something like that.

Re: The Web Is Eating the Desktop (2017)

#27

Post by rcurry »

hrififjkrjr wrote: post #16

The usual retort is "people use Electron because they only know web technologies". No, it's not only that. I've been programming GUI apps for 30 years, going through TurboVision, Delphi, MFC, WinForms, wxWidgets, Qt, WPF, native Android/iPhone, and probably 2 more I forgot about. They all suck terribly when compared to React/Vue/HTML/CSS. Creating a GUI app with web tech it's just so much more productive. It's like c…

Completely agree with you, hardcore XAML developer and I walked away for React and Tailwind CSS. I will never write another desktop app again.

Re: The Web Is Eating the Desktop (2017)

#28

Post by the_only_law »

hrififjkrjr wrote: post #16

The usual retort is "people use Electron because they only know web technologies". No, it's not only that. I've been programming GUI apps for 30 years, going through TurboVision, Delphi, MFC, WinForms, wxWidgets, Qt, WPF, native Android/iPhone, and probably 2 more I forgot about. They all suck terribly when compared to React/Vue/HTML/CSS. Creating a GUI app with web tech it's just so much more productive. It's like c…

I wanted to do a mockup of a UI a few moth back. It was moderately complex, I suppose. And I was just trying to find something that would let me build out a shell. I started on Linux and I found most of the UI frameworks to be quite disappointed and a bit involved for what I was wanting to do. I think I was splaying with Glade and then QT creator and realizing just how much boilerplate code I'd have to write to get things to look how I wanted.

I then ran over to Windows, because I recall having done similar things with WPF. I instantly recalled why I hated it though, as doing any custom styling on components is a miserable mess of boilerplate XML and overriding values I have little knowledge of and seem not related or tangentially related to what I was styling.

I was able to create what I wanted relatively easily with a mix of HTML and CSS though. I think something like WPF but with CSS-like styling would be nice.

Re: The Web Is Eating the Desktop (2017)

#29

Post by jbverschoor »

hrififjkrjr wrote: post #16

The usual retort is "people use Electron because they only know web technologies". No, it's not only that. I've been programming GUI apps for 30 years, going through TurboVision, Delphi, MFC, WinForms, wxWidgets, Qt, WPF, native Android/iPhone, and probably 2 more I forgot about. They all suck terribly when compared to React/Vue/HTML/CSS. Creating a GUI app with web tech it's just so much more productive. It's like c…

Agree, but at least use react native or nativescript

Also the web has a superior distribution and sandboxing model

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