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Microsoft is open sourcing Windows 11's UI framework

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

#221

Post by whoknowsidont »

michaelcampbell wrote: post #93
arunc wrote: post #55

> Alignment with Microsoft Goals > We are being thoughtful about resourcing. This effort is happening alongside other critical responsibilities like security, platform stability, and support for existing products. Our current focus is on foundational work that unlocks value for contributors and increase transparency. We are aligning this work with Microsoft’s broader business priorities to ensure long-term support an…

> passionate losers This is unduly meanspirited. Your passion projects are not even considered to probably the vast majority of the world; that doesn't make you a loser. I have zero interest in the Win11 UI, and am even on board with the cynical view that this is purely a bean counter cost savings for MS rather than some benevolent outreach. But I respect the people that take this on and want to keep it going.

>This is unduly meanspirited.

No it's not? It's accurate.

>Your passion projects are not even considered to probably the vast majority of the world; that doesn't make you a loser.

A Windows UI project is not a "passion project" and the only """person""" that really benefits here is Microsoft.

>But I respect the people that take this on and want to keep it going.

Contribute to something else that doesn't only help the bottom line of a mega global corp?

Why are you defending this?

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

#223

Post by pjmlp »

bobmcnamara wrote: post #204
pjmlp wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forms and WPF are still reasonable options.

GDI32 only works as well as it ever did.

WPF uses DirectX 9, in any case it is good enough for many businesses use cases.

UWP never had feature parity with neither Forms nor WPF, so already it has a hard sell to businesses.

Microsoft marketing always cool about cool experiences and design, without the actual meat in features.

That is why there were API reboots between Windows 8, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10.

Then comes along Project Reunion, which is supposed to properly unify Win32 and UWP execution models, instead a few months in, they do yet another reboot, that to this day is a shadow of UWP features, endless bugs, and a team that everyone thought was also part of the layoffs, has they were radio silence for months.

GDI32 you say? At least it works.

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

#224

Post by pjmlp »

chrisandchris wrote: post #110
michaelcampbell wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> passionate losers This is unduly meanspirited. Your passion projects are not even considered to probably the vast majority of the world; that doesn't make you a loser. I have zero interest in the Win11 UI, and am even on board with the cynical view that this is purely a bean counter cost savings for MS rather than some benevolent outreach. But I respect the people that take this on and want to keep it going.

> I have zero interest in the Win11 UI [...] As has the rest of the world, and we will just put it on the list of UI frameworks Microsoft did not completly implement, fully support or considering "the default". So we stay stuck with the status quo: There's no official UI for Windows, still.

There is Win32, that has made us company for several decades, is kind of ok, definitely much better than Motif, the official UI for much UNIXes, before Linux took over.

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

#225

Post by pjjpo »

whoknowsidont wrote: post #221
michaelcampbell wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> passionate losers This is unduly meanspirited. Your passion projects are not even considered to probably the vast majority of the world; that doesn't make you a loser. I have zero interest in the Win11 UI, and am even on board with the cynical view that this is purely a bean counter cost savings for MS rather than some benevolent outreach. But I respect the people that take this on and want to keep it going.

>This is unduly meanspirited. No it's not? It's accurate. >Your passion projects are not even considered to probably the vast majority of the world; that doesn't make you a loser. A Windows UI project is not a "passion project" and the only """person""" that really benefits here is Microsoft. >But I respect the people that take this on and want to keep it going. Contribute to something else that doesn't only help the…

It's sad how OSS enables predatory practices by the mega corps. It's definitely not just Microsoft, Google, Amazon at least also behave the same way, and the worst part is how the audience is captive - if they're stuck on any platform (since all the platform owners behave the same way), despite paying for it, the only way to fix broken parts of the platform is to fix it yourself.

For any time a legitimate bug gets a "we always accept pull requests" comment from a $XXXK paid engineer, I really wish I had control of an orbital laser, or a deathnote with eyes that work with text.

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

#226

Post by pjmlp »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #217
Kwpolska wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Win8/10 taskbar's code predates Avalon (the prototype/codename for WPF), and trying to change/fix it at all usually ended up breaking it. It's one of the few binaries on Windows that would not be recompiled to build a new release image in fear of breaking it. The taskbar that underwent a major redesign in Windows 7 (released after WPF)? Also, that binary is explorer.exe, surely it got rebuilt quite often for ne…

The taskbar exists in its own timeline, apparently. (Ex-)Microsoft engineers working in the UI/UX team for Windows itself have spoken about how much of a nightmare dealing with that thing was. Also, the taskbar technically exists as a dll, not an exe, explorer.exe would link to it and run it if it was being ran as the UI shell. This is now split out to its own exe (Shell Experience Host iirc), and explorer.exe is now…

The detail missing is that those DLLs are COM servers, so it isn't really doing injection rather the standard COM RPC.

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

#227

Post by pjmlp »

crinkly wrote: post #184
DougN7 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MFC support is still in the latest Visual Studio, and it looks like ATL as well.

It’s in there because it’s a cockroach. It is throughly abandoned though, frozen in time. You can observe this looking at the state of old outlook.

The state is wonderful, versus the new kind of Electron junk.

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

#228

Post by pjmlp »

octo888 wrote: post #193
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 Q…

I can produce similar lists on other domains in the industry, it is a matter of being part of the ecosystem.

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

#229

Post by bobmcnamara »

userbinator wrote: post #211
bobmcnamara wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the old stuff was purchased any may never be open sourced.

I highly doubt Win32 was purchased from a third party.

I highly doubt they're certain that every line is original.

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

#230

Post by Woodi »

If abandonware of Win11 UI means Win12 then maybe I like that direction :)

On the other hand it it is smpossibility that MS is working on something better, right ? They probably plan some worse UI prison...

ASCI was [business] enforced by some EU project, POSIX - the same and probably there are more examples of such things so we just need some sanity __OS with UI__ project from someone...

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