Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft hasn't had a coherent GUI strategy since Petzold

jsnover.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 604 posts

Re: Microsoft hasn't had a coherent GUI strategy since Petzold

#421

Post by PaulHoule »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #126
PaulHoule wrote: post #2

The churn would have been much worse if Microsoft was rolling out successful GUI framework after GUI framework. As it is you can still write a Win32 app if that pleases you, or still write .NET (and damn that runtime download!) Microsoft has bought into ‘make a web app’ since 1988, they introduced AJAX, they got flexbox and grid into CSS and numerous HTML 5 features to support application UIs. They ‘frikin bought npm…

> For all the complaints about modern JavaScript it gives you the pieces to make a very pleasant world in terms of DX and UX There is no such thing as pleasant UX in a web app. The best experience will always be a native app, a web app is at best a port in a storm solution.

When Windows wants to nag you it makes marketing-oriented screens that I think are visually attractive in a commercial way if not quite as 'cute', 'cool' and 's--y' as a gatcha screen from a mobile game. These sure look like they were drawn with an HTML-based rendering system and if they weren't, they were certainly inspired by commercial art on the web.

When MacOS wants to nag you it pops up a Liquid Glass vandalized version of the 1999 retread of the modal confirm dialog from the 1984 MacOS.

I wish both of them had NEVER OPEN A MODAL DIALOG THAT I DIDN'T ASK FOR EVER AGAIN button that took 80% of the space and a tiny little greyed-out link at the bottom that said "maybe just maybe I want to hear about this in three years" but from a graphic art viewpoint I laugh at MacOS.

Re: Microsoft hasn't had a coherent GUI strategy since Petzold

#422

Post by wg0 »

simonask wrote: post #369
wg0 wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt that .NET was meant to solve the problem of underlying variation in instruction set of Intel processors because that concern does not exists for 98% of the applications anyway they rarely have to look for the compiler settings and for the rest of the 2%, the compiler flags are huge set of options and that kind of tweaks are NOT available for .NET anyway. Additionally, such applications that want to exploit ce…

The .NET JIT compiler absolutely does query CPUID flags and generates different optimized code depending on available features, as well as the performance profile of each CPU model. This is similar to always passing `-march=native` to GCC. This can have a huge effect on a wide range of applications, not just those using particular CPU features. For example, each libc implementation typically has a separate implementa…

Okay thank you. I need to read more on the subject the.

Re: Microsoft hasn't had a coherent GUI strategy since Petzold

#423

Post by jasonlotito »

shmeeed wrote: post #379
marcos100 wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla removed a lot of power-user features and customization from Firefox claiming that their telemetry showed that few users used them. That's the reality now, nobody wants to develop and maintain things for the 1%.

>their telemetry showed that few users used them I wonder if they ever stopped to think that power users are the ones that disable telemetry immediately upon install.

That's not remotely universal, but they did consider that. It's immaterial.

Re: Microsoft hasn't had a coherent GUI strategy since Petzold

#424

Post by PaulHoule »

Anamon wrote: post #284
vscode-rest wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Figma is far superior to the native apps it replaced. As is VS Code. Slack.

One could (and I would) argue that they achieved that despite their web-tech-based UIs, not because of. At least those of us who were around for the days when most apps were still native, do notice and get bothered by the input lag, for instance. Slack is, in fact, one of the worst offenders. It is so incredibly sluggish. And it doesn't need to be, when I compare it to the speed (and memory consumption) of Pidgin wit…

Async comm in web apps often keeps them responsive when the native app experience is: spinner... spinner... spinner... spinner... lock up the window and you can't move it... spinner... spinner... spinner... "should i reboot the whole machine first thing or should i try killing the app with task manager and starting again?"

Re: Microsoft hasn't had a coherent GUI strategy since Petzold

#425

Post by throwaway2037 »

vovavili wrote: post #373
rigonkulous wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We've ended up in a world where power users have been forgotten. I think its more like the OS vendors have stopped being operating system vendors, and are now - instead - vendors of eyeballs to advertisers . The less the user is GUI'ing, the more they are just watching, placid, whatever else is on their screen. For native apps to survive, they need to not be platform-specific - i.e. web apps, which require a browser…

>i.e. dissuaded from using native, but rather bespoke, UI frameworks. Based on my experience, I would be quite reluctant to rely on any non-native cross-platform desktop UI framework that is not web-based. These tend to be either less performant, look outdated or are bug-ridden.

What about Qt? It is the gold standard for cross-platform desktop UI frameworks.

It is (1) performant (C++-based), (2) does not look outdated, and (3) not bug-ridden.

Re: Microsoft hasn't had a coherent GUI strategy since Petzold

#426

Post by okanat »

hermitcrab wrote: post #378
SyneRyder wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds intriguing - are there examples of desktop apps (eg productivity apps) that are made with JUCE? I'm already very familiar with JUCE in VST plugins, I have hundreds of VSTs made with JUCE and I love their UIs. But I don't think I've ever seen it for a standalone business application? The JUCE pricing is certainly far more reasonable than Qt.

Qt Small Business pricing is very reasonable.

You can also use LGPL. You only need to disclose the changes you made into Qt itself and allow changing it with another DLL. That's it.

Re: Microsoft hasn't had a coherent GUI strategy since Petzold

#427

Post by starik36 »

wg0 wrote: post #249

Java wanted to run your code everywhere so they basically wrote a byte code compiler and then wrote one vm per OS/architecture I never understood.NET's purpose. What problem it exactly went out to solve? Did Microsoft want developers to be able to run their applications everywhere too? Absolutely not. Sidenote - MFC is the ugliest thing you'll see. Yet they didn't mention another piece of work called ATL. Active Temp…

WinForms still exist, still supported, still getting new features. And it's open sourced. https://github.com/dotnet/winforms

Re: Microsoft hasn't had a coherent GUI strategy since Petzold

#428

Post by Topfi »

hu3 wrote: post #363
iamcalledrob wrote: post #309

Desktop, especially Windows, is such a mess. It's 2026. We're running 8+ cores and 32gb ram as standard. We can run super realistic video games at high frame-rates. Yet on the same machine, resizing a window with rectangles in it is laggy on every platform except macOS (where there's a chance it's not laggy).

Sorry but neither Linux or Windows lag to resize windows in any of my 4 machines. They range from old laptops to a Ryzen 7 9800X3D workstation. Just yesterday a friend's father needed help setting up their second-hand old laptop with an old i5 processor. I slapped KDE and there was no lag to be seen. Bonus point that Windows and some Linux distros have sane, intuitive window management. Whereas with macOS I keep seei…

I see frame drops when opening the start menu on a clean Windows 11 install on my work laptop (Intel Quad with 32GB memory from two years ago). I have seen the same on 3D Vcache Ryzens on systems from people who claimed there was not lag or sluggishness. It was there and they saw it once pointed out, the standards for Windows users have simply gotten so low that they’ve gotten used to the status quo.

On MacOS, meanwhile, Finder refuses to update any major changes done via CLI operations without a full Finder restart and the search indexing is currently broken, after prior versions of Ventura where stable functionality wise. I am however firm that Liquid Glass is a misstep and more made by the Figma crowd then actual UX experts. It is supposed to look good in static screenshots rather than have any UX advantage or purpose compared to e.g skeuomorphism.

If I may be a bit snarky, I’d advise anyone who does not see the window corner inconsistencies on current MacOS or the appealing lag on Windows 11 to seek an Ophthalmologist right away…

KDE and Gnome are the only projects that are still purely UX focused, though preferences can make one far more appealing than the other.

Re: Microsoft hasn't had a coherent GUI strategy since Petzold

#429

Post by throwaway2037 »

kristofferR wrote: post #353
bityard wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Browsers like Vivaldi that cater to power users are gaining in popularity. They are not trying to be the next Chrome, they are just out to serve their niche well. Firefox has nothing to differentiate itself from Chrome at this point.

Try installing Sidebery or a good adblocker on Chrome.

I use AdBlock on Chrome. It is excellent. Do you not like it?

Re: Microsoft hasn't had a coherent GUI strategy since Petzold

#430

Post by SyneRyder »

rigonkulous wrote: post #348
SyneRyder wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds intriguing - are there examples of desktop apps (eg productivity apps) that are made with JUCE? I'm already very familiar with JUCE in VST plugins, I have hundreds of VSTs made with JUCE and I love their UIs. But I don't think I've ever seen it for a standalone business application? The JUCE pricing is certainly far more reasonable than Qt.

>desktop, productivity apps You can configure your JUCE project to build to any of the standard audio plugin formats, or for it to build a standalone app for the target platform (i.e. plugins, desktop, mobile, embedded) or indeed to build all of these targets, at once, in one build. However, during app (i.e. non-plugin) development I often switch between linux and macos environments as part of my workflow, and during…

You might have sold me on this, because on top of the productivity-ish stuff I do, I'd really love to get into VST development. If I hadn't fallen into Photoshop plugins first, I would always have been an audio plugin dev. I loved PSP VintageWarmer in the late 90s.

The UI in Rowland's demo at 32min is feeling a little DearImGui / Reaper-ish, kinda bland while also being non-native. But I've seen all the UIs that Arturia & everyone else makes with JUCE, even what Valhalla does with it with their NASA inspired interfaces, so it can clearly make amazing stuff.

I can't believe we're now looking to PACE of all companies to help indie devs. I hated iLok for so long even though I have two iLok dongles now ;)

Post reply on HN