Microsoft hasn't had a coherent GUI strategy since Petzold • Hacker News Board

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

#481

Post by ack_complete » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 3:57 PM UTC

seltzered_ wrote: post #169

mwcampbell wrote: post #129

> WPF was good As someone who saw what impact WPF had on average users running average hardware in the late 2000s to early 2010s, I disagree. In 2011, my brother was in seminary, using an average Windows Vista-era laptop that he had been given in 2008. When he was home for Christmas in 2011, we were talking about his laptop, and he told me that the Logos Bible software ran sluggishly on that laptop. He said something…

A notable example I remember from around 2010 was when Evernote dropped WPF, supposedly due to blurry text issues but probably also performance (remember when we called it EverBloat?) Can't find the original blog post about it but here's a couple mentions of it: - https://www.edandersen.com/p/evernote-has-no-patience-drops-... - https://www.reddit.com/r/csharp/comments/x0nu7h/comment/im9k...

WPF originally had two major rendering issues. One was the lack of pixel snapping support, and another was gamma correction issues during text rendering, particularly for light text on a dark background (due to an alpha correction approximation, IIRC). The two combined led to blurry text in WPF applications.

These were finally improved for WPF 4, since Visual Studio 2010 switched to it and had a near riot in the betas due to the poor rendering in the text editor.

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

#482

Post by pxc » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 3:58 PM UTC

throwaway2037 wrote: post #429

kristofferR wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try installing Sidebery or a good adblocker on Chrome.

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

Go to an adblock test page in Chrome and compare it to Firefox with uBlock Origin. Chrome can't block some ads, and some of the ads it can block leaves behind empty containers.

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

#483

Post by electroly » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 4:09 PM UTC

cogman10 wrote: post #393

ZuLuuuuuu wrote: post #342

2 things Microsoft failed to do in the last 15 years are: 1) They abandoned their mobile phone, tablet, and wearable strategy. So, today if you develop a native Windows application, it will only work on desktops and laptops. That is it. It is not attractive for a developer to learn a whole new UI framework just to target a single form factor. And I don't know if there is any solution for this at this point, they shou…

Yeah, a striking difference between windows and linux at this point is that the linux UI frameworks are hyper stable. If I want to make a linux desktop app, I'll choose QT or GTK. Heck, if I want to make a windows and macOS app, I'll probably choose QT or GTK. What do I chose with Windows? Who knows. It literally changes every time I look into it. That's just insane. It's gotten so bad that probably the right way to…

Windows Forms is the answer you seek. It still receives updates to this day. I've been writing and shipping Windows Forms apps for 25 years. High DPI, dark mode, Edge web views, Blazor integration, we've got it all. Users don't even need to install .NET these days with self-contained deployment.

I will boldly claim Windows Forms is more stable than Gtk and Qt. Don't let random teams at Microsoft confuse you because they released yet another unrelated framework that you don't have to use. They are engineer-sirens trying to lure you from the true path. Let them pursue their promotions in peace while we rely on a stable workhorse.

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

#484

Post by hluska » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 4:11 PM UTC

Oh hey look, another chance for HN to dunk on Microsoft. I’m sure there will be some fresh new perspecti…oh darn, it’s just a rehash of the exact same snark the last time HN had a chance to dunk on Microsoft.

I’m not sure what Microsoft can possibly do when the closest thing to a collection of power users is this painfully repetitive.

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

#485

Post by u8080 » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 4:16 PM UTC

vscode-rest wrote: post #449

u8080 wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telegram Desktop (Qt)

We might contrast that with Slack, yes? This thread comes to mind: https://www.0xsid.com/blog/wont-download-your-app With Slack that’s trivial, Telegram impossible.

Except Telegram Desktop is opensource and they also have full-functional Web version.

But tdesktop is really well-made Qt piece of software, snappy, feature-rich and multi-platform.

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

#486

Post by ghelmer » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 4:16 PM UTC

> I sat through a conference session in the late nineties trying to understand the difference between an OLE document, a COM object, and an ActiveX control.

I wonder if we attended the same conference session!

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

#487

Post by dejongh » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 4:24 PM UTC

Fun and sad. Garbage collected languages like .NET, Java, and Go are slow compared DIY languages like C, Rust, and Swift. So, no wonder the Windows team dislike them. However, it seems the Windows team had to live with a React start menu for quite some time. How does that fit into the over all battle between the teams and UI frameworks?

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

#488

Post by icedchai » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 4:29 PM UTC

bjourne wrote: post #474

icedchai wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bloat is pretty incredible. Consider my Amiga 500 could resize windows without lag on a ~7.1 mhz 68000 and 512K of RAM, almost 40 years ago.

Resizing was based on a wireframe system and windows weren't repainted during resizes.

Yes, I agree, it's not apples-to-apples... but we're talking orders of magnitude in CPU, RAM, and "GPU" power.

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

#489

Post by ecshafer » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 4:42 PM UTC

mwcampbell wrote: post #129

> WPF was good As someone who saw what impact WPF had on average users running average hardware in the late 2000s to early 2010s, I disagree. In 2011, my brother was in seminary, using an average Windows Vista-era laptop that he had been given in 2008. When he was home for Christmas in 2011, we were talking about his laptop, and he told me that the Logos Bible software ran sluggishly on that laptop. He said something…

The fact that software to show the bible needs a GPU is funny in some kind of dystopian way. That is the kind of software that should work in 50k of memory.

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

#490

Post by butlike » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 4:43 PM UTC

iamcalledrob wrote: post #317

shiandow wrote: post #277

What I find must puzzling is that everyone seems to just be violating basic rules that had been in place for ages. Things like: - If you can't respond to a UI event wait until you can - Menus should be tree structures - Pressing alt should underline the hotkeys you need to access anything clickable As well as just basic responsiveness or predictability. A 2000 era windows application may not have been pretty, and may…

We've ended up in a world where power users have been forgotten. Not out of malice, but out of a misguided aim to reduce complexity and achieve consistency with the web. I would argue that desktop is the platform for power users, and its future depends on them. The keyboard shortcuts, the micro-interactions, the window management -- this stuff is all important when you're using a system for 8+ hours per day. Yet we r…

The issue is that everyone wants a full-featured remote with only "on, volume, and channel changing" buttons.