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Microsoft hasn't had a coherent GUI strategy since Petzold

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

#511

Post by PaulHoule »

skydhash wrote: post #188
jemmyw wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The DOM is very ill-suited for most UI. Too complex and lots of missing features Can you expand on this, because I'm not seeing it myself. The DOM, html+css is very flexible. It easily encompasses most UI. Most UI is some kind of data display, so lists, trees, tables, forms. The need for JS might be what you're complaining about. I think we might be stuck with it as a UI control language forever.

The DOM(and CSS) is primarily built for documents and forms, even with the latest addition like Flexbox or Grid layouts. It is closer to typesetting tools like troff, latex, texinfo than any UI engines you can think of. And some that are not needed, like the difference between , , , ,... Also with most GUI frameworks, there's some difference between widgets like label, button, menu, checkbox,... and containers that d…

The GUI system for the NeXT was based on the Display PostScript system which in turn was based for the PostScript system designed for rendering to printers. Quartz in MacOS X is a further evolution of that.

Inside HTML 5 you can find facilities for rendering documents and you can find facilities for rendering applications, including those forms. There is not a clear line between one and the other.

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

#512

Post by rigonkulous »

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 These tend to be either less performant, look outdated or are bug-ridden.

That's your prerogative, but web-based UI's have their hard limits, and native cross-platform desktop UI's are no more/less problematic than the browser.

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

#513

Post by hbn »

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…

> They abandoned their mobile phone, tablet, and wearable strategy

They were way too late to make a dent. Ballmer made the mistake when the iPhone came out to not get their ass in gear to compete. Microsoft's first potential real competitor to the iPhone came with Windows Phone 7 at the very end of 2010. The iPhone was announced in January 2007 and they didn't have anything to compete until almost 4 years later. I'm not sure how they could have recovered from that by the time they gave up on Windows Phone/Mobile in 2017. Anyone who worked in mobile sales at that time knew most people who did buy a Windows Phone ended up returning it when they realized none of their apps were there. They could have had apps if they recognized the iPhone's threat earlier and reacted appropriately.

Also worth mentioning that in their time competing for mobile they did a fairly hard reset of the platform 2 more times for Windows Phone 8 and Windows 10 Mobile. Go find what developers who tried to keep up have to say

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15432720#15434572

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

#514

Post by skydhash »

PaulHoule wrote: post #511
skydhash wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The DOM(and CSS) is primarily built for documents and forms, even with the latest addition like Flexbox or Grid layouts. It is closer to typesetting tools like troff, latex, texinfo than any UI engines you can think of. And some that are not needed, like the difference between , , , ,... Also with most GUI frameworks, there's some difference between widgets like label, button, menu, checkbox,... and containers that d…

The GUI system for the NeXT was based on the Display PostScript system which in turn was based for the PostScript system designed for rendering to printers. Quartz in MacOS X is a further evolution of that. Inside HTML 5 you can find facilities for rendering documents and you can find facilities for rendering applications, including those forms. There is not a clear line between one and the other.

PostScript was for rendering graphics to a printer with a good emphasis on texts. Most of HTML is about marking up and styling interactive documents. There’s no clear line between the two, but an API for applications UI has different goals than one for document typesetting (even interactive one).

HTML have a lot of tools for devex, but if you’re going for a good codebase and simple implementation for a desktop application, QT is way easier.

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

#516

Post by d-us-vb »

dejongh wrote: post #487

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?

That wasn't the issue. The problem was that most of Windows system utilities are not managed, but the WPF move was trying to make a patchwork quilt of managed vs. unmanaged utilities, making the entire system very difficult to reason about and introducing regressions constantly. From the Windows Team's perspective, the .NET people just made a mess out of everything they touched.

Perhaps if WPF really did stay at the presentation level, or used VMs or something to keep it away from the Windows core, it would have panned out better. But is it goes with "paradigm shifts", when a company thinks it has a great idea, it wants to suddenly do that great idea everywhere.

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

#517

Post by icelusxl »

wg0 wrote: post #422
simonask wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The "Performance Improvements in .NET" blog lists the new JIT support for instruction sets each year.

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/performance-improvemen...

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

#519

Post by vouwfietsman »

sizeofdouble wrote: post #346
9dev wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, thank you. Also, JavaScript today means TypeScript—an arguably extremely capable type system actively developed by Microsoft—and several, modern runtimes with a big standard library and solid asynchronous primitives. There are a lot worse scripting languages out there.

Folks misunderstand the whole point just because I mention TypeScript. Sure it’s a capable and elegant language. Doesn’t change the fact that it’s a bloated monstrosity on the desktop. Think about it: it transpiles to JavaScript. Even if it’s the most elegant language in the world doesn’t change the fact that it’s a world of bloat. Stacks on stacks on stacks. And yet people are complaining about .Net? Come on. Lol

Transpilation and bloat are orthogonal. Javascript being bloated or not is also a relative: consider Python, which is much slower than js, and much more memory hungry.

To further argue your original point: chrome & electron are the only reason desktop is still around, both Microsoft and Apple tried their very hardest to build a walled garden of GUI frameworks, rejecting the very idea of compatibility, good design, and ease of use, until they were surpassed by the web, and particularly Google, showing that delivering functioning applications to a computer does not require gigantic widget libraries, outdated looks or complicated downloads & install processes, but is in fact nothing more than a bit of standardization and a couple MBs of text.

All this electron & web hate is so incredibly misplaced I don't even know where to begin. Have you tried making a cross platform mac/win native app? I have, its like being catapulted into the stone age, but you're asked to build a skyscraper.

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

#520

Post by teekert »

ioseph wrote: post #329
teekert wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel that some people are just too old to get used to the swipe based ui. I mean friends of mine who just keep buying the only phones with (screen based) back and home buttons.

It's not just mental, as you age you lose moisture in your skin and with that accuracy with touch devices.

Hmm, would explain that frustrated pokey interaction I see elder people often throw at touchscreens... you know, chin up, peering down through their reading glasses, going for a 4th, 5th try at something...
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