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The new desktop Outlook is a bad idea

windowscentral.com

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Re: The new desktop Outlook is a bad idea

#61

Post by 5e92cb50239222b »

tmikaeld wrote: post #30
mrcsharp wrote: post #25

I've switched to Thunderbird after hearing about this a couple of weeks ago. I simply do not want yet another WebView/Electron-based application on my machine. They feel slow and out of place compared to native applications. Microsoft, in the past 10 years, have failed to provide a good UI option for developers. WinForms is legacy. WPF is legacy. WinRT is dead. UWP is dead. MAUI is a mess. WinUI looks to be either ab…

The native views of thunderbird are wonderfully performant, especially when browsing thousands of e-mails in lists and sorting through them. I'd never be able to go back to scrolling with "skeleton rows" that's the web default because it can't render fast enough..

What's funny is that Thunderbird UI is not native. It uses XUL which is Mozilla's version of something like Electron that has existed since before Electron was even conceived as an idea. That it feels like a native application shows just how really shit Electron is.

Re: The new desktop Outlook is a bad idea

#62

Post by tonyarkles »

5e92cb50239222b wrote: post #61
tmikaeld wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The native views of thunderbird are wonderfully performant, especially when browsing thousands of e-mails in lists and sorting through them. I'd never be able to go back to scrolling with "skeleton rows" that's the web default because it can't render fast enough..

What's funny is that Thunderbird UI is not native. It uses XUL which is Mozilla's version of something like Electron that has existed since before Electron was even conceived as an idea. That it feels like a native application shows just how really shit Electron is.

I think the interesting part about XUL and why I really enjoyed it back in the day is that it's what HTML-for-applications could have been. It's still a "document" in the way any XML is a "document", but the markup is way more application-focused than document-focused. But instead we keep using a markup language that's designed for documents and try our best to make it usable in a very not-a-document way.

Edit: one detail I don't recall is what XUL actually uses for rendering components on-screen.

Re: The new desktop Outlook is a bad idea

#63

Post by [deleted] »

rektide wrote: post #33
mrcsharp wrote: post #25

I've switched to Thunderbird after hearing about this a couple of weeks ago. I simply do not want yet another WebView/Electron-based application on my machine. They feel slow and out of place compared to native applications. Microsoft, in the past 10 years, have failed to provide a good UI option for developers. WinForms is legacy. WPF is legacy. WinRT is dead. UWP is dead. MAUI is a mess. WinUI looks to be either ab…

Vscode feels blitz fast. Which apps have you tried that feel slow?

[deleted]

Re: The new desktop Outlook is a bad idea

#64

Post by cmos »

We use MS365 at work. Outlook for the web is ok until you try to use the 'groups' feature. I need to hold a 10 minute tutorial on the backwards UI for the group view within outlook.

The 'groups' functionality is decent.. so sad they hide buttons and kinda just stopped working on it.

Re: The new desktop Outlook is a bad idea

#65

Post by jupp0r »

skydhash wrote: post #45
jupp0r wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

vscode is an Electron app and is great and more responsive than its "native" competitor apps from JetBrains.

VS Code is primarily an editor, while JetBrains's products are IDEs. You can add extensions to make VS Code more an IDE. And I'd like to see benchmarks proving your point. If you're using VS Code as an editor, others like Sublime Text, Notepad++, Kate and TextMate make it seem very slow.

If your definition of IDE is that everything has to be done using menus and that it needs to be super slow, you are right. If you look at actual functionality then VSCode is as much of an IDE as Eclipse.

Re: The new desktop Outlook is a bad idea

#66

Post by PTOB »

Business user here.

I remember how much work I could get done in Outlook 2007 using a 1024x768 monitor on a crap workstation with 1GB RAM. I admit that this performance was often chilled by the many pitfalls of on-premise Exchange setups, lack of interop with non-Exchange services, and lack of standards-compatible email formats. Today's Outlook is less buggy, but slower.

This new version gives me the chills.

I can understand the platform change. I can begrudgingly learn to live with oversized UI elements, fat content spacing, etc.

I shuddered when finding that from an efficiency and automation standpoint it's a real downgrade. Things I experienced in one day of "Try the new Outlook":

  - Keyboard shortcuts (some changed, some missing entirely)
  - Context menu key did not work
  - No single key operations in context menu (e.g. right click, d for Delete, a for Archive, etc)
  - Limited view customization
  - Janky UI reaction speed
  - Window and component refresh lag / jank
  - Reduced rule functionality
  - There were a few more, but the traumatic experience wiped them out of my memory

Re: The new desktop Outlook is a bad idea

#67

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

bitwize wrote: post #36
LorenDB wrote: post #2

The main problem is that Microsoft is trying to use a WebView. If they really want a single cross-platform app, they should develop a native framework that will work everywhere instead of shoving everything into a web engine.

Name a native UI framework that enables seamless cross-platform deployment without extensive testing on each platform. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Does webui not require testing on each platform+browser combo? Or are we just accepting that sometimes it is going to break and not allowing the same consideration for native GUI frameworks?

Re: The new desktop Outlook is a bad idea

#68

Post by smodo »

Wojtkie wrote: post #19
LorenDB wrote: post #2

The main problem is that Microsoft is trying to use a WebView. If they really want a single cross-platform app, they should develop a native framework that will work everywhere instead of shoving everything into a web engine.

PowerBI's UI runs off of WebView and it's the most frustrating thing. That whole software feels like someone mashed together different colors of play-doh and called it a new one. There are multiple ways to do the same thing within the software, but they have differing levels of efficiency. It's a Frankenstein's Monster of technologies bundled up into this lacking visualization software.

Don’t most Microsoft products feel that way? I’m occasionally forced to use a windows machine the office gave me. Windows 11 is a new kind of janky and it also packs all the fun stuff from earlier versions.

Anyway, they don’t care. Nadella has us all by the monthly subscripted balls.

Re: The new desktop Outlook is a bad idea

#69

Post by timeon »

bitwize wrote: post #36
LorenDB wrote: post #2

The main problem is that Microsoft is trying to use a WebView. If they really want a single cross-platform app, they should develop a native framework that will work everywhere instead of shoving everything into a web engine.

Name a native UI framework that enables seamless cross-platform deployment without extensive testing on each platform. Go ahead, I'll wait.

One would expect Microsoft puts Windows before cross-platform.
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