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

Microsoft Throws in the Towel on UWP, Elevates Win32

extremetech.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 104 posts

Re: Microsoft Throws in the Towel on UWP, Elevates Win32

#91

Post by MikusR »

vitorgrs wrote: post #73
codeflo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but how does that square with the widespread assumption that UWP and the store are basically dead? Do you expect WinUI to be available in desktop apps eventually? There’s something called “XAML Islands” to integrate UWP components into desktop apps, but that’s technically ugly, incomplete, and very explicitly targeted at legacy applications. Beyond that, they didn’t announce anything as far as I can tell.

Windows Terminal will be distributed on Store, and so do new Edge. I don't know why people are calling it dead... And they announced that WinUI 3.0 will open source all built-in XAML controls (they are even rewritten some to be on top of Composition because of that), will also open the XAML Stack and Composition. This is a big deal.

Neither old or new Edge is being distributed on Store. Old one gets bugfixes from Windows update and new features come with the big biannual Windows updates. New one uses it's own updater. They also removed ability to install Office from store.

Re: Microsoft Throws in the Towel on UWP, Elevates Win32

#92

Post by wildmusings »

userbinator wrote: post #85
wildmusings wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s funny that they use that awful pyramid-of-doom error handling style in a lot of the public documentation. The correct way is to have an “Error:” label at the end of the function before all the cleanup code. After calling any function that can return an error code, you check the error code and “goto Error” if necessary. You can encapsulate that whole logic in a macro so you just call something like CHK(hr) anytim…

True, the error handling could be better, but my main point was really to say that much of that code should not even be necessary; the majority of those calls are really just doing the equivalent of setting a field in a structure in the old way. Furthermore, because it's a function call and "could" fail, "best" (more like dogmatic ) practice dictates that the return values must be checked, despite the fact that failu…

You should always check the return value for an error, no matter what. I would not suggest otherwise. Whatever the source of the failure, you want to explicitly fail in a defined way rather than have your application behave in unexpected ways, potentially destroying user data or otherwise misbehaving.

Re: Microsoft Throws in the Towel on UWP, Elevates Win32

#93

Post by School-Cotton »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #57
School-Cotton wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iOS is not really “general-purpose computing”.

How do you define "general-purpose computing", then? DVD players, microwaves, and even game consoles are single-purpose computing devices, designed to do one thing. I'm having a lot of trouble putting iPhones and iPads in that category. As terribly locked down as they are, they're still very much "general purpose". And BTW, I think Microsoft's goal was quite clearly for UWP to be as locked down as iOS.

Well, it’s a spectrum. Microwaves I’d only call the last element of that chain “general-purpose” — to me, one requirement for earning that label is the ability to write and compile programs. If I can’t write iOS apps from inside iOS, it isn’t general-purpose.

Re: Microsoft Throws in the Towel on UWP, Elevates Win32

#94

Post by Razengan »

lozenge wrote: post #64
crispinb wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly think the days of the cohesive desktop platform are done. It arguably reached its peak with OS X (perhaps circa Snow Leopard), but the idea has been falling into disrepair even on the mac. It's hard to see any strong force moving us back to it, but given the current situation, if I were a desktop app developer I don't think it's something I would consider it worth investing too much effort in.

Maybe my memory is bad but I don't think OS X ever really had it. The flag-carrying apps (Adobe, Final Cut, Garageband) had custom UIs. Built ins like Calendar had skeumorphic UIs.

> Maybe my memory is bad but I don't think OS X ever really had it.

This is not a binary question of either a desert or either a rainforest, but Apple's side of the fence is definitely a lot greener than Microsoft's in terms of UI/UX consistency.

I was a purely PC/MS user up until about 10 years ago, but I haven't suffered as many befuddled facepalm moments from Apple's UI decisions as from the Escheresque nightmare that Microsoft is even now.

> The flag-carrying apps (Adobe, Final Cut, Garageband) had custom UIs. Built ins like Calendar had skeumorphic UIs.

However, almost every macOS app has the same standard menus, same standard shortcuts, and most of them support the same OS extensibility features. Even as a developer you just need to build against the latest AppKit and you get not only all the current features, but usually future features for free too (e.g. most of the NSDocument stuff such as autosaving and previous versions.)

Compare this to the hodgepodge of different interfaces even in Windows' builtin apps alone, and championing a different API almost every other year.

Re: Microsoft Throws in the Towel on UWP, Elevates Win32

#95

Post by naikrovek »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #67
mycall wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too bad Winforms is butt ugly.

It looks native, it's fine. The problem I've found is high-dpi support is still a dogs dinner.

Pretty sure they've fixed that in recent releases (within 18 months, I believe) of Windows 10. You should only need to recompile to gain hi-DPI awareness, if I recall properly.

Re: Microsoft Throws in the Towel on UWP, Elevates Win32

#96

Post by tonyedgecombe »

naikrovek wrote: post #95
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks native, it's fine. The problem I've found is high-dpi support is still a dogs dinner.

Pretty sure they've fixed that in recent releases (within 18 months, I believe) of Windows 10. You should only need to recompile to gain hi-DPI awareness, if I recall properly.

No, there are still problems. My understanding is there will be further work on the .Net Core version although I haven't paid any attention to that so far.

Re: Microsoft Throws in the Towel on UWP, Elevates Win32

#97

Post by lorriman »

maxxxxx wrote: post #6

How do they expect desktop developers to bet on anything MS does? Since .NET came out they constantly keep changing direction without any cohesive strategy. The server development strategy looks pretty good with MVC and now Core. But desktop development is just terrible. If I have to write a new app I will either think about making it web based or maybe use qt but I think I will avoid any MS UI toolkit.

Desktop development was a dream with Delphi but Microsoft decided to compete against it and then undermine it instead of supporting it. Not just a dick move, but DaF.

Re: Microsoft Throws in the Towel on UWP, Elevates Win32

#98

Post by MordodeMaru »

kevingadd wrote: post #54
maxxxxx wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't Mono have Winforms already?

Yes, but I don't personally know how complete it is. The only company using it that I'm aware of is Plastic SCM.

This is how we use it:

https://www.mono-project.com/news/2019/02/13/plastic-scm-a-f...

Re: Microsoft Throws in the Towel on UWP, Elevates Win32

#99

Post by pjmlp »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #68
pcwalton wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean that calling COM objects from C doesn't work . I just mean that COM isn't designed to be used from C.

Actually I think it was, that was the lowest common denominator.

Not really, COM is a subset of OLE 2.0, designed to replace VBX as OCX originally.

Naturally OLE was designed as C framework back in Win16 days, with endless pages of boilerplate code.

https://www.amazon.com/Windows-Programmers-Guide-Book-Disk/d...

As such COM can be called from C, specially since C++ Windows compilers have a VTBL layout as if they were a plain old C struct with function pointers.

However unless one is masochist, it is not sane to use COM from bare bones C.

Re: Microsoft Throws in the Towel on UWP, Elevates Win32

#100

Post by pjmlp »

muststopmyths wrote: post #29

About 7 years too late. This thing should have been drowned in the bathtub when it was called WinRT. An excellent example of the hubris of the Windows division, leading to the demise of Windows Phone (and Windows in due course). The genius who convinced Microsoft to throw its weight behind an API completely incompatible with everything they had done before should be lauded for chutzpah. They couldn't have done a bett…

I bet it was related to Sinofsky and the whole WinDev vs DevTools political issues that also torpedoed the Longhorn and Midori efforts.
Post reply on HN