4 ms·

I am a regular Windows user (split between OSX and Windows, actually, but Windows gets used on a daily basis) and I can't think of a single Qt app I use on a re

I am a regular Windows user (split between OSX and Windows, actually, but Windows gets used on a daily basis) and I can't think of a single Qt app I use on a regular basis now. Actually, with my current workflow, I can't think of a Qt or GTK app that I use on a regular basis on either platform. I guess Wireshark's Qt and it gets used occasionally. But most of the cross-platform Qt and GTK stuff I used to install (Pidgin and GIMP immediately come to mind) I haven't even installed on a machine in ages. I've moved to native alternatives for a lot of the stuff I run, and what cross-platform applications I do run (Chrome, Sublime, etc.) tend to implement UIs with the native toolkit, since that's a much better experience on non-Linux platforms.

laumars 11y ago
Chrome uses Aura (http://dev.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/aura http://dev.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/aura) I'd also argue that Qt applications are still "native" in that they run as a native EXE (or ELF on nix). Granted they don't use Win32 APIs, but then calling them non-native because of that is a little like calling Windows OpenGL games non-native because they don't use Direct3D. But that's an aside point. On the whole, I don't think it makes sense to categorise Windows desktop applications by what toolkit they use. MS Office 2003 didn't use Win32 toolbars. Office 2007 then introduced the ribbon bar, which changed in appearance in every subsequent release of MS Office. And even within MS Office, Microsoft doesn't always follow the same design patterns (Office 2007 used ribbon in Word and Excel but not in Outlook). Even outside of MS Office, some Windows applications in WinXP used different menu bars to the ones provided by the Win32 APIs (you can see by looking at whether menu items go 3D or just highlight when you hover over them). One example was the difference between Windows Explorer and Notepad. Plus often older Windows utilities go completely unaltered for years, eg the add font dialog box in XP was still using Windows 3.1 APIs: http://apagreekkeys.org/images/addFont1.jpg http://apagreekkeys.org/images/addFont1.jpg ....and this is all without discussing the disruption Metro has caused. I will grant you that in spite of these criticisms, Windows still fairs better than Linux in terms of uniformity. But it's certainly not consistent enough to define anything that doesn't use Win32 widgets as non-native.

laumars 11y ago

Chrome uses Aura (http://dev.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/aura http://dev.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/aura) I'd also argue that Qt applications are still "native" in that they run as a native EXE (or ELF on nix). Granted they don't use Win32 APIs, but then calling them non-native because of that is a little like calling Windows OpenGL games non-native because they don't use Direct3D. But that's an aside point. On the whole, I don't think it makes sense to categorise Windows desktop applications by what toolkit they use. MS Office 2003 didn't use Win32 toolbars. Office 2007 then introduced the ribbon bar, which changed in appearance in every subsequent release of MS Office. And even within MS Office, Microsoft doesn't always follow the same design patterns (Office 2007 used ribbon in Word and Excel but not in Outlook). Even outside of MS Office, some Windows applications in WinXP used different menu bars to the ones provided by the Win32 APIs (you can see by looking at whether menu items go 3D or just highlight when you hover over them). One example was the difference between Windows Explorer and Notepad. Plus often older Windows utilities go completely unaltered for years, eg the add font dialog box in XP was still using Windows 3.1 APIs: http://apagreekkeys.org/images/addFont1.jpg http://apagreekkeys.org/images/addFont1.jpg ....and this is all without discussing the disruption Metro has caused. I will grant you that in spite of these criticisms, Windows still fairs better than Linux in terms of uniformity. But it's certainly not consistent enough to define anything that doesn't use Win32 widgets as non-native.