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One of the things that really disappoints me about computing is how GUI development is such a horrid treadmill of constant reinvention and total reboots with no

by api 10y ago

One of the things that really disappoints me about computing is how GUI development is such a horrid treadmill of constant reinvention and total reboots with no overall cumulative progress. The Web is just now reinventing things with React and components that were perfected in several different desktop systems at different times. Something about UI development makes long term reuse and depth building impossible. I think one factor is that good UI and UX is nearly always proprietary, so these great platforms get built but then ultimately die when the market moves on.

wtallis 10y ago
There's nothing dead about this UI platform. It got a new theme in 2001 and is still going strong today. The colors have shifted over the years and the scroll bars switched sides and have mostly faded away, but it only takes a glance at the code to see that it's the same platform at heart.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  Except that some elements have changed massively. You no longer have window-independent focus. You cannot bind hotkeys to windowing events. You cannot toggle through all windows via alt-tab, you can't set focus-follows-mouse. Source: I've been use WindowMaker (a NeXTstep clone) for 20 years.
  - wtallis 10y ago
    I really don't see how some tweaks to window manager behavior to make it more accessible to Mac and Windows users are more fundamental and massive than the aforementioned change to scrollbar behavior to make it more accessible to Mac and Windows users. They were all noticeable, for sure, but from a technological perspective they were all quite minor. Plus, I'm not sure how many of the things you mention are even changes relative to genuine NeXTSTEP rather than just differences from WindowMaker's imperfect emulation of it. Focus-follows-mouse was an X11 thing WindowMaker shoehorned into its NeXT-like environment; genuine NeXTSTEP was click-to-focus, though it could be hacked to emulate focus-follows-mouse: https://ftp.nice.ch/peanuts/GeneralData/Usenet/news/1994/_Misc94-II.html https://ftp.nice.ch/peanuts/GeneralData/Usenet/news/1994/_Mi...
- radiofan 10y ago
  With over a billion devices sold running a direct descendent of this platform I'd say 'going strong' is a bit of an understatement!

by api 10y ago

wtallis 10y ago

There's nothing dead about this UI platform. It got a new theme in 2001 and is still going strong today. The colors have shifted over the years and the scroll bars switched sides and have mostly faded away, but it only takes a glance at the code to see that it's the same platform at heart.

dredmorbius 10y ago
Except that some elements have changed massively. You no longer have window-independent focus. You cannot bind hotkeys to windowing events. You cannot toggle through all windows via alt-tab, you can't set focus-follows-mouse. Source: I've been use WindowMaker (a NeXTstep clone) for 20 years.
- wtallis 10y ago
  I really don't see how some tweaks to window manager behavior to make it more accessible to Mac and Windows users are more fundamental and massive than the aforementioned change to scrollbar behavior to make it more accessible to Mac and Windows users. They were all noticeable, for sure, but from a technological perspective they were all quite minor. Plus, I'm not sure how many of the things you mention are even changes relative to genuine NeXTSTEP rather than just differences from WindowMaker's imperfect emulation of it. Focus-follows-mouse was an X11 thing WindowMaker shoehorned into its NeXT-like environment; genuine NeXTSTEP was click-to-focus, though it could be hacked to emulate focus-follows-mouse: https://ftp.nice.ch/peanuts/GeneralData/Usenet/news/1994/_Misc94-II.html https://ftp.nice.ch/peanuts/GeneralData/Usenet/news/1994/_Mi...
radiofan 10y ago
With over a billion devices sold running a direct descendent of this platform I'd say 'going strong' is a bit of an understatement!