4 ms·

Must we wreck all the high quality GUIs we had and replace them with non-standardized, ugly and bloated Electron garbage? This would be a much better use for Q

Must we wreck all the high quality GUIs we had and replace them with non-standardized, ugly and bloated Electron garbage? This would be a much better use for Qt than Electron. But I guess that's not hip enough anymore.

mitchas 10y ago
I made this because I just switched from Mac to PC. On Mac I was using Transmit, which was super easy to use and looked pretty good. I don't use FTP frequently - I just needed something basically to upload/download files. After switching to windows, I couldn't find any decent FTP clients I liked. I tried Filezilla, Winscp, Cyberduck. They're all too busy and look like they're straight from XP... so I made this. I guess I'm just not sure what you're talking about when you say "High Quality GUIs" when talking about Windows FTP clients specifically.
- fredsted 10y ago
  This one looks pretty good: http://www.frenchfrysoftware.com/steed/ http://www.frenchfrysoftware.com/steed/
  - SyneRyder 10y ago
    That looks really good. Never heard of those folks before, but looking at their website & blog, I get a similar vibe to Panic Software (the Mac developers of Transmit). At the very least they seem to care about design. Thanks for the link!
  - heywire 10y ago
    Strange, our McAfee firewall flags that site as containing malware.
- problems 10y ago
  Filezilla and WinSCP are precisely the apps I was referring to. "Straight from XP". Pfft. Windows explorer maintains about the same look in most places as well as most other windows applications. Not everything needs to be changed for the sake of change every few months.
throwaway2016a 10y ago
For this particular app, yes. However, more more complex UIs I think that Electron has some benefits that QT does not. The UI tools available to web applications is miles ahead of desktop. The benefit the technology set gives us in productivity will hopefully produce higher quality apps at lower costs. FOr example, I'm considering it for a big data front-end because of all the high quality graphing libraries and reactive template libraries available for web applications. Plus I don't need to retrain the team. This app it is kind of overkill, though.
- problems 10y ago
  > The UI tools available to web applications is miles ahead of desktop. That's a ridiculous statement. Web UIs are pretty awful, unpredictable, confusing and non-standard compared to desktop ones. Not only that but they're hard to develop, you have to jump through hoops of CSS hacks to make things behave in a sort-of-desktop-like fashion. There are many high quality graphing libraries available on desktop apps (Qwt, QCustomPlot, DevExpress to name a few I've worked with). The training thing you talk about is true though, if your team has more experience on the web, then retraining them is wasted effort I suppose. Depends on your idea of quality result though.
  - throwaway2016a 10y ago
    > Web UIs are pretty awful, unpredictable, confusing and non-standard compared to desktop ones. Not only that but they're hard to develop, you have to jump through hoops of CSS hacks to make things behave in a sort-of-desktop-like fashion. I disagree almost completely with this. I haven't had to use a CSS "hack" in ages. And I think the "hard to develop" part is a product of experience. Having been in the web world for a while I find no difficult in it at all. Especially when using one of the many CSS frameworks out there. Although I will give you that on second read, my statement is a bit ridiculous because I said "tools" and desktop does have better drag and drop tools for UI. What I should have said is "capabilities" Was there something that can be done on the desktop you had in mind that is particular difficult in web?
- pjmlp 10y ago
snowpanda 10y ago
What you call garbage, might be good looking to someone else. He did not say he's trying to replace other GUIs, there's a good use for this. Calling someone's work garbage after you haven't even extensively tried it (it was posted 30 minutes ago) is uncalled for. I think it looks promising and look forward to trying it when I get home.
- swiley 10y ago
  Electron is objectively horrible. The only upsides are 1 "it's easy" and 2 "it's pretty" neither of which make for efficient or minimal programs. To be quite honest, "pretty" GUIs are usually the worst anyway.
- khedoros1 10y ago
  > What you call garbage, might be good looking to someone else. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder", "There's no accounting for taste", and all that. I'm not a fan of the style that was used (too much blank space, flat UI elements, gives the vibe of a webpage instead of an application that you can do something in, having both a hamburger menu and dropdown menus seems weird), but "garbage" is needlessly harsh. It's useful to be reminded that software development is a process of continuous learning, and that's what this project represents anyhow: Learning a new platform by tying some libraries together into something that's functional and that demonstrates what the developer was trying to learn.
BorisMelnik 10y ago
I would not call this garbage, but I do agree that Windows apps should stick to standardized windows design. One of the reasons I love Filezilla is because it feels like I am working right inside Windows shell / explorer.exe.
- zokier 10y ago
  Of course it would help if there were a singular standardized Windows design to follow. Doubly so if the goal-post didn't move every couple of years.

mitchas 10y ago

I made this because I just switched from Mac to PC. On Mac I was using Transmit, which was super easy to use and looked pretty good. I don't use FTP frequently - I just needed something basically to upload/download files. After switching to windows, I couldn't find any decent FTP clients I liked. I tried Filezilla, Winscp, Cyberduck. They're all too busy and look like they're straight from XP... so I made this. I guess I'm just not sure what you're talking about when you say "High Quality GUIs" when talking about Windows FTP clients specifically.

fredsted 10y ago
This one looks pretty good: http://www.frenchfrysoftware.com/steed/ http://www.frenchfrysoftware.com/steed/
- SyneRyder 10y ago
  That looks really good. Never heard of those folks before, but looking at their website & blog, I get a similar vibe to Panic Software (the Mac developers of Transmit). At the very least they seem to care about design. Thanks for the link!
- heywire 10y ago
  Strange, our McAfee firewall flags that site as containing malware.
problems 10y ago
Filezilla and WinSCP are precisely the apps I was referring to. "Straight from XP". Pfft. Windows explorer maintains about the same look in most places as well as most other windows applications. Not everything needs to be changed for the sake of change every few months.

throwaway2016a 10y ago

For this particular app, yes. However, more more complex UIs I think that Electron has some benefits that QT does not. The UI tools available to web applications is miles ahead of desktop. The benefit the technology set gives us in productivity will hopefully produce higher quality apps at lower costs. FOr example, I'm considering it for a big data front-end because of all the high quality graphing libraries and reactive template libraries available for web applications. Plus I don't need to retrain the team. This app it is kind of overkill, though.

problems 10y ago
> The UI tools available to web applications is miles ahead of desktop. That's a ridiculous statement. Web UIs are pretty awful, unpredictable, confusing and non-standard compared to desktop ones. Not only that but they're hard to develop, you have to jump through hoops of CSS hacks to make things behave in a sort-of-desktop-like fashion. There are many high quality graphing libraries available on desktop apps (Qwt, QCustomPlot, DevExpress to name a few I've worked with). The training thing you talk about is true though, if your team has more experience on the web, then retraining them is wasted effort I suppose. Depends on your idea of quality result though.
- throwaway2016a 10y ago
  > Web UIs are pretty awful, unpredictable, confusing and non-standard compared to desktop ones. Not only that but they're hard to develop, you have to jump through hoops of CSS hacks to make things behave in a sort-of-desktop-like fashion. I disagree almost completely with this. I haven't had to use a CSS "hack" in ages. And I think the "hard to develop" part is a product of experience. Having been in the web world for a while I find no difficult in it at all. Especially when using one of the many CSS frameworks out there. Although I will give you that on second read, my statement is a bit ridiculous because I said "tools" and desktop does have better drag and drop tools for UI. What I should have said is "capabilities" Was there something that can be done on the desktop you had in mind that is particular difficult in web?
pjmlp 10y ago

snowpanda 10y ago

What you call garbage, might be good looking to someone else. He did not say he's trying to replace other GUIs, there's a good use for this. Calling someone's work garbage after you haven't even extensively tried it (it was posted 30 minutes ago) is uncalled for. I think it looks promising and look forward to trying it when I get home.

swiley 10y ago
Electron is objectively horrible. The only upsides are 1 "it's easy" and 2 "it's pretty" neither of which make for efficient or minimal programs. To be quite honest, "pretty" GUIs are usually the worst anyway.
khedoros1 10y ago
> What you call garbage, might be good looking to someone else. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder", "There's no accounting for taste", and all that. I'm not a fan of the style that was used (too much blank space, flat UI elements, gives the vibe of a webpage instead of an application that you can do something in, having both a hamburger menu and dropdown menus seems weird), but "garbage" is needlessly harsh. It's useful to be reminded that software development is a process of continuous learning, and that's what this project represents anyhow: Learning a new platform by tying some libraries together into something that's functional and that demonstrates what the developer was trying to learn.

BorisMelnik 10y ago

I would not call this garbage, but I do agree that Windows apps should stick to standardized windows design. One of the reasons I love Filezilla is because it feels like I am working right inside Windows shell / explorer.exe.

zokier 10y ago
Of course it would help if there were a singular standardized Windows design to follow. Doubly so if the goal-post didn't move every couple of years.