4 ms·

This is precisely what drew me to start making Mac apps 10 years ago. There was a whole philosophy behind Mac OS X's Cocoa framework that contrasted sharply wit

This is precisely what drew me to start making Mac apps 10 years ago. There was a whole philosophy behind Mac OS X's Cocoa framework that contrasted sharply with my experience with all the programs I had been accustomed to using on Windows 95-98-2k-XP. In all those OSes, there was invariably some program I would need to run that had its own custom scroll bars that didn't work like normal, and the body of a scrollable page didn't respond to arrow keys and the scroll wheel, or the buttons had unusual semantics and required pressing them in certain ways. This was the norm for Windows programs. When I came to Mac and everything all worked the same, it was a breath of fresh air. The philosophy behind Apple's Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) at the time was that every app should follow the same basic rules with only slight variations where it made sense. I went full force into learning Cocoa because of this genius idea, but unfortunately now every app is Electron and each has their own UX paradigms that reinvent the wheel all over again. It's frustrating and I hope and plan to make apps that hearken back to the days of predictability, familiarity, and simplicity so people can just use their computers to get a thing done and then get off their computers ASAP, like it's meant to be.

int_19h 8y ago
Windows also had the equivalent to HIG, and it was just as rigorous as Apple's in many cases, especially by Vista. Take a look at this: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/uxguide/guidelines https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/uxguide/gui... Problem is, it was and is routinely ignored. Anyway, as you say, it's the Electron era now, and it's the same everywhere. We had our golden age of desktop UX, but we couldn't keep it.
aikinai 8y ago
Just wanted to say thank you for trying to make native apps with thoughtful UX! I also frequently bemoan how far we've fallen since the golden age of app design and implementation.

int_19h 8y ago

Windows also had the equivalent to HIG, and it was just as rigorous as Apple's in many cases, especially by Vista. Take a look at this: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/uxguide/guidelines https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/uxguide/gui... Problem is, it was and is routinely ignored. Anyway, as you say, it's the Electron era now, and it's the same everywhere. We had our golden age of desktop UX, but we couldn't keep it.

aikinai 8y ago

Just wanted to say thank you for trying to make native apps with thoughtful UX! I also frequently bemoan how far we've fallen since the golden age of app design and implementation.