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Actually, if I would have a need to follow RSS feeds (are there any left?), I would greatly prefer a fast, well written native programme. With a proper toolkit

by ktpsns 8y ago

Actually, if I would have a need to follow RSS feeds (are there any left?), I would greatly prefer a fast, well written native programme. With a proper toolkit (Qt/GTK/Cocoa/MFC or whatever is modern and native). My feeling is that the time for browser extensions which add other application logic is over.

robodev 8y ago
Thanks for replying. Why do you feel the time for extensions is over, when many companies are creating extensions for their apps? I believe that the browser is the workspace, apart from things like IDE and Slack. A lot of time is spent there. Extensions don't get in your way, and with modern processors and JavaScript engines you can't really tell the difference. I come from a Java background so it was difficult for me at first to accept JavaScript, though I code in TypeScript for sanity. I can see the point of having native apps though. These days it's a matter of user experience, not so much performance as computers are generally pretty good. None of those toolkits are really modern anymore! QT? :) I think perhaps React or Electron is the way forward. So what kind of feeds would you be interested in? News, updates, stocks, blogs?
- ktpsns 8y ago
  You say it: It's all about the user experience. And neither Electron nor a chrome extension can provide a seamless look and feel. Interestingly, Firefox extensions with XUL used to be able to feel "native". For instance, there was FireFTP, an XUL application within Firefox (basically acting as an application within the original Mozilla "meta" application). That felt native. Have you ever touched Qt? It provides a way more native feeling then wxWidgets did. You see, I probably come from another time, you maybe never heard of XUL, but it was a great technology at that time. Maybe similar as how Swing changed Java GUIs in the early 2000s (but inverse, by going from native to custom widgets). Really, I would say even more today, it's all about the quality of the widgets, the smoothness of the UI and the interplay with the native ecosystem. You won't get anywhere with browser extensions in this respect.

by ktpsns 8y ago

robodev 8y ago

Thanks for replying. Why do you feel the time for extensions is over, when many companies are creating extensions for their apps? I believe that the browser is the workspace, apart from things like IDE and Slack. A lot of time is spent there. Extensions don't get in your way, and with modern processors and JavaScript engines you can't really tell the difference. I come from a Java background so it was difficult for me at first to accept JavaScript, though I code in TypeScript for sanity. I can see the point of having native apps though. These days it's a matter of user experience, not so much performance as computers are generally pretty good. None of those toolkits are really modern anymore! QT? :) I think perhaps React or Electron is the way forward. So what kind of feeds would you be interested in? News, updates, stocks, blogs?

ktpsns 8y ago
You say it: It's all about the user experience. And neither Electron nor a chrome extension can provide a seamless look and feel. Interestingly, Firefox extensions with XUL used to be able to feel "native". For instance, there was FireFTP, an XUL application within Firefox (basically acting as an application within the original Mozilla "meta" application). That felt native. Have you ever touched Qt? It provides a way more native feeling then wxWidgets did. You see, I probably come from another time, you maybe never heard of XUL, but it was a great technology at that time. Maybe similar as how Swing changed Java GUIs in the early 2000s (but inverse, by going from native to custom widgets). Really, I would say even more today, it's all about the quality of the widgets, the smoothness of the UI and the interplay with the native ecosystem. You won't get anywhere with browser extensions in this respect.