5 ms·

Isn't the problem that users don't want the eye-candy of 1995, but the one of 2019 and therefore we don't have any choice but to bundle a browser and use JS if

Isn't the problem that users don't want the eye-candy of 1995, but the one of 2019 and therefore we don't have any choice but to bundle a browser and use JS if we want users? There is a heavy focus on transition animations, fonts, media query breakpoints and drag and drop. It's kind of embarrassing (or a testament to hard of a problem that it is) the state we are in because of (IMO) Microsoft/Apple/Canonical. If they had a really, really good GUI foundation, it'd be a quick job to do a minimal Slack or Things for macOS clone in C++/Rust. Edit: Seems people get irritated about what the users want. But that's not really up to us to decide as coders...

otabdeveloper4 7y ago
No. Everyone hates web UI's, including users and programmers. But we need them because they're the only cross-platform and device-independent solution.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  That's not true though, they only work on one platform: the web browser, and often they only work well on one specific browser. If you're going to allow a runtime as bloated and complicated as a web browser to count as "cross platform" then you'll have to admit that Java met those same criteria 2 decades ago.
  - otabdeveloper4 7y ago
    A web browser has been ported to literally every platform that has a screen. Java doesn't even come pre-installed on a normal machine. It's not about technical considerations, it's just that one cross-platform runtime has won.
kbumsik 7y ago
> because of (IMO) Microsoft/Apple/Canonical. > If they had a really, really good GUI foundation. It is not true at all. They already have really nice GUI foundations. Brining the web tech to desktop apps gots so popular because the web is won so that devs are forced to make web apps, not because it is better than the "traditional" GUI development.
- danielscrubs 7y ago
  I'm not saying that traditional GUI development is worse. I'm saying that the users want shiny stuff that in many cases comes out of the box with Electron for example. Do I want to code in 3 languages, let the app swallow copious amounts of RAM and break behaviours that users expect? NO. Will they do a hard pass on software if it's not pretty enough? YES. If you want to chalk it up to not enough good themes in QT/JavaFX, that's fine two less languages and less packaging for them to worry about. But until those themes exist that makes the user turn its head...
yyyk 7y ago
To me, the eye-candy of 2019 is often uglier and worse then the one of the 2000s, since the fashion these days is for 'flat' interfaces, and the UI latency seems to be a bit higher.
gmueckl 7y ago
There is at least one toolkit around that can do this: Qt. Yes, you can only use it from C++ in a meaningful way, but it has all the building blocks for designing, styling and animating UIs that you might wish for. I don't think the extent to which this is possible is known by most HN users. It is quite easy to write e.g. conditional widget style sheets that change widget appearance based on widget state (e.g. failing input validation) without a single line of C++ code required. WPF can also be styled extensively, at least in theory, but this is much harder to accomplish. MS has developed Blend to assist with this, but you still need a deep knowledge of the internal hierarchy if elements of a widget to get good results.
opencl 7y ago
What makes you think modern GTK isn't capable of 2019 eye-candy? The GNOME people love transition animations. Lollypop for example has a very fancy-looking "modern" UI.
- superkuh 7y ago
  The eye-candy in question is really more about usability of the GUI when people are on terrible computers with bad network connectivity and terrible UI input restrictions. I am, of course, speaking of smart phones. The smart phone design aesthetic has taken over and is now constantly being used in places where the whitespace is a waste and the giant buttons make things terrible. Canonical may have finally given up on "convergence" but few other companies have woken up.
  - 0815test 7y ago
    The real "convergence" is all about bringing the plain old desktop design aesthetic to the smartphone. "Bad network connectivity" is a fiddly modem connection at 300 baud, compared to that what you get on smartphones is excellent. If one can browse HN, reply to comments and even do operations like voting/flagging comments on a smartphone, that's proof enough that "usability" is no obstacle.
    - superkuh 7y ago
      >a fiddly modem connection at 300 baud, compared to that what you get on smartphones is excellent. No, both those examples are terrible. The 300 baud modem because of the low speed and the smart phone LTE connection because the round trip time is highly variable and TCP backoff applies a heavy penalty. Additionally, most smart phone internet connections don't have ports or even an ipv4 and are behind Carrier-NAT. Given that, I'd prefer the 300 baud modem.
vbezhenar 7y ago
Nobody cares what users want. Users use what they have to. Developers just pushed web UI over their throats, because it's so easy to bundle website with browser and call it an application. People dreamed about it since forever: not to duplicate all GUI work over and over again for every platform and now when web is a platform, it become even worse, so when Electron became a thing, developers jumped and users did not really care, because those apps were good enough and that's all that really matters. Given the choice I would prever native UI any day.

otabdeveloper4 7y ago

No. Everyone hates web UI's, including users and programmers. But we need them because they're the only cross-platform and device-independent solution.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
That's not true though, they only work on one platform: the web browser, and often they only work well on one specific browser. If you're going to allow a runtime as bloated and complicated as a web browser to count as "cross platform" then you'll have to admit that Java met those same criteria 2 decades ago.
- otabdeveloper4 7y ago
  A web browser has been ported to literally every platform that has a screen. Java doesn't even come pre-installed on a normal machine. It's not about technical considerations, it's just that one cross-platform runtime has won.

kbumsik 7y ago

> because of (IMO) Microsoft/Apple/Canonical. > If they had a really, really good GUI foundation. It is not true at all. They already have really nice GUI foundations. Brining the web tech to desktop apps gots so popular because the web is won so that devs are forced to make web apps, not because it is better than the "traditional" GUI development.

danielscrubs 7y ago
I'm not saying that traditional GUI development is worse. I'm saying that the users want shiny stuff that in many cases comes out of the box with Electron for example. Do I want to code in 3 languages, let the app swallow copious amounts of RAM and break behaviours that users expect? NO. Will they do a hard pass on software if it's not pretty enough? YES. If you want to chalk it up to not enough good themes in QT/JavaFX, that's fine two less languages and less packaging for them to worry about. But until those themes exist that makes the user turn its head...

yyyk 7y ago

To me, the eye-candy of 2019 is often uglier and worse then the one of the 2000s, since the fashion these days is for 'flat' interfaces, and the UI latency seems to be a bit higher.

gmueckl 7y ago

There is at least one toolkit around that can do this: Qt. Yes, you can only use it from C++ in a meaningful way, but it has all the building blocks for designing, styling and animating UIs that you might wish for. I don't think the extent to which this is possible is known by most HN users. It is quite easy to write e.g. conditional widget style sheets that change widget appearance based on widget state (e.g. failing input validation) without a single line of C++ code required. WPF can also be styled extensively, at least in theory, but this is much harder to accomplish. MS has developed Blend to assist with this, but you still need a deep knowledge of the internal hierarchy if elements of a widget to get good results.

opencl 7y ago

What makes you think modern GTK isn't capable of 2019 eye-candy? The GNOME people love transition animations. Lollypop for example has a very fancy-looking "modern" UI.

superkuh 7y ago
The eye-candy in question is really more about usability of the GUI when people are on terrible computers with bad network connectivity and terrible UI input restrictions. I am, of course, speaking of smart phones. The smart phone design aesthetic has taken over and is now constantly being used in places where the whitespace is a waste and the giant buttons make things terrible. Canonical may have finally given up on "convergence" but few other companies have woken up.
- 0815test 7y ago
  The real "convergence" is all about bringing the plain old desktop design aesthetic to the smartphone. "Bad network connectivity" is a fiddly modem connection at 300 baud, compared to that what you get on smartphones is excellent. If one can browse HN, reply to comments and even do operations like voting/flagging comments on a smartphone, that's proof enough that "usability" is no obstacle.
  - superkuh 7y ago
    >a fiddly modem connection at 300 baud, compared to that what you get on smartphones is excellent. No, both those examples are terrible. The 300 baud modem because of the low speed and the smart phone LTE connection because the round trip time is highly variable and TCP backoff applies a heavy penalty. Additionally, most smart phone internet connections don't have ports or even an ipv4 and are behind Carrier-NAT. Given that, I'd prefer the 300 baud modem.

vbezhenar 7y ago

Nobody cares what users want. Users use what they have to. Developers just pushed web UI over their throats, because it's so easy to bundle website with browser and call it an application. People dreamed about it since forever: not to duplicate all GUI work over and over again for every platform and now when web is a platform, it become even worse, so when Electron became a thing, developers jumped and users did not really care, because those apps were good enough and that's all that really matters. Given the choice I would prever native UI any day.