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I also contend the supposed "ugliness" of gtk. This is at most a personal issue; in my view gtk programs are typically beautiful and Qt and Electron are unbear

I also contend the supposed "ugliness" of gtk. This is at most a personal issue; in my view gtk programs are typically beautiful and Qt and Electron are unbearably ugly.

throwaway8941 7y ago
Entirely depends on your system. On Linux/BSD with the right theme it can indeed look beautiful. I also quite enjoy the "plastic-y" feel it provides with some themes (like Clearlooks).
langitbiru 7y ago
What about GTK programs on Windows? I am not familiar with their case on Windows platform.
- _pmf_ 7y ago
  I'm using Textadept and Notecase on Windows. I personally like the Win95 aesthetics, but it's not everyone's cup of tea.
  - Crinus 7y ago
    I also like the Win95 aesthetics, though last time i checked Gtk+ does support Windows' theme engine (not 100% perfect but 99.9% is there). At least Gtk+ 2 does, did that change with Gtk+ 3?
Barrin92 7y ago
I recently started to use a gtk audiobook player (https://github.com/geigi/cozy https://github.com/geigi/cozy, small plug as i've been very happy with it), and it looks absolutely fine to me. Of the three frameworks in the title traditional Qt Widgets apps to me look the worst.
- simion314 7y ago
  What do you not like about Qt? Are the apps or the Widget themselves? The apps are the job of the developer to align and padd things properly. The wdidgets are designed to look as default platforms Widgets, so on Windows you get the buttons and progressbars to look native, in Linux it will use the theme you set. Where GTK apps by default look horrible, they do not use the platform icons and styles or dialog boxes, I assume the reason is that Qt is sold as a cross platform toolkit where GTK is a Red Hat project and RH is focused mainly on GNOME
- z0mbie42 7y ago
  Hi, I would love to heard from your experience the easiness/difficulty to theme your Gtk application. Also, In the analysis I tested Qt with QML, not widgets.
mraison 7y ago
Definitely depends on the platform. On Linux it's probably great, but on macOS at least, I've yet to see a GTK app that doesn't feel super clunky. GTK breaks lots of expectations about how things should behave on macOS (shortcuts, standard menus, buttons, etc). Gimp or Inkscape are good examples. On the other hand those are examples of what a "native" app is expected to look like: https://www.sketch.com https://www.sketch.com https://paw.cloud https://paw.cloud https://www.pixelmator.com https://www.pixelmator.com Note that the apps above are not implemented with Qt or Electron either, they use the official Apple frameworks.
- ScottFree 7y ago
  This is something I've always wondered and still can't find a good answer to: why are MacOS apps so damned beautiful and plentiful compared to linux and windows apps? Are the official Apple frameworks just that easy and pleasant to work with? I hear devs complain about ObjectiveC all the time, so it can't be their language choice. Or is it another example of Steve Job's reality distortion field, but applied to the entire MacOS application developer community?
  - dagw 7y ago
    why are MacOS apps so damned beautiful and plentiful compared to linux and windows apps? One is developer culture. Going all the way back to the earliest Macintosh days, Apple has always had detailed guidelines about how the one true way a GUI app should look and feel. And the importance of following those guidelines gets drilled into you from your very first Hello World program. This leads to all apps on macs to look both good and consistent, giving developers a lot of inspiration to draw from when they write their own apps. Windows and Linux simply doesn't have this culture ingrained into its developers. It also helps that Apple really only has one GUI framework at a time that it pours all their effort and focus into while Windows and Linux always have at least 2 or 3 competing frameworks that never get quite the attention they need. Another might simply be financial incentives. Anecdotally Mac user care more about what their apps look like than Windows and Linux users, thus the financial incentives to put in the effort to add the final polish to your apps is higher, since it probably affects sales much more than it does on Linux and Windows. Also (and equally anecdotally) Apple users seem far more willing to pay for small useful applications from indie developers so more indie developers put more effort into producing small useful and beautiful apps for Mac.
IshKebab 7y ago
It definitely depends on the platform and how much effort has been put in by the author. It is definitely ugly-by-default. Try Inkscape on Mac for example... that still uses XQuartz, maybe they're still on GTK2? Or try GIMP on Windows. But there are more attractive apps that use GTK. They just have spent time doing custom themes.
z0mbie42 7y ago
Hi, while I agree this criterion is highly subjective, I've based my analysis on the successful Desktop applications, and how it's easy/difficult to customize components.
z0mbie42 7y ago
Hi, I think we can objectively say that Slack or VS Code (Electron) are beautiful, while fractal or Notecase (Gtk) are not.
- mouldysammich 7y ago
  I would say that this is not objective at all; I find VS Code well designed but it doesnt fit with the rest of the Gnome desktop (or any desktop) at all, whereas fractal fits well with the rest of the gnome system, and in my opinion looks quite nice.
- rsynnott 7y ago
  Highly subjective; I’d say that VS Code looks worse (and is certainly more clunky) than IntelliJ or even Xcode.
- alkonaut 7y ago
  I’d say “modern” or “web-like” versus “traditional desktop”. It’s not quite objective but I agree you’d probably find 90 or 99% of respondents prefer the web look for desktop apps. The time when desktop apps looked like a consistent toolkit is gone. Now it’s more important for a desktop app to look like its own web version than to look like the next desktop app.
  - ridiculous_fish 7y ago
    A consistent look trains users to expect consistent behavior. For example, a native macOS table supports various modifier key behavior, arrow key navigation, type select, drag and drop, copy and pasting rows, etc. It's worth learning these features (the theory goes) because they translate across apps. But every web app is a snowflake, so there's no shared expertise to be developed. I don't expect anything beyond point and click. We've given up on empowering users.
    - ScottFree 7y ago
      > We've given up on empowering users. That's because the mass market doesn't want to be empowered. They want to consume. That said, phones and tablets are custom built for those people. The only people still using laptops and desktops are people who need to get things done. It's beyond time for desktop OS's and apps to start focusing on the power user again.

I also contend the supposed "ugliness" of gtk. This is at most a personal issue; in my view gtk programs are typically beautiful and Qt and Electron are unbearably ugly.

throwaway8941 7y ago

Entirely depends on your system. On Linux/BSD with the right theme it can indeed look beautiful. I also quite enjoy the "plastic-y" feel it provides with some themes (like Clearlooks).

langitbiru 7y ago

What about GTK programs on Windows? I am not familiar with their case on Windows platform.

_pmf_ 7y ago
I'm using Textadept and Notecase on Windows. I personally like the Win95 aesthetics, but it's not everyone's cup of tea.
- Crinus 7y ago
  I also like the Win95 aesthetics, though last time i checked Gtk+ does support Windows' theme engine (not 100% perfect but 99.9% is there). At least Gtk+ 2 does, did that change with Gtk+ 3?

Barrin92 7y ago

I recently started to use a gtk audiobook player (https://github.com/geigi/cozy https://github.com/geigi/cozy, small plug as i've been very happy with it), and it looks absolutely fine to me. Of the three frameworks in the title traditional Qt Widgets apps to me look the worst.

simion314 7y ago
What do you not like about Qt? Are the apps or the Widget themselves? The apps are the job of the developer to align and padd things properly. The wdidgets are designed to look as default platforms Widgets, so on Windows you get the buttons and progressbars to look native, in Linux it will use the theme you set. Where GTK apps by default look horrible, they do not use the platform icons and styles or dialog boxes, I assume the reason is that Qt is sold as a cross platform toolkit where GTK is a Red Hat project and RH is focused mainly on GNOME
z0mbie42 7y ago
Hi, I would love to heard from your experience the easiness/difficulty to theme your Gtk application. Also, In the analysis I tested Qt with QML, not widgets.

mraison 7y ago

Definitely depends on the platform. On Linux it's probably great, but on macOS at least, I've yet to see a GTK app that doesn't feel super clunky. GTK breaks lots of expectations about how things should behave on macOS (shortcuts, standard menus, buttons, etc). Gimp or Inkscape are good examples. On the other hand those are examples of what a "native" app is expected to look like: https://www.sketch.com https://www.sketch.com https://paw.cloud https://paw.cloud https://www.pixelmator.com https://www.pixelmator.com Note that the apps above are not implemented with Qt or Electron either, they use the official Apple frameworks.

ScottFree 7y ago
This is something I've always wondered and still can't find a good answer to: why are MacOS apps so damned beautiful and plentiful compared to linux and windows apps? Are the official Apple frameworks just that easy and pleasant to work with? I hear devs complain about ObjectiveC all the time, so it can't be their language choice. Or is it another example of Steve Job's reality distortion field, but applied to the entire MacOS application developer community?
- dagw 7y ago
  why are MacOS apps so damned beautiful and plentiful compared to linux and windows apps? One is developer culture. Going all the way back to the earliest Macintosh days, Apple has always had detailed guidelines about how the one true way a GUI app should look and feel. And the importance of following those guidelines gets drilled into you from your very first Hello World program. This leads to all apps on macs to look both good and consistent, giving developers a lot of inspiration to draw from when they write their own apps. Windows and Linux simply doesn't have this culture ingrained into its developers. It also helps that Apple really only has one GUI framework at a time that it pours all their effort and focus into while Windows and Linux always have at least 2 or 3 competing frameworks that never get quite the attention they need. Another might simply be financial incentives. Anecdotally Mac user care more about what their apps look like than Windows and Linux users, thus the financial incentives to put in the effort to add the final polish to your apps is higher, since it probably affects sales much more than it does on Linux and Windows. Also (and equally anecdotally) Apple users seem far more willing to pay for small useful applications from indie developers so more indie developers put more effort into producing small useful and beautiful apps for Mac.

IshKebab 7y ago

It definitely depends on the platform and how much effort has been put in by the author. It is definitely ugly-by-default. Try Inkscape on Mac for example... that still uses XQuartz, maybe they're still on GTK2? Or try GIMP on Windows. But there are more attractive apps that use GTK. They just have spent time doing custom themes.

z0mbie42 7y ago

Hi, while I agree this criterion is highly subjective, I've based my analysis on the successful Desktop applications, and how it's easy/difficult to customize components.

z0mbie42 7y ago

Hi, I think we can objectively say that Slack or VS Code (Electron) are beautiful, while fractal or Notecase (Gtk) are not.

mouldysammich 7y ago
I would say that this is not objective at all; I find VS Code well designed but it doesnt fit with the rest of the Gnome desktop (or any desktop) at all, whereas fractal fits well with the rest of the gnome system, and in my opinion looks quite nice.
rsynnott 7y ago
Highly subjective; I’d say that VS Code looks worse (and is certainly more clunky) than IntelliJ or even Xcode.
alkonaut 7y ago
I’d say “modern” or “web-like” versus “traditional desktop”. It’s not quite objective but I agree you’d probably find 90 or 99% of respondents prefer the web look for desktop apps. The time when desktop apps looked like a consistent toolkit is gone. Now it’s more important for a desktop app to look like its own web version than to look like the next desktop app.
- ridiculous_fish 7y ago
  A consistent look trains users to expect consistent behavior. For example, a native macOS table supports various modifier key behavior, arrow key navigation, type select, drag and drop, copy and pasting rows, etc. It's worth learning these features (the theory goes) because they translate across apps. But every web app is a snowflake, so there's no shared expertise to be developed. I don't expect anything beyond point and click. We've given up on empowering users.
  - ScottFree 7y ago
    > We've given up on empowering users. That's because the mass market doesn't want to be empowered. They want to consume. That said, phones and tablets are custom built for those people. The only people still using laptops and desktops are people who need to get things done. It's beyond time for desktop OS's and apps to start focusing on the power user again.