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Now draw the rest of the owl! A key point of a shared UI toolkit is that users can bring their knowledge from one app to another. A standard Cocoa table view o

Now draw the rest of the owl! A key point of a shared UI toolkit is that users can bring their knowledge from one app to another. A standard Cocoa table view or text view has tons of advanced behaviors: type select, keyboard shortcuts, etc. It's worth the user's time to learn these because they work in every app. But apps where these don't work feel discordant and frustrating.

adamnemecek 6y ago
You can mimic native behaviors. But these are different between say browser and native cocoa apps anyway.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  This is why many people are frustrated by web applications that do not mimic features they expect from native Cocoa apps.
- kergonath 6y ago
  You won’t ever produce a perfect imitation. UIs based on third-party toolkits are always a pain, stuck in the uncanny valley. They look somewhat like they should, but have all sorts of quirks that break useability: text fields that don’t support standard shortcuts, weird layouts, wrong fonts, buttons that cannot be selected with the keyboard, etc. It is much, much better to use Apple’s toolkits.
  - adamnemecek 6y ago
    How many shortcuts are there realistically? 50?
    - kergonath 6y ago
      Probably around that by default, maybe a bit more: https://jblevins.org/log/kbd https://jblevins.org/log/kbd https://www.howtogeek.com/681662/35-mac-text-editing-keyboard-shortcuts-to-speed-up-typing/ https://www.howtogeek.com/681662/35-mac-text-editing-keyboar... But all of them need to work, along with system-wide custom ones. Text substitution is also an issue.
    - samatman 6y ago
      That's not the problem, the problem is that I can define a system-wide shortcut from System Preferences and it really is system-wide... unless you don't use the native framework, in which case I'm out of luck. There are an infinity of little things like this. macOS is powerfully integrated across the platform and you either play ball with it or you don't. One that's pretty important is accessibility. You're leaving the blind, vision-impaired, and paralyzed users out in the cold, because macOS has a fairly complete system for all those users to make use of the operating system. But it won't work for an app that isn't native.
- jen20 6y ago
  This is the precise reason I hate web apps with a passion. I want every app on my machine to behave predictably and have a uniform look and feel, not for every UI designer to be able to produce their own unique snowflake without regard for consistency.

adamnemecek 6y ago

You can mimic native behaviors. But these are different between say browser and native cocoa apps anyway.

saagarjha 6y ago
This is why many people are frustrated by web applications that do not mimic features they expect from native Cocoa apps.
kergonath 6y ago
You won’t ever produce a perfect imitation. UIs based on third-party toolkits are always a pain, stuck in the uncanny valley. They look somewhat like they should, but have all sorts of quirks that break useability: text fields that don’t support standard shortcuts, weird layouts, wrong fonts, buttons that cannot be selected with the keyboard, etc. It is much, much better to use Apple’s toolkits.
- adamnemecek 6y ago
  How many shortcuts are there realistically? 50?
  - kergonath 6y ago
    Probably around that by default, maybe a bit more: https://jblevins.org/log/kbd https://jblevins.org/log/kbd https://www.howtogeek.com/681662/35-mac-text-editing-keyboard-shortcuts-to-speed-up-typing/ https://www.howtogeek.com/681662/35-mac-text-editing-keyboar... But all of them need to work, along with system-wide custom ones. Text substitution is also an issue.
  - samatman 6y ago
    That's not the problem, the problem is that I can define a system-wide shortcut from System Preferences and it really is system-wide... unless you don't use the native framework, in which case I'm out of luck. There are an infinity of little things like this. macOS is powerfully integrated across the platform and you either play ball with it or you don't. One that's pretty important is accessibility. You're leaving the blind, vision-impaired, and paralyzed users out in the cold, because macOS has a fairly complete system for all those users to make use of the operating system. But it won't work for an app that isn't native.
jen20 6y ago
This is the precise reason I hate web apps with a passion. I want every app on my machine to behave predictably and have a uniform look and feel, not for every UI designer to be able to produce their own unique snowflake without regard for consistency.