4 ms·

I think we got there also by desperation of lacking good cross-platform GUI toolkits. The current state is, you either use something that looks like Windows 95

I think we got there also by desperation of lacking good cross-platform GUI toolkits. The current state is, you either use something that looks like Windows 95 in all platforms, or web app. What the web made possible is to anyone to create a decent custom UI with little effort. I still remember how messed up was to create a custom component for Java Swing, which I believe is still one of the easiest to do. How would you do that for QT? GTK? WxWidgets? etc

dleslie 6y ago
I'll take Win95 in a heartbeat; consistent, accessible, responsive and clear. Vastly superior to the majority of web interfaces.
- kilburn 6y ago
  Also totally inflexible, you better have the right-sized screen/resolution: too small and you can't see that "ok" button; too large and you'll have a ridiculously small and crammed winform to fill/see your information.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Most cross platform toolkits support layout managers, since Motif days. Actually even WinForms supports them, even though too many are happily doing fixed canvas positioning without using them.
  - dleslie 6y ago
    Windows has shipped an accessibility magnifier since the 90s, before hidpi was a thing.
smt1 6y ago
Qt is (still) very good at being cross platform and native looking. Actually, I think qml is easier than the webstack for newbies, perhaps not C++ though.
krzyk 6y ago
Take a look at Telegram client, looks great on Linux, not sure how it looks on macos or Windows.
- morpheuskafka 6y ago
  Interesting Telegram has both a native (Swift/Obj-C not sure which) and an cross-platform-codebase app for macOS. The former is called Telegram for macOS and the latter Telegram Desktop. Both are on the app store even. So it would actually be a very good case to compare performance, etc. The native one presumably shares a lot of code with iOS which is probably why it exists at all, and it supports secret chats. Otherwise they have similar but slightly different design and features. However, I think the Telegram Desktop client is not Electron either, it is just regular C++ compiled on different systems.
  - krzyk 6y ago
    Yes, Telegram Desktop is a normal C++ app: https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop So a cross-platform is quite easy, Electron one would need to be tested for different webviews on each system.

dleslie 6y ago

I'll take Win95 in a heartbeat; consistent, accessible, responsive and clear. Vastly superior to the majority of web interfaces.

kilburn 6y ago
Also totally inflexible, you better have the right-sized screen/resolution: too small and you can't see that "ok" button; too large and you'll have a ridiculously small and crammed winform to fill/see your information.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Most cross platform toolkits support layout managers, since Motif days. Actually even WinForms supports them, even though too many are happily doing fixed canvas positioning without using them.
- dleslie 6y ago
  Windows has shipped an accessibility magnifier since the 90s, before hidpi was a thing.

smt1 6y ago

Qt is (still) very good at being cross platform and native looking. Actually, I think qml is easier than the webstack for newbies, perhaps not C++ though.

krzyk 6y ago

Take a look at Telegram client, looks great on Linux, not sure how it looks on macos or Windows.

morpheuskafka 6y ago
Interesting Telegram has both a native (Swift/Obj-C not sure which) and an cross-platform-codebase app for macOS. The former is called Telegram for macOS and the latter Telegram Desktop. Both are on the app store even. So it would actually be a very good case to compare performance, etc. The native one presumably shares a lot of code with iOS which is probably why it exists at all, and it supports secret chats. Otherwise they have similar but slightly different design and features. However, I think the Telegram Desktop client is not Electron either, it is just regular C++ compiled on different systems.
- krzyk 6y ago
  Yes, Telegram Desktop is a normal C++ app: https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop So a cross-platform is quite easy, Electron one would need to be tested for different webviews on each system.