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I agree that there's a lot of form-over-function and bad usability decisions in apps but that's completely separate from the underlying frameworks and distribut

I agree that there's a lot of form-over-function and bad usability decisions in apps but that's completely separate from the underlying frameworks and distribution technology. You can have great webapps and terrible native apps. Also when it comes to usability, users prefer having a consistent UI over a "native" UI, especially as the number of devices have exploded between laptops, phones and tablets. Slack looks and works the same everywhere, and that's one of it's advantages.

bernardv 5y ago
True, the user doesn’t necessarily know a ‘native’ UI from a familiar/consistent UI. The two major OS’s used to be the promoters of well thought-out standards and consistency. The two went hand-in-hand.
kitsunesoba 5y ago
> I agree that there's a lot of form-over-function and bad usability decisions in apps but that's completely separate from the underlying frameworks and distribution technology. You can have great webapps and terrible native apps. I may be wrong in this but I feel that lot of the push for Electron and the like is for the styling capabilities it brings compared to native toolkits. In the case of many Electron apps, especially simpler ones, maintaining something in Qt or even WPF/AppKit/etc wouldn't be a challenge, as long as the dev is willing to use standard widgets. An inordinate amount of energy and resources has been spent on turning apps into an arm of branding/marketing. > Also when it comes to usability, users prefer having a consistent UI over a "native" UI, especially as the number of devices have exploded between laptops, phones and tablets. Slack looks and works the same everywhere, and that's one of it's advantages. Slack is a bit of a funny example, that's one app where I'd greatly prefer to run the iOS app on desktop if I could. The web/electron version is a mess.
pseudalopex 5y ago
Desktop, phone, and tablet apps don't really work the same anyway. Except when they're just scaled up. But everyone agrees that's bad. I see few people use the same apps on more than 1 desktop and 1 mobile OS. They use Windows and couldn't care less what the macOS app looks like. Or vice versa. It's about branding usually in my experience. Not what users want.
- manigandham 5y ago
  It's not always the same user but a team or entire organization using the same tools, and it helps to unify the experience. Contrast that with something like Outlook which has a dozen different UIs depending on app or device or website. It causes way more friction than just having the same workflow everywhere.
sciprojguy 5y ago
You make it sound like users are switching among Windows, Linux, macOS, Android and iOS all the time so the app UI has to have the lowest common denominator. By and large they're not and as such the native UI is the consistent UI: the apps launch the same way, you know how to get to settings or the trash can and the gestures all do pretty much the same thing to get the same result.

bernardv 5y ago

True, the user doesn’t necessarily know a ‘native’ UI from a familiar/consistent UI. The two major OS’s used to be the promoters of well thought-out standards and consistency. The two went hand-in-hand.

kitsunesoba 5y ago

> I agree that there's a lot of form-over-function and bad usability decisions in apps but that's completely separate from the underlying frameworks and distribution technology. You can have great webapps and terrible native apps. I may be wrong in this but I feel that lot of the push for Electron and the like is for the styling capabilities it brings compared to native toolkits. In the case of many Electron apps, especially simpler ones, maintaining something in Qt or even WPF/AppKit/etc wouldn't be a challenge, as long as the dev is willing to use standard widgets. An inordinate amount of energy and resources has been spent on turning apps into an arm of branding/marketing. > Also when it comes to usability, users prefer having a consistent UI over a "native" UI, especially as the number of devices have exploded between laptops, phones and tablets. Slack looks and works the same everywhere, and that's one of it's advantages. Slack is a bit of a funny example, that's one app where I'd greatly prefer to run the iOS app on desktop if I could. The web/electron version is a mess.

pseudalopex 5y ago

Desktop, phone, and tablet apps don't really work the same anyway. Except when they're just scaled up. But everyone agrees that's bad. I see few people use the same apps on more than 1 desktop and 1 mobile OS. They use Windows and couldn't care less what the macOS app looks like. Or vice versa. It's about branding usually in my experience. Not what users want.

manigandham 5y ago
It's not always the same user but a team or entire organization using the same tools, and it helps to unify the experience. Contrast that with something like Outlook which has a dozen different UIs depending on app or device or website. It causes way more friction than just having the same workflow everywhere.

sciprojguy 5y ago

You make it sound like users are switching among Windows, Linux, macOS, Android and iOS all the time so the app UI has to have the lowest common denominator. By and large they're not and as such the native UI is the consistent UI: the apps launch the same way, you know how to get to settings or the trash can and the gestures all do pretty much the same thing to get the same result.