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Operating systems have different features and conventions. And why would vendors care what cross platform technologies you use? I doubt the framework you want

Operating systems have different features and conventions. And why would vendors care what cross platform technologies you use? I doubt the framework you want them to create would change much. Many Electron fans talk about how apps should look and feel exactly the same on every OS. They say web technologies are the best UI layer by far. And it isn't like Slack or Microsoft don't have the resources to make native apps.

sofixa 5y ago
> Many Electron fans talk about how apps should look and feel exactly the same on every OS Don't you think it's a good idea to have consistent UI and UX cross platform? If a user switches between the mobile/mac/Windows/web version, everything should change? > And it isn't like Slack or Microsoft don't have the resources to make native apps. Considering Microsoft seemingly don't have the resources to make a functional Electron app for Teams, and the Linux and macOS versions are always late and buggy, apparently they can't.
- ryandrake 5y ago
  > Don't you think it's a good idea to have consistent UI and UX cross platform? No. Users don't typically switch platforms often. End users expect applications to be consistent with other applications on their platform. If every other application on my system uses ⌘Q to quit, and yours doesn't because you're trying to be consistent with some other platform I've never used, then yours is going to seem like it has the broken UI.
  - sofixa 5y ago
    > No. Users don't typically switch platforms often Users don't switch between mobile, PC? By far the most common mobile and PC OSes, Android and Windows, look nothing alike. Using something as simple as a chat app on both in "native" modes can be a burden. I
    - ryandrake 5y ago
      1. Users definitely don't want consistency across mobile and desktop. Mobile interfaces displayed on a desktop look like ultra-simplified toys and desktop interfaces displayed on mobile are too dense. 2. The article/thread is about native vs. web UIs on desktop platforms so not sure how mobile is even relevant.
      - sofixa 5y ago
        > Mobile interfaces displayed on a desktop look like ultra-simplified toys and desktop interfaces displayed on mobile are too dense I'm talking about consistency, not copy pasting. Google's Material Design is sufficiently consistent that switching between mobile and desktop ( web) is fine > The article/thread is about native vs. web UIs on desktop platforms so not sure how mobile is even relevant Indeed, but one of the main points for native UI on desktop is for native OS UX consistency, and my point is that i prefer app consistency cross platform over OS consistency. Especially when the most popular desktop OS changes its UX paradigm half-heartedly every few years. Are you an Apple user per chance? Most people who seem to prefer "native" UX seem to prefer Apple's different way of doing UX, which i understand can be difficult when switching to a cross platform UI which is consistent between platforms and is closer to Windows and Linux UX than it is to Apple's.
api 5y ago
Web technologies have become the most productive UI layer due to a lot of developer work on abstracting them via things like React and the many React-based view libraries. The same kind of paradigm could be done with native-mode libraries but nobody has done it because all the momentum is behind web technology now. My real argument was that fighting this trend may be pissing into a hurricane. All the momentum may be behind web tech, so maybe we should just focus on making it better as a UI layer and fixing its problems instead of developing native mode UI layers that nobody will use. WASM may eventually liberate us from JavaScript. Another way to do that would be to add C/C++ level API hooks to web renderers like Chromium and WebKit to allow the DOM to be manipulated from native code. Then we could write a native UI toolkit using web view renderers with no JavaScript at all.

sofixa 5y ago

> Many Electron fans talk about how apps should look and feel exactly the same on every OS Don't you think it's a good idea to have consistent UI and UX cross platform? If a user switches between the mobile/mac/Windows/web version, everything should change? > And it isn't like Slack or Microsoft don't have the resources to make native apps. Considering Microsoft seemingly don't have the resources to make a functional Electron app for Teams, and the Linux and macOS versions are always late and buggy, apparently they can't.

ryandrake 5y ago
> Don't you think it's a good idea to have consistent UI and UX cross platform? No. Users don't typically switch platforms often. End users expect applications to be consistent with other applications on their platform. If every other application on my system uses ⌘Q to quit, and yours doesn't because you're trying to be consistent with some other platform I've never used, then yours is going to seem like it has the broken UI.
- sofixa 5y ago
  > No. Users don't typically switch platforms often Users don't switch between mobile, PC? By far the most common mobile and PC OSes, Android and Windows, look nothing alike. Using something as simple as a chat app on both in "native" modes can be a burden. I
  - ryandrake 5y ago
    1. Users definitely don't want consistency across mobile and desktop. Mobile interfaces displayed on a desktop look like ultra-simplified toys and desktop interfaces displayed on mobile are too dense. 2. The article/thread is about native vs. web UIs on desktop platforms so not sure how mobile is even relevant.
    - sofixa 5y ago
      > Mobile interfaces displayed on a desktop look like ultra-simplified toys and desktop interfaces displayed on mobile are too dense I'm talking about consistency, not copy pasting. Google's Material Design is sufficiently consistent that switching between mobile and desktop ( web) is fine > The article/thread is about native vs. web UIs on desktop platforms so not sure how mobile is even relevant Indeed, but one of the main points for native UI on desktop is for native OS UX consistency, and my point is that i prefer app consistency cross platform over OS consistency. Especially when the most popular desktop OS changes its UX paradigm half-heartedly every few years. Are you an Apple user per chance? Most people who seem to prefer "native" UX seem to prefer Apple's different way of doing UX, which i understand can be difficult when switching to a cross platform UI which is consistent between platforms and is closer to Windows and Linux UX than it is to Apple's.

api 5y ago

Web technologies have become the most productive UI layer due to a lot of developer work on abstracting them via things like React and the many React-based view libraries. The same kind of paradigm could be done with native-mode libraries but nobody has done it because all the momentum is behind web technology now. My real argument was that fighting this trend may be pissing into a hurricane. All the momentum may be behind web tech, so maybe we should just focus on making it better as a UI layer and fixing its problems instead of developing native mode UI layers that nobody will use. WASM may eventually liberate us from JavaScript. Another way to do that would be to add C/C++ level API hooks to web renderers like Chromium and WebKit to allow the DOM to be manipulated from native code. Then we could write a native UI toolkit using web view renderers with no JavaScript at all.