5 ms·

> consistent across OS versions and platforms. This is an upside for the developer only. And a downside for the user as the GUI will probably not be consistent

by guggle 5y ago

> consistent across OS versions and platforms. This is an upside for the developer only. And a downside for the user as the GUI will probably not be consistent with its OS. > over the past decade it seems like many apps have eschewed this anyway And I regret it.

nawgz 5y ago
> > consistent across OS versions and platforms. > This is an upside for the developer only. Strongly disagree. How is a consistent user experience enabling developers to support more platforms at a higher level of quality going to lead to worse end-user experience? To me: it's not, this is just anti-browser sentiment dressing itself up as enlightenment
- geodel 5y ago
  > ... higher level of quality going to lead to worse end-user experience This is just a management speak where degradation in quality is called 'next generation'. It is worse because it is resource hog and slow even on high end machines. As a technical user I understand at least what is happening. On other hand non-technical folks are unable to articulate their frustrations which slick developers seems to take as users are satisfied.
  - nawgz 5y ago
    > It is worse because it is resource hog and slow even on high end machines And what of other factors? If it is worse in the dimensions you list but superior in: * accessibility * cross-platform capability * debuggability * library availability * user familiarity and more, then what does this matter? Each choice made in such a domain as this is picking a point in a high-dimensional tradespace, and to blatantly disregard this obvious perspective citing "management speak" and "slick developers" doesn't really inspire confidence you're arguing in good faith
- user-the-name 5y ago
  Because it is not a consistent user experience, it is a consistent developer experience. For the actual user, the experience is inconsistent with the rest of their system.
  - anigbrowl 5y ago
    Well, it depends. Some tools I want to be OS-consistent and unobtrusive. I don't care for the newish trend of everything having its own 'dark mode' (none of which match each other) or the way this is offered as some great innovation when it's only about few pages of code to implement. I would much prefer to have better theming options at the system/WM level. On the other hand, I have many specialized tools where the UI is superior that of the OS and if anything I would like everything else to look more like those. Ableton Live was an early pioneer of the kind of flat minimalism that people associate most often with Material Design, for example. At the time it was launched most music software manufacturers were still obsessed with skeuomorphism, albeit for entirely justifiable reasons because musicians often fetishize and want to emulate the sound of particular pieces of studio equipment.
  - nawgz 5y ago
    > For the actual user, the experience is inconsistent with the rest of their system. This point is moot. If your argument is that each system has its own GUI semantics, and the developer fails the user by not developing within those semantics for that platform, then you are proposing the developer must do 1 unit of work per platform where previously it was 1 unit of work for all platforms. Therefore exactly 1 platform will be supported, and users on the unlucky ones will have exactly no experiences with this tool.
    - user-the-name 5y ago
      Sure, if you're strapped for resources and are content with making sub-par tools, that's what happens. If you actually care about what you make and want to make it good, there are no shortcuts. You need to put in the work.
      - 5y ago
twobitshifter 5y ago
Users trade a consistent GUI for programs that a) wouldn’t exist on their platform or b) would have a smaller feature set. So both developers and users benefit
dbrueck 5y ago
>> consistent across OS versions and platforms. > This is an upside for the developer only. This is definitely not the case. For some apps/branding, a particular style is more desirable than making sure a checkbox looks 100% native on each platform. And even the things that benefit the developer are not upsides just for them (think lower initial design & dev costs, lower testing costs, lower costs of new features - all of which mean resources can be allocated elsewhere). > the GUI will probably not be consistent with its OS. Like I mentioned, there seems to be a trend away from this as a goal anyway (even within the set of OS-provided apps). Probably it's a combination of it not mattering as much as we originally thought it did, and because end-users now have a familiarity with a core set of UI concepts. There's a short list of things you do to make a button be "button-y", and users know to click on it. They just don't care if it looks different than the buttons in some unrelated app.
- robertoandred 5y ago
  There’s more to being a native app than the look of a checkbox.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  > There's a short list of things you do to make a button be "button-y", and users know to click on it. Could someone please inform Microsoft of this, so maybe they could try that in "Skype for Business"? I have to use the fucking thing at work, and it's even more afflicted by the fucking Flat Where Everything Looks The Same look than the rest of their apps and OSes. For instance, whenever I'm in a chat with someone and initiate an audio call by clicking on the round blue handset button, it pops up a helpful little tooltip/label in the form of a (squared-off, because Modern) speech bubble! to tell me that what I've just initiated is a "Skype Call". Then I sit there and wait for them to pick up for a while, before I remember that the fucking speech bubble IS A BUTTON, and that I need to click again to start a call. Holy fucking goddamn shit! The absolute worst company at following Microsoft's UI guidelines is... Microsoft. Another example: Just a few hours ago I was switching back and forth between Excel and my text editor, copying stuff from one to the other. Half the time when I though Excel had focus, it didn't -- because the fucking thing can't even de-highlight its bloody title bar! Their interfaces absolutely suck nowadays.
capableweb 5y ago
> And a downside for the user as the GUI will probably not be consistent with its OS Depends on what kind of "user". Many professionals that spend their day in software like the Autodesk suite of applications, Music production, Animation or other creative endeavors expect consistent GUI across OSes when using the same tool, not consistent GUIs within the specific OS for all tools.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  How many of those users ever use more than one OS?
  - kbenson 5y ago
    How many of them might be following directions from someone or giving directions to someone on a different OS? How often we use something and what type of things we're doing on it (work, play, etc) probably greatly affect how we think about this. I expect my tools to work the same no matter where I use them. For things I don't rely on to get essential work done, I care less, on a sliding scale.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
      I expect my tools to work well too, that's why they're almost never web-based.
      - kbenson 5y ago
        Sure, but there's a difference between web-based and built using web technologies. Whatever other faults electron apps have, they're fairly consistent across operating systems. For a tool (like a chat client) that's very appealing. It's all that other things that seem to be endemic to electron apps (high resource usage, large size) that are the problem. Theoretically if you make a webapp that works fine on Safari Edge and Chrome you could use the OS provided webviews on iOS, MacOS, Android and Windows (and Electron on other platforms I guess) to ship local equivalents that are less problematic at the expense of more engineering work (or maybe just a leaner meaner electron competitor).
kbenson 5y ago
Eh, some apps have been around longer than mobile GUI paradigms, to the point they've seen a few. As a user that's been around for a few of those as well, at this point I could care less. If you're around long enough, everything changes anyway, so whether it's learning a specific app's navigation and conventions on install or re-learning many small changes in all your apps, you're stuck with stuff feeling confusing and inconsistent at some point no matter what. Personally, at least for popular apps, I prefer being able to explain how to do something to someone else and it just working the same way, regardless of what phone they are on, or if I'm lucky, to some degree even if it's between mobile and web.
journey_16162 5y ago
> This is an upside for the developer only. And a downside for the user as the GUI will probably not be consistent with its OS. Depends on how you look at it. I'm building an app and if it was not for Electron and web technologies, no user would get to use that app because it would not be built in the first place.

by guggle 5y ago

nawgz 5y ago

> > consistent across OS versions and platforms. > This is an upside for the developer only. Strongly disagree. How is a consistent user experience enabling developers to support more platforms at a higher level of quality going to lead to worse end-user experience? To me: it's not, this is just anti-browser sentiment dressing itself up as enlightenment

geodel 5y ago
> ... higher level of quality going to lead to worse end-user experience This is just a management speak where degradation in quality is called 'next generation'. It is worse because it is resource hog and slow even on high end machines. As a technical user I understand at least what is happening. On other hand non-technical folks are unable to articulate their frustrations which slick developers seems to take as users are satisfied.
- nawgz 5y ago
  > It is worse because it is resource hog and slow even on high end machines And what of other factors? If it is worse in the dimensions you list but superior in: * accessibility * cross-platform capability * debuggability * library availability * user familiarity and more, then what does this matter? Each choice made in such a domain as this is picking a point in a high-dimensional tradespace, and to blatantly disregard this obvious perspective citing "management speak" and "slick developers" doesn't really inspire confidence you're arguing in good faith
user-the-name 5y ago
Because it is not a consistent user experience, it is a consistent developer experience. For the actual user, the experience is inconsistent with the rest of their system.
- anigbrowl 5y ago
  Well, it depends. Some tools I want to be OS-consistent and unobtrusive. I don't care for the newish trend of everything having its own 'dark mode' (none of which match each other) or the way this is offered as some great innovation when it's only about few pages of code to implement. I would much prefer to have better theming options at the system/WM level. On the other hand, I have many specialized tools where the UI is superior that of the OS and if anything I would like everything else to look more like those. Ableton Live was an early pioneer of the kind of flat minimalism that people associate most often with Material Design, for example. At the time it was launched most music software manufacturers were still obsessed with skeuomorphism, albeit for entirely justifiable reasons because musicians often fetishize and want to emulate the sound of particular pieces of studio equipment.
- nawgz 5y ago
  > For the actual user, the experience is inconsistent with the rest of their system. This point is moot. If your argument is that each system has its own GUI semantics, and the developer fails the user by not developing within those semantics for that platform, then you are proposing the developer must do 1 unit of work per platform where previously it was 1 unit of work for all platforms. Therefore exactly 1 platform will be supported, and users on the unlucky ones will have exactly no experiences with this tool.
  - user-the-name 5y ago
    Sure, if you're strapped for resources and are content with making sub-par tools, that's what happens. If you actually care about what you make and want to make it good, there are no shortcuts. You need to put in the work.
    - 5y ago

twobitshifter 5y ago

Users trade a consistent GUI for programs that a) wouldn’t exist on their platform or b) would have a smaller feature set. So both developers and users benefit

dbrueck 5y ago

>> consistent across OS versions and platforms. > This is an upside for the developer only. This is definitely not the case. For some apps/branding, a particular style is more desirable than making sure a checkbox looks 100% native on each platform. And even the things that benefit the developer are not upsides just for them (think lower initial design & dev costs, lower testing costs, lower costs of new features - all of which mean resources can be allocated elsewhere). > the GUI will probably not be consistent with its OS. Like I mentioned, there seems to be a trend away from this as a goal anyway (even within the set of OS-provided apps). Probably it's a combination of it not mattering as much as we originally thought it did, and because end-users now have a familiarity with a core set of UI concepts. There's a short list of things you do to make a button be "button-y", and users know to click on it. They just don't care if it looks different than the buttons in some unrelated app.

robertoandred 5y ago
There’s more to being a native app than the look of a checkbox.
CRConrad 5y ago
> There's a short list of things you do to make a button be "button-y", and users know to click on it. Could someone please inform Microsoft of this, so maybe they could try that in "Skype for Business"? I have to use the fucking thing at work, and it's even more afflicted by the fucking Flat Where Everything Looks The Same look than the rest of their apps and OSes. For instance, whenever I'm in a chat with someone and initiate an audio call by clicking on the round blue handset button, it pops up a helpful little tooltip/label in the form of a (squared-off, because Modern) speech bubble! to tell me that what I've just initiated is a "Skype Call". Then I sit there and wait for them to pick up for a while, before I remember that the fucking speech bubble IS A BUTTON, and that I need to click again to start a call. Holy fucking goddamn shit! The absolute worst company at following Microsoft's UI guidelines is... Microsoft. Another example: Just a few hours ago I was switching back and forth between Excel and my text editor, copying stuff from one to the other. Half the time when I though Excel had focus, it didn't -- because the fucking thing can't even de-highlight its bloody title bar! Their interfaces absolutely suck nowadays.

capableweb 5y ago

> And a downside for the user as the GUI will probably not be consistent with its OS Depends on what kind of "user". Many professionals that spend their day in software like the Autodesk suite of applications, Music production, Animation or other creative endeavors expect consistent GUI across OSes when using the same tool, not consistent GUIs within the specific OS for all tools.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
How many of those users ever use more than one OS?
- kbenson 5y ago
  How many of them might be following directions from someone or giving directions to someone on a different OS? How often we use something and what type of things we're doing on it (work, play, etc) probably greatly affect how we think about this. I expect my tools to work the same no matter where I use them. For things I don't rely on to get essential work done, I care less, on a sliding scale.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    I expect my tools to work well too, that's why they're almost never web-based.
    - kbenson 5y ago
      Sure, but there's a difference between web-based and built using web technologies. Whatever other faults electron apps have, they're fairly consistent across operating systems. For a tool (like a chat client) that's very appealing. It's all that other things that seem to be endemic to electron apps (high resource usage, large size) that are the problem. Theoretically if you make a webapp that works fine on Safari Edge and Chrome you could use the OS provided webviews on iOS, MacOS, Android and Windows (and Electron on other platforms I guess) to ship local equivalents that are less problematic at the expense of more engineering work (or maybe just a leaner meaner electron competitor).

kbenson 5y ago

Eh, some apps have been around longer than mobile GUI paradigms, to the point they've seen a few. As a user that's been around for a few of those as well, at this point I could care less. If you're around long enough, everything changes anyway, so whether it's learning a specific app's navigation and conventions on install or re-learning many small changes in all your apps, you're stuck with stuff feeling confusing and inconsistent at some point no matter what. Personally, at least for popular apps, I prefer being able to explain how to do something to someone else and it just working the same way, regardless of what phone they are on, or if I'm lucky, to some degree even if it's between mobile and web.

journey_16162 5y ago

> This is an upside for the developer only. And a downside for the user as the GUI will probably not be consistent with its OS. Depends on how you look at it. I'm building an app and if it was not for Electron and web technologies, no user would get to use that app because it would not be built in the first place.