4 ms·

If I were to start a new application for Windows 10+ today, what should I use?

by pornel 4y ago

mikewarot 4y ago
Lazarus/Free Pascal GUI drag and drop that's almost magic. Just hook up the events you need, and you've got a GUI program. Supports gigabyte strings without need for manual memory management. Does everything you need, compiles insanely quickly. Oh, and it's cross platform.
ripley12 4y ago
There are no great options. I've written a bit about this: https://www.reillywood.com/blog/windows-ui-frameworks/ https://www.reillywood.com/blog/windows-ui-frameworks/ tl;dr: WinForms is well supported if you don't need it to be pretty. WPF is complex but mature. WinUI 3 might be ready someday but it's not there yet. I don't want to suggest Electron, but there are valid reasons why people use it...
- mellosouls 4y ago
  Fwiw I tried reading your article but found the sparkly effect on scrolling the page off-putting.
  - ripley12 4y ago
    Thanks for your feedback. I'll add more sparkles.
    - mellosouls 4y ago
      I guess you can be glib about it but you should consider that if you are seen as having no awareness of or concern for accessibility then you aren't going to be taken remotely seriously when you write about UI creation.
cxr 4y ago
Cocoa.
- pornel 4y ago
  Which one? AppKit, UIKit, Catalyst, or SwiftUI?
  - cxr 4y ago
    Cocoa Classic.
donkeybeer 4y ago
Whats wrong with the C apis, did microsoft remove them? I think the best solution to these fickle, buggy new frameworks is to just use what was always there and hopefully would be always supported in future. Moreover it seems many of these new frameworks are strongly tied to a specific language C# instead of a simple C api that can be used from any language. It simply is creating problems for yourself if you choose to select such kinds of technologies. The latter point is especially ridiculous. We only see "blessed languages" in blatantly user hostile platforms like mobile till now. There weren't blessed languages in desktop till now, and its strange to see this coming to desktops.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  > Whats wrong with the C apis, did microsoft remove them? Depends on how much you love COM, after Longhorn's debacle, all newer APIs tend to be based on COM. Using it from C++ or .NET, despite its warts is kind of OK, doing it from C, better be persistent.
pjmlp 4y ago
MFC if doing C++ (really, still better than C++/WinRT after being released in 2016), otherwise Forms/WPF. Naturally WPF seems to be on a hard time, so that leave us with Forms, or go with third party libraries like Avalonia and Uno, that rely on Win32. UWP is deprecated, while WinUI 3.0 is years away to reach feature parity with it. Regarding C++, if MFC isn't your cup of tea given its age, then either Qt or VCL/FireMonkey.
- donkeybeer 4y ago
  I did not know mfc is still supported. And yeah thats what I had thought, the win32 stuff still seems the safest bet, or otherwise as you said some safe cross platform framework like Qt.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Not much is happening, but still they added support for HDPI and minor fixes. As incredible as it may seem, MFC has better integration with Direct2D (on WinUI, Win2D still is missing features from its UWP version), and doing COM is much better than the ATL/WRL experience that C++/WinRT team loves so much (without any Visual Studio support for IDL files and code generation workflows).
MikusR 4y ago
Seriously Electron or QT.

If I were to start a new application for Windows 10+ today, what should I use?

by pornel 4y ago

If I were to start a new application for Windows 10+ today, what should I use?

Lazarus/Free Pascal GUI drag and drop that's almost magic. Just hook up the events you need, and you've got a GUI program. Supports gigabyte strings without need for manual memory management. Does everything you need, compiles insanely quickly. Oh, and it's cross platform.

ripley12 4y ago

There are no great options. I've written a bit about this: https://www.reillywood.com/blog/windows-ui-frameworks/ https://www.reillywood.com/blog/windows-ui-frameworks/ tl;dr: WinForms is well supported if you don't need it to be pretty. WPF is complex but mature. WinUI 3 might be ready someday but it's not there yet. I don't want to suggest Electron, but there are valid reasons why people use it...

mellosouls 4y ago
Fwiw I tried reading your article but found the sparkly effect on scrolling the page off-putting.
- ripley12 4y ago
  Thanks for your feedback. I'll add more sparkles.
  - mellosouls 4y ago
    I guess you can be glib about it but you should consider that if you are seen as having no awareness of or concern for accessibility then you aren't going to be taken remotely seriously when you write about UI creation.

cxr 4y ago

Cocoa.

pornel 4y ago
Which one? AppKit, UIKit, Catalyst, or SwiftUI?
- cxr 4y ago
  Cocoa Classic.

donkeybeer 4y ago

Whats wrong with the C apis, did microsoft remove them? I think the best solution to these fickle, buggy new frameworks is to just use what was always there and hopefully would be always supported in future. Moreover it seems many of these new frameworks are strongly tied to a specific language C# instead of a simple C api that can be used from any language. It simply is creating problems for yourself if you choose to select such kinds of technologies. The latter point is especially ridiculous. We only see "blessed languages" in blatantly user hostile platforms like mobile till now. There weren't blessed languages in desktop till now, and its strange to see this coming to desktops.

pjmlp 4y ago
> Whats wrong with the C apis, did microsoft remove them? Depends on how much you love COM, after Longhorn's debacle, all newer APIs tend to be based on COM. Using it from C++ or .NET, despite its warts is kind of OK, doing it from C, better be persistent.

pjmlp 4y ago

MFC if doing C++ (really, still better than C++/WinRT after being released in 2016), otherwise Forms/WPF. Naturally WPF seems to be on a hard time, so that leave us with Forms, or go with third party libraries like Avalonia and Uno, that rely on Win32. UWP is deprecated, while WinUI 3.0 is years away to reach feature parity with it. Regarding C++, if MFC isn't your cup of tea given its age, then either Qt or VCL/FireMonkey.

donkeybeer 4y ago
I did not know mfc is still supported. And yeah thats what I had thought, the win32 stuff still seems the safest bet, or otherwise as you said some safe cross platform framework like Qt.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Not much is happening, but still they added support for HDPI and minor fixes. As incredible as it may seem, MFC has better integration with Direct2D (on WinUI, Win2D still is missing features from its UWP version), and doing COM is much better than the ATL/WRL experience that C++/WinRT team loves so much (without any Visual Studio support for IDL files and code generation workflows).

MikusR 4y ago

Seriously Electron or QT.