6 ms·
The main problem is that Microsoft is trying to use a WebView. If they really want a single cross-platform app, they should develop a native framework that will
by LorenDB 3y ago
The main problem is that Microsoft is trying to use a WebView. If they really want a single cross-platform app, they should develop a native framework that will work everywhere instead of shoving everything into a web engine.
- Zelphyr 3y agoAll Microsoft needed to do is look to the Apple Music app to know how bad an idea building it on WebView is. But, yeah, I wholeheartedly agree that they should either develop or use a native framework (Flutter perhaps?) rather than trying to shoehorn a technology that has never been very good for application development.
- hulitu 3y ago> All Microsoft needed to do is look to the Apple Music app to know how bad an idea building it on WebView is. Teams.
- jupp0r 3y agoTeams is just a horrible product overall. It wouldn't be better with a completely native app.
- D13Fd 3y agoI really don't get the Teams hate. Or lure organization uses Teams every day to great effect. None of its competitors have apps worth equivalent functionality at a similar price point. It absolutely has bugs and issues, but what it does and what it costs seem to easily outweigh those.
- Atotalnoob 3y agoMattermost?
- hulitu 3y ago> I really don't get the Teams hate Yesterday i lost 5 minutes to change my picture profile in Teams. So good hidden. + other small antiuser features all over.
- Zelphyr 3y agoComing back to this a week late but, MY GOD YES!
- adamrezich 3y agoit's one thing when third parties do this, and quite another when it's the operating system manufacturer. it's as though Microsoft doesn't want Microsoft Windows users to feel good about being Microsoft Windows users when they use their Microsoft software from within Microsoft Windows.
- JohnFen 3y agoMicrosoft appears to have stopped caring about how Windows users feel about using Windows quite a long time ago.
- gochi 3y agoThey already have MAUI. I don't have direct professional experience with it, but the message I'm getting from those who have used it, is that it's cumbersome. With people instead just sticking with XF/Uno/Avalonia (Avalonia being closer to Flutter in how it doesn't actually tap into the platform's native frameworks).
- francisl 3y agoEven if its cumbersome, it's still a win-win for them to use it. The outlook app will be native desktop and mobile (except linux for now). Plus it will give the maui project more credibility, help grow its userbase. Make the framework better by providing a real world project for the maui team to benchmark, highlighting pain point, provide in-house feedback, feature request.
- gochi 3y agoI would be interested to know from anyone at the Office/Outlook team why they went with what they did, and if they had any awareness of MAUI happening at all. Fully agree with the noted benefits, so any non-MAUI team insight would be really interesting
- happymellon 3y agoHas the Office team ever paid that much attention to what Windows was actually recommending? All the releases that I can think of shunned the standard UI toolkits for their own homegrown UI. Presumably to show the Windows folks that the Office team is it's own little empire.
- danzk 3y agoExcel even had its own custom C compiler.
- wvenable 3y agoMy guess would be that they're looking for parity with web apps. I have teams installed on my corporate desktop but I just use the web application any other time and it's... identical. If you want an identical experience with identical code across the Web, iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, Linux then there is only one solution.
- jupp0r 3y agovscode is an Electron app and is great and more responsive than its "native" competitor apps from JetBrains.
- JohnFen 3y agoThat's damning with faint praise, though, isn't it?
- jupp0r 3y agoIs it? I'm pretty happy with vscode. I realize that if you actually measure responsiveness there are better options, but subjectively I'm happy while other "IDEs" are completely unusable for me (Visual Studio, JetBrains IDEs, Eclipse, ...).
- JohnFen 3y agoVSCode isn't an IDE, really, so there is a bit of apples and oranges here. But that said... I meant that comparing VSCode to the likes of JetBrains products and Eclipse isn't meaningful because JetBrains and Eclipse are fairly terrible in terms of performance and system load. Comparing to native programs is more appropriate. Visual Studio is a native program, true, but I think it's a terrible one. All that said, the IDE product space has become awful overall, and I struggle to find a modern good one. So, yeah...
- wrapperup 3y agoJetBrains' IDEs are very heavyweight, it's apples to oranges. And while there is some native code in them, they're still driven by the JVM mostly. There is fleet, but it's not an improvement to vscode at all IMO. How about vscode vs sublime, neovim, or any other native text editor with LSP support? vscode is slow comparatively.
- skydhash 3y agoVS Code is primarily an editor, while JetBrains's products are IDEs. You can add extensions to make VS Code more an IDE. And I'd like to see benchmarks proving your point. If you're using VS Code as an editor, others like Sublime Text, Notepad++, Kate and TextMate make it seem very slow.
- Wojtkie 3y agoPowerBI's UI runs off of WebView and it's the most frustrating thing. That whole software feels like someone mashed together different colors of play-doh and called it a new one. There are multiple ways to do the same thing within the software, but they have differing levels of efficiency. It's a Frankenstein's Monster of technologies bundled up into this lacking visualization software.
- smodo 3y agoDon’t most Microsoft products feel that way? I’m occasionally forced to use a windows machine the office gave me. Windows 11 is a new kind of janky and it also packs all the fun stuff from earlier versions. Anyway, they don’t care. Nadella has us all by the monthly subscripted balls.
- Wojtkie 3y ago>Don't most Microsoft products feel that way? They really do. A lot of their products feel like a "too many cooks" situation where there's too many things being packed into a UI that can't exactly handle it. To make matters worse, the errors you get when something fails aren't too helpful and they are used across various Microsoft platforms. You have to always ensure you're looking for help on PowerBI vs PowerBI developer or PowerQuery.
- meepmorp 3y agoWhat I don’t understand is why the Electron-based desktop application is so bad, but the web client isn’t. Somehow they can make a usable web app but their all-webview client is trash.
- bitwize 3y agoName a native UI framework that enables seamless cross-platform deployment without extensive testing on each platform. Go ahead, I'll wait.
- Alifatisk 3y agoI’ll try, Flutter?
- jeremycarter 3y agoFlutter doesn't use native UI. It recreates similar UI.
- Alifatisk 3y agoOh right.
- sharikous 3y agoTauri is quasi-native in that it uses native WebViews. It ought to be the best of both worlds once we accept that web-based UI is the only way now
- BaseballPhysics 3y agoSure. Electron or similar tech are doing a very simple thing: they're externalizing development costs by transferring them to the individual users in the form of storage costs, performance costs, and user experience costs, to name a few. Meanwhile, Microsoft is a behemoth. Your argument makes total sense for a small shop with limited bandwidth to test. Companies like Microsoft don't get that excuse. They're simply padding their bottom line at our collective expense, and they can do it because they have extremely sticky services in a lot of areas (in this case, corporate email infra).
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 3y agoDoes webui not require testing on each platform+browser combo? Or are we just accepting that sometimes it is going to break and not allowing the same consideration for native GUI frameworks?
- wvenable 3y agoThe web browser is a native cross-platform GUI framework that works everywhere -- including on the web. It's the best and most used cross-platform GUI framework that has ever existed. Why should Microsoft roll their own solution? Nobody has ever been able to make this work outside of the web browser.
- LorenDB 3y agoWrong - I can use Qt and QML to make an app that compiles and runs, unmodified, on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, and others. It can even run on web with WASM. And I wouldn't call web apps "native" or "the best".
- wvenable 3y agoDevelopers want to take their web applications and turn them into desktop applications, not the other way around. The web is the master platform. Qt has had decades to win over this space and failed. Github slapped Chromium together with Nodejs and took over the entire market of cross platform GUI development overnight. I might not like it but I understand it completely.
- tredre3 3y ago> I can use Qt and QML to make an app that compiles and runs, unmodified, on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, and others. As someone who is currently working on several QT apps that also work on mobile: That's an absolute lie. You need a lot of extra work to get it to work on both the desktop and mobile. Realistically you have to build the UI twice, QML is nowhere near as "responsive" as html/css. It's also prone to sluggishness. I stick with Qt because I enjoy working in C++, it's just simpler to have the whole app in one language. My users also told me they dislike electron like you. But it's very disingenuous to tell people that Qt is "just as easy" to build desktop/mobile hybrid apps, they'll be sorely disappointed if they take your word.
- LorenDB 3y agoThat may be your experience, but for the right kind of app (e.g. simpler apps) I can confirm from experience that apart from setting up the Android app manifest, Qt apps don't need modifications to port, especially if you design convergence in from the get-go.