4 ms·

Let me make it easy for you, if you want it to look and feel native on Windows 11, use WinUI 3. ChatGPT gives a decent summary of the history of all that: htt

Let me make it easy for you, if you want it to look and feel native on Windows 11, use WinUI 3. ChatGPT gives a decent summary of the history of all that: https://chat.openai.com/share/6478dcdd-98d3-449a-84be-be56664b03aa https://chat.openai.com/share/6478dcdd-98d3-449a-84be-be5666...

pjc50 3y ago
That's not a bad summary for AI, but it is very funny that every step of the way gets the adjective "modern". My own personal outsider take on this is that there are really only three eras that need to be considered: - "HWND era": win16/win32 classic UI aka "WinForms". This extends all the way up to ActiveX. Microsoft get to dictate the platform without real competition. - XAML era: the second system. Classic WinForms doesn't handle high-DPI displays or GPU rendering; it relies on pixel positioning and lets you draw directly on the framebuffer. WPF is the reaction to this. - Phone era: suddenly there is real competition and users start using a lot of non-Microsoft platforms. Microsoft launch their own phone, complete with new sandboxed APIs that don't correspond to Win32 at all. This is ultimately a market failure. But Microsoft have invested too much in UWP. At this point, the winning stacks globally are, in order: web (including Electron), iOS, Android. Nobody wants to do native Windows applications that aren't games if they can possibly help it. Even Microsoft start building web-on-desktop apps like Teams. So the only thing Microsoft can do is salvage operations on UWP APIs and XAML-related techs to try to make it usable to desktop developers by getting out of the sandbox.
- grumblingdev 3y ago
  Does Microsoft have a reply for declarative UIs, e.g. React / SwiftUI / Jetpack Compose? I had thought XAML was it and was ahead of the game, but it's kind of a different approach. All the new ones define their declarative UI as inline source code.
grumblingdev 3y ago
Can I use TypeScript and WinUI 3? I remember a while back there was contraversy that MS wanted people to write Windows apps for store in TypeScript. What happened to that?
- fassssst 3y ago
  No, WinUI 3 supports C# and C++. You can use it with TypeScript indirectly via React Native.
  - grumblingdev 3y ago
    Did Windows ever support writing apps with JavaScript? UWP maybe? I swear I remember it being a thing...
    - fassssst 3y ago
      You still can create a progressive web app and submit it to the Microsoft Store. Essentially the same as Win8 web apps but better since PWA’s use a Chromium-based web view. You don’t get native controls though.

pjc50 3y ago

That's not a bad summary for AI, but it is very funny that every step of the way gets the adjective "modern". My own personal outsider take on this is that there are really only three eras that need to be considered: - "HWND era": win16/win32 classic UI aka "WinForms". This extends all the way up to ActiveX. Microsoft get to dictate the platform without real competition. - XAML era: the second system. Classic WinForms doesn't handle high-DPI displays or GPU rendering; it relies on pixel positioning and lets you draw directly on the framebuffer. WPF is the reaction to this. - Phone era: suddenly there is real competition and users start using a lot of non-Microsoft platforms. Microsoft launch their own phone, complete with new sandboxed APIs that don't correspond to Win32 at all. This is ultimately a market failure. But Microsoft have invested too much in UWP. At this point, the winning stacks globally are, in order: web (including Electron), iOS, Android. Nobody wants to do native Windows applications that aren't games if they can possibly help it. Even Microsoft start building web-on-desktop apps like Teams. So the only thing Microsoft can do is salvage operations on UWP APIs and XAML-related techs to try to make it usable to desktop developers by getting out of the sandbox.

grumblingdev 3y ago
Does Microsoft have a reply for declarative UIs, e.g. React / SwiftUI / Jetpack Compose? I had thought XAML was it and was ahead of the game, but it's kind of a different approach. All the new ones define their declarative UI as inline source code.

grumblingdev 3y ago

Can I use TypeScript and WinUI 3? I remember a while back there was contraversy that MS wanted people to write Windows apps for store in TypeScript. What happened to that?

fassssst 3y ago
No, WinUI 3 supports C# and C++. You can use it with TypeScript indirectly via React Native.
- grumblingdev 3y ago
  Did Windows ever support writing apps with JavaScript? UWP maybe? I swear I remember it being a thing...
  - fassssst 3y ago
    You still can create a progressive web app and submit it to the Microsoft Store. Essentially the same as Win8 web apps but better since PWA’s use a Chromium-based web view. You don’t get native controls though.