4 ms·

> Did we even have hover in windows 95/98? Hover how? Changing the appearance of a control when the mouse passes over it? Or having a tooltip appearing? Both ca

by ale42 2y ago

> Did we even have hover in windows 95/98? Hover how? Changing the appearance of a control when the mouse passes over it? Or having a tooltip appearing? Both can definitely be implemented quite easily. For the tooltip, I just checked on Delphi 2 (which I was using on Win95 ages ago) and it had the Hint and ShowHint properties (as the current VCL/LCL). > Pre-2k UI APIs were extremely limited. But that was largely enough for most GUIs. Nowadays people are putting a full browser (Electron) to create an interface with a few buttons and a progress bar. I'm thinking of an actual application, a relatively famous SD card writing program which weighs something like 200 MB. Make it with native GUI controls and it takes 50 kB (maybe even less) and will not eat the RAM and CPU of the users. Moreover, people are doing fancy GUIs, with the result that no two application look the same, totally confusing some users (Windows itself is a mess, since Windows 8).

ffsm8 2y ago
The tooltip hover is equivalent with the title attribute in hmtl5, so that once again as trivial as you can get. The original comment made it sound like they wanted something else to happen. The resource inefficency is a completely different argument. That's true, but has no bearing on how complicated the APIs supposedly are. Same with the coherence between applications. That's an issue entirely unrelated to the original claim which was just false. Completely off topic, but... If you're on windows , use Rufus instead if balena etcher. And if you're on Linux/MacOS... dd works great, just make an alias with tab completion for devices/image
- coldtea 2y ago
  >That's true, but has no bearing on how complicated the APIs supposedly are. Same with the coherence between applications. That's an issue entirely unrelated to the original claim which was just false. That's like your opinion, man. First, it's not the invidual APIs themselves, it's several layers of APIs, and combinations thereof. In traditional desktop UIs you just placed widgets together in a form/panel, hooked events, and wrote your application - normally all in the same language and with a single bundle of APIs from your lib (e.g. the Delphi API, the QT API, MS's API). In web dev (I do both), it's an endless layer upon layer of cruft. Even just the browser UI base layer alone has HTML, CSS, JS, the DOM, SVG, Web Components and shadow DOMs, and several other items besides. Then there are the differences and incompatibilities between engines, between desktop and mobile, and so on. Then there's the pre-processing of all those, JS (or typescript), bundlers stuff like Webpack, minimization and map files, then there are Frameworks like Next/React/Angular/Vue, and different varieties. We haven't even touched the backend of those, written in the same (Node) or different languages, and with its own layers added.
  - ffsm8 2y ago
    I don't think it's possible to end this debate unless one of you finally names an example. Please provide a screenshot or at least a name of an UI/application from before 2000 that's not braindead easy to implement with pure html/trivial css and simple click handlers. If you can provide one, I'll yield to your point. Otherwise you're just high on nostalgia and comparing today's complexities caused by a vastly bigger scope to yesteryears simple realities, where multi-platform, i18n, animations, dynamic rerendering, etc pretty much wasn't a thing... entirely If you remove all these features, you end with a simple html file with inline css. And that's easier then it was in the 90s.
    - coldtea 2y ago
      >Please provide a screenshot or at least a name of an UI/application from before 2000 that's not braindead easy to implement with pure html/trivial css and simple click handlers. I'm not sure what exactly you think "UI/applications from before 2000" looked like and were. You do know that, e.g. Word, Excel, Photoshop, Logic, WinAmp, Paint, Framemaker, 3ds Max, Final Draft, Lotus Domino/Agenda, Visio, QuickBooks, Cinema 4D, Encarta, Dreamweaver, ACDSee, Real Player, Outlook, AIM, ICQ, FL Studio, Maya, WinRar, WinZip, InDesign, Quark Xpress, Cubase, and countless others, commercial and freeware, including full featured KDE and Gnome DEs were made before 2000, right?
      - ffsm8 2y ago
        Oh yes, i do know that. but do YOU know how they looked back then? because they're literally just toolbars with buttons on em and canvas frames which are just fricking images / application logic! rendering these viewports/canvases are challenging for sure -- back then just like today, because thats where where the domain logic goes. the UI back then were fucking trivial, youre deluding yourself if you think anything else. Lets go through your first examples one-by-one, as the theme continues i will stop at some point. * Word: literally just 1 menu/text, 2 rows of icons. And a range picker. you can do that within ~15 minutes even as a beginner. https://winworldpc.com/res/img/screenshots/97-98-11f3805bab5fd5b644b1d1bbd72dcdca-w98-2014-09-13-22-20-41.png https://winworldpc.com/res/img/screenshots/97-98-11f3805bab5... * Excel: same as word, with the addition of a grid in the body. the challenge is in chaining together the cells. trivial as hell -- as long as you ignore the application/domain logic, which would've been just as complicated back then. https://winworldpc.com/res/img/screenshots/57db2161e19c9e95d86ab25be9c8b127f205eb8ff365fdb218ecfbadbcba2aa2.png https://winworldpc.com/res/img/screenshots/57db2161e19c9e95d... * slightly challenging for someone that hasn't encountered flex. extremely easy -- albeit time consuming just because of the quantity of buttons. still doable within <1h. https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/uploaded/old-software/graphic-software/adobe-photoshop/adobe-photoshop-5-5-preview.png https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/uploaded/old-software/graphi... * logic: once again, the challenge is in the domain. the UI itself is just buttons in rows. trivially done by simple flex rows. https://www.muzines.co.uk/images_mag/articles/mt/MT_93_04_notator_logi_large.jpg https://www.muzines.co.uk/images_mag/articles/mt/MT_93_04_no... * winamp 2.5: once again, trivial to do. creating this UI -- without the domain logic of actually playing the music etc behind it -- can be done within <1h. https://preterhuman.net/software/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/winamp25-680x445.jpg https://preterhuman.net/software/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/... It goes on and on. Every single example youre citing is just rows and rows of icons. Thats extremely easy to implement with pure html and trivial css. give any of these UIs to an experienced frontend dev and they'll provide you with a click dummy within 15 minutes to 3hours, depending on the quantity of elements on it. I'd be pointless, precisely because nobody cares about such trivial UIs anymore... But hey, whatever floats your boat, right? And everything I wrote here is ignoring the fact that every one of your example was the opposite of easy back in the 90s. They were developed by whole teams over years to get to that point, despite what was claimed initially. And duplicating this with html5 is trivial, that itself should tell you how much easier it's gotten if you just don't chase the hippest tech that's fotm right now

by ale42 2y ago

ffsm8 2y ago

The tooltip hover is equivalent with the title attribute in hmtl5, so that once again as trivial as you can get. The original comment made it sound like they wanted something else to happen. The resource inefficency is a completely different argument. That's true, but has no bearing on how complicated the APIs supposedly are. Same with the coherence between applications. That's an issue entirely unrelated to the original claim which was just false. Completely off topic, but... If you're on windows , use Rufus instead if balena etcher. And if you're on Linux/MacOS... dd works great, just make an alias with tab completion for devices/image

coldtea 2y ago
>That's true, but has no bearing on how complicated the APIs supposedly are. Same with the coherence between applications. That's an issue entirely unrelated to the original claim which was just false. That's like your opinion, man. First, it's not the invidual APIs themselves, it's several layers of APIs, and combinations thereof. In traditional desktop UIs you just placed widgets together in a form/panel, hooked events, and wrote your application - normally all in the same language and with a single bundle of APIs from your lib (e.g. the Delphi API, the QT API, MS's API). In web dev (I do both), it's an endless layer upon layer of cruft. Even just the browser UI base layer alone has HTML, CSS, JS, the DOM, SVG, Web Components and shadow DOMs, and several other items besides. Then there are the differences and incompatibilities between engines, between desktop and mobile, and so on. Then there's the pre-processing of all those, JS (or typescript), bundlers stuff like Webpack, minimization and map files, then there are Frameworks like Next/React/Angular/Vue, and different varieties. We haven't even touched the backend of those, written in the same (Node) or different languages, and with its own layers added.
- ffsm8 2y ago
  I don't think it's possible to end this debate unless one of you finally names an example. Please provide a screenshot or at least a name of an UI/application from before 2000 that's not braindead easy to implement with pure html/trivial css and simple click handlers. If you can provide one, I'll yield to your point. Otherwise you're just high on nostalgia and comparing today's complexities caused by a vastly bigger scope to yesteryears simple realities, where multi-platform, i18n, animations, dynamic rerendering, etc pretty much wasn't a thing... entirely If you remove all these features, you end with a simple html file with inline css. And that's easier then it was in the 90s.
  - coldtea 2y ago
    >Please provide a screenshot or at least a name of an UI/application from before 2000 that's not braindead easy to implement with pure html/trivial css and simple click handlers. I'm not sure what exactly you think "UI/applications from before 2000" looked like and were. You do know that, e.g. Word, Excel, Photoshop, Logic, WinAmp, Paint, Framemaker, 3ds Max, Final Draft, Lotus Domino/Agenda, Visio, QuickBooks, Cinema 4D, Encarta, Dreamweaver, ACDSee, Real Player, Outlook, AIM, ICQ, FL Studio, Maya, WinRar, WinZip, InDesign, Quark Xpress, Cubase, and countless others, commercial and freeware, including full featured KDE and Gnome DEs were made before 2000, right?
    - ffsm8 2y ago
      Oh yes, i do know that. but do YOU know how they looked back then? because they're literally just toolbars with buttons on em and canvas frames which are just fricking images / application logic! rendering these viewports/canvases are challenging for sure -- back then just like today, because thats where where the domain logic goes. the UI back then were fucking trivial, youre deluding yourself if you think anything else. Lets go through your first examples one-by-one, as the theme continues i will stop at some point. * Word: literally just 1 menu/text, 2 rows of icons. And a range picker. you can do that within ~15 minutes even as a beginner. https://winworldpc.com/res/img/screenshots/97-98-11f3805bab5fd5b644b1d1bbd72dcdca-w98-2014-09-13-22-20-41.png https://winworldpc.com/res/img/screenshots/97-98-11f3805bab5... * Excel: same as word, with the addition of a grid in the body. the challenge is in chaining together the cells. trivial as hell -- as long as you ignore the application/domain logic, which would've been just as complicated back then. https://winworldpc.com/res/img/screenshots/57db2161e19c9e95d86ab25be9c8b127f205eb8ff365fdb218ecfbadbcba2aa2.png https://winworldpc.com/res/img/screenshots/57db2161e19c9e95d... * slightly challenging for someone that hasn't encountered flex. extremely easy -- albeit time consuming just because of the quantity of buttons. still doable within <1h. https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/uploaded/old-software/graphic-software/adobe-photoshop/adobe-photoshop-5-5-preview.png https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/uploaded/old-software/graphi... * logic: once again, the challenge is in the domain. the UI itself is just buttons in rows. trivially done by simple flex rows. https://www.muzines.co.uk/images_mag/articles/mt/MT_93_04_notator_logi_large.jpg https://www.muzines.co.uk/images_mag/articles/mt/MT_93_04_no... * winamp 2.5: once again, trivial to do. creating this UI -- without the domain logic of actually playing the music etc behind it -- can be done within <1h. https://preterhuman.net/software/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/winamp25-680x445.jpg https://preterhuman.net/software/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/... It goes on and on. Every single example youre citing is just rows and rows of icons. Thats extremely easy to implement with pure html and trivial css. give any of these UIs to an experienced frontend dev and they'll provide you with a click dummy within 15 minutes to 3hours, depending on the quantity of elements on it. I'd be pointless, precisely because nobody cares about such trivial UIs anymore... But hey, whatever floats your boat, right? And everything I wrote here is ignoring the fact that every one of your example was the opposite of easy back in the 90s. They were developed by whole teams over years to get to that point, despite what was claimed initially. And duplicating this with html5 is trivial, that itself should tell you how much easier it's gotten if you just don't chase the hippest tech that's fotm right now