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Microsoft is open sourcing Windows 11's UI framework
- bluescrn 1y agoIf only they'd open source Windows Explorer and the taskbar/start menu, rather than resisting peoples attempts to customise them through other hackery.
- BoorishBears 1y agoSeasons may come and go, but one thing will never change. Windows and an absolutely baffling array of UI frameworks with various pitfalls, uncertain futures, and no clear winners. (honorable mention to WinForms though.)
- politelemon 1y agoAnd I still give them points for trying, a rarity among the tech giants.
- jiggawatts 1y agoMy analogy is every Microsoft UI framework was almost completed in the sense of someone being almost pregnant. A framework that has just one show-stopper missing feature or problem is... unusable. You can't embark on a large, complex application development journey if you even suspect that you'll be painted into a corner. For example, many of WPF-derived frameworks had atrocious performance, with fundamental mistakes in their design that made them incompatible with list virtualization. It wasn't until they had to eat their own dogfood and use WPF for Visual Studio that they started fixing these issues. Win UI 3 meanwhile dropped all support for HDR, wide-gamut, etc... going backwards to SDR sRGB only in an era where all mobile phone manufacturers were starting to standardise on OLED HDR displays. The logic behind this decision? Microsoft wanted a UI framework that is "mobile compatible"!
- brokencode 1y agoI just have to wonder.. why after decades can Microsoft not get this right? I’d love to hear insider stories about what’s going on here.
- pjmlp 1y agoFrom watching the community calls, long after I stopped caring, management doesn't seem to care to actually hire people that have Windows development background, many times they would ignore community questions or don't get where they were coming from.
- bloomca 1y agoI really hope they do and the rendering engine is decently decoupled, I'll give a try building a framework on top of it. I wish all platforms gave access to their rendering engine similar to DOM on the web, imo SwiftUI/WinUI (or WPF, but they are very similar) are not that good. Haven't built anything native on Linux, though, no idea how good those are.
- jamil7 1y agoWhat do you mean by access? APIs to program against or fully open sourcing the rendering engine? Because you can mix SwiftUI with a few different rendering frameworks at varying abstraction levels that it itself renders to (AppKit, UIKit, Core Graphics, Metal etc.)
- bloomca 1y agoBasically I want an API available to build my own SwiftUI. Definitely not on the Core Graphics level :) But good point, I actually think AppKit might be a good abstraction level. I'll play with it a bit and see if I can abstract it behind a good component model.
- genter 1y agoWhat's wrong with Skia? Chrome, Firefox, and OpenOffice all use it, and it works on Windows, Linux, MacOS, and Android.
- bloomca 1y agoNothing wrong with it, just want something a bit higher level and ideally with at least some native components/styles.
- incrudible 1y agoIt is a ton of C++ for what is essentially something that an OS like Windows/MacOS/Android/iOS or the browser would provide anyway. Apps that use it ship with a substantial minimum amount of bloat, e.g. Flutter for web.
- hyperbolablabla 1y agoI'm sure it'll be really user friendly(!)
- feverzsj 1y agoSo, they gonna abandon it soon?
- sirwhinesalot 1y agoIt was abandoned from birth.
- bobmcnamara 1y agoFirst time?
- bobsmooth 1y agoWhat "UI framework"? Windows is a Frankenstein's monster of different UI elements.
- bloomca 1y agoRendering engine + set of native components + APIs to make your own components. Windows definitely shot themselves in a foot with building multiple renderers while building them on top of each other.
- Disposal8433 1y agoI haven't used Windows for a long time but I'm sure they still have the moricons.dll of Windows 3.1 somewhere.
- qayxc 1y agoPS C:\Windows> get-childitem -path . -include "moricons.dll" -recurse Directory: C:\Windows\System32 Mode LastWriteTime Length Name ---- ------------- ------ ---- -a--- 01.04.2024 09:22 12288 moricons.dll Directory: C:\Windows\SysWOW64 Mode LastWriteTime Length Name ---- ------------- ------ ---- -a--- 01.04.2024 09:22 2560 moricons.dll Yep.
- Springtime 1y agoI hope this leads to having a native vertical taskbar, which has been absent in W11 despite being a taskbar feature dating back as early as Windows 98. Third-party tools have tried to reimplement it but it's either been by bastardizing the native W11 horizontal taskbar to be vertical (eg: Windhawk) or just restoring the old W10 taskbar code (eg: StartAllBack).
- wild_pointer 1y agoHow will making the UI framework open source lead to taskbar changes? For third party contributions in this area, they need to open source the taskbar, not the UI framework.
- Timwi 1y agoNit-pick: Windows 95, actually. The vertical taskbar was an option in its very first version.
- hulitu 1y ago> Nit-pick: Windows 95, actually. The vertical taskbar was an option in its very first version. Yes, but this was when computer were less capable. Now, you are not able to choose colors or fonts, the taskbar is fixed and the programs need at least 2 seconds to start. Terrific evolution.
- flohofwoe 1y agoIs the Windows team even using WinUI for the native Win11 desktop UI? ;)
- madeofpalk 1y agoIt's confusing what exactly 'WinUI' is, but does Explorer looks WinUI-ish. Parts of it at least.
- e4m2 1y agoExplorer uses XAML Islands. Parts of it are WinUI, while the rest is still Win32.
- daemin 1y agoLast I evaluated it WinUI3 was a terrible developer experience. The application had to be literally installed on the system to even debug it, which means you end up with a large number of useless start menu entries, not to mention registry entries and such. Another thing was that the example programs crashed when I clicked on a button. All I want is something simple to work with to make applications for Windows, and so far I'm still using Win32 with WTL.
- bloomca 1y ago> The application had to be literally installed on the system to even debug it I think that's because you chose "packaged" application, these apps need to be installed so that capabilities are handled correctly. To be fair, macOS has the same issue, although they won't show in Launchpad, they still can be indexed by Spotlight.
- daemin 1y agoI did try to develop an unpackaged test application but I gave up trying to implement it and just went with Win32 instead as I wanted make something rather than messing around with a UI framework. These days if I were to switch from Win32 I might try some custom rendered framework which a lot of apps seem to use, or Qt.
- zigzag312 1y agoI want to be able to create self-contained GUI application that are relatively small and can be just copied and run on another computer. Installation should be an option, not a requirement. From my evaluation, WinUI3 doesn't offer that.
- deaddodo 1y agoWinUI3 offers that, it's just not the recommended way of building+deploying. What you are looking for is "unpackaged, framework-dependent". This will build an application like an old-school WinAPI executable, one which expects the relevant DLLs to be installed on the host system (or distributed in the same directory).
- deafpolygon 1y agoopen-sourcing it so they can get free labor. winui3 was abandoned the moment it was conceived.
- AlienRobot 1y agoI feel like this should be called "open outsourcing"
- muhehe 1y agoI already lost count how many UI frameworks are in windows. It looks like complete chaos and mess. I really wonder what they expect from open-sourcing it. Just to pretend how open they are? Or is there any real benefit to developers who target windows?
- flohofwoe 1y agoThey probably started something new and shiny (Now with AI!) and want to get rid of the old baggage without causing too much of a user revolt (all dozens of them) ;)
- SkiFire13 1y agohttps://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
- cheschire 1y agoWinUI is an evolution of UWP which is an evolution of WinRT. WinUI has been around for years. MAUI is not exactly a competing product and is more about enabling cross platform UI development. Different intent. WinUI is actually ok tech. It’s evolved over the years through a few iterations, now on WinUI 3. Im mostly with you though. Until they rebuild the entire OS in it, including all of the administrative controls and tools, I don’t trust the longevity.
- elygre 1y agoI won’t benefit from this. At the same time, I cannot see a single bad thing about it, so I’m surprised about all the negative energy.
- sirwhinesalot 1y agoThe "bad thing" is that it's effectively getting abandoned, open sourcing it won't make any difference. It's not like external contributions will suddenly turn it into something usable, and they'll just have a skeleton crew maintaining it, like they do WinForms and WPF. People are tired of Microsoft and their ever growing graveyard of ill thought out, half-baked, "native" UI frameworks.
- _mlbt 1y agoNative UI is effectively dead outside of Apple’s platforms, and even there it’s hanging on for dear life. HTML, CSS and JavaScript won the cross platform toolkit battle.
- sirwhinesalot 1y agoSadly yes. And all the platforms are to blame. Microsoft and their 1000 half-working frameworks made writing a wrapper that was any better than wxWidgets impossible. But also Apple "totally not deprecating" AppKit and pushing everyone to the mess that is SwiftUI, Gnome breaking backwards compatibility as a sport, and Qt messing around with QML, meant "native UI" became quicksand. Even going HTML, CSS and JavaScript wouldn't be too bad if the browser engines provided by the OSes were any good, but it took Microsoft giving up and switching to rebranded Chromium as a browser for Windows to provide a usable one in WebView 2. WebKitGTK is also terrible compared to the macOS version of WebKit, which hurts projects like Wails and Tauri. So everyone bundles a freaking copy of Chromium with their applications. I should have studied mechanical engineering.
- Sammi 1y agoThe most important thing the web standards get right is their insistence on never ever breaking backwards compatibility. HTML, CSS, and JS accumulate a lot of cruft, but they do move forward into the future without leaving anyone behind.
- rvba 1y agoSo will we be able to have more than 11 programs on the taskbar without them being compacted? Or a 2 row taskbar? So I can easily switch between my 40 windows open? What is good for productivity?
- ycuser2 1y agoAnd hopefully the customizable quick start bar... I lost hope in Windows but have to use it.
- Rochus 1y agoHow was it implemented? C#? C++?
- e4m2 1y agoC++
- cshokie 1y agoThe source is already available (albeit not buildable). See https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml
- bobmcnamara 1y agoClassic Microsoft.
- lostmsu 1y agoThat's not it
- zerr 1y agoEven for Windows-only GUI software, it is much safer and sane to use cross-platform frameworks such as wxWidgets and Qt Widgets.
- orphea 1y agoAnd if you're on .NET, something like Avalonia.
- wopwops 1y agoDoes this mean that we will be able to get the Quicklaunch toolbar back?
- arunc 1y ago> Alignment with Microsoft Goals > We are being thoughtful about resourcing. This effort is happening alongside other critical responsibilities like security, platform stability, and support for existing products. Our current focus is on foundational work that unlocks value for contributors and increase transparency. We are aligning this work with Microsoft’s broader business priorities to ensure long-term support and impact. I don't sense any benevolence in their words. They are just pulling off their resources and dumping the framework on the public, hoping passionate losers will contribute.
- paavohtl 1y agoThis is definitely corporate speak for "no guaranteed support, no planned further updates beyond critical security bugs, you are on your own".
- nine_k 1y agoApache Windows when? More seriously, a desktop UI toolkit is hardly a moat by now, especially a Windows toolkit, Windows having 3-4 very different look-and-feels mixed and shipped with the official distribution. OTOH security and stability are things that Windows critically depend on to stay on the laptops and desktops in medical, governmental, and financial institutions, and on devices of executives.
- echelon 1y agoThis feels like Windows itself is no longer producing enough growth for Microsoft relative to its other efforts. Even the enterprise sales lock-in isn't compelling enough for the cloud/AI-centric future Microsoft envisions. So Microsoft is slowly pulling resources that it can instead invest into Azure and AI and other high-growth business units. I don't watch Windows too closely. Have there been any other signals of waning investment into Windows? Has Nadella or the other leadership admitted to this? Hasn't Microsoft also been pulling back from Xbox? IIRC, haven't they been trying to consolidate and use gaming to lionize Windows as a platform? After spending billions on multiple AAA studios? That would seem counter to a Windows pullback strategy. Is this a case of the left hand not talking to the right hand?
- paavohtl 1y agoI am worried about the future of native UI technologies on Windows. Traditionally at least the developers of operating systems have eaten their own dogfood and have at least tried to implement well-performing & visually consistent native applications to serve as an example to others. Windows 11 has largely done the opposite. Windows has had minimal but perfectly functional native email and calendar apps at least since Windows 10 (could have been in 8, never used that). Windows 11 originally shipped with those apps, but they were removed in a later update and replaced with laggy webview wrappers that take seconds to start.
- nine_k 1y agoI won't be surprised if there is an effort to rewrite MSO in something like Dart and WASM, and make it independent from any native toolkits altogether. Yes, to reproduce all of the Excel power, and make it available everywhere as a premium plan of O365. Then Windows could pull a ChromeOS. The only place where a native UI is really needed is the lock / login screen; a tiny subset of any current UI toolkit would suffice.
- p_ing 1y agoOffice is a completely separate team divorced from Windows proper. Unless Office deemed it wise to rewrite their UI, they're not going to do so (and it's a frankenstein of a Win32 UI). Office on Windows relies heavily on COM and other Win32-only libraries to function. I can't think of a valid reason to rewrite Office to that extent. They already have Office for the web and Mac Office; while not identical in features, they're often good enough outside of BI scenarios or highly complex Excel work. Outlook is the lone exception where that team decided to have Outlook for the web, Windows Outlook, and Mac Outlook be identical, so those are getting their rewrites with removal of Win32-specific features where applicable.
- mroche 1y ago> Outlook is the lone exception where that team decided to have Outlook for the web, Windows Outlook, and Mac Outlook be identical, so those are getting their rewrites with removal of Win32-specific features where applicable. I wish they didn't. Outlook on macOS is abysmal nowadays and I still find myself resorting to the legacy view just to change some settings that both iterations can read but only one exposes. I significantly prefer using Thunderbird or the web views for Gmail and Zoho Mail over any version of Outlook. Is the integration across O365 apps nice? Sure, but the platforms themselves are miserable to use. In a similar vein, I was cautiously optimistic about Teams V2 for unifying the client. But then they completely dropped the Linux client for their PWA which does not have feature parity with the "native" platforms and has a significantly worse UX.
- 1970-01-01 1y agoWhat we wanted: Win7 UI open source What we got: Win11 dumpster fire, free for everyone to fix
- 3036e4 1y agoI would be fine with really any version as open source or at least one that was free-as-in-free-beer to make it possible to maintain virtual machines running old software without having to rely on dodgy downloaded versions... I'd even pay Microsoft something reasonable if they put them up on GOG or some similar site for a few $.
- listenallyall 1y agoYep. Win7, especially the UI, really was the peak. It was also more stable and faster than 10/11.
- tomovo 1y agoThey need to feed it to all the LLMs to get help keeping it from falling apart. They could go back to Win32 + WinForms and everything would be fine.
- mellosouls 1y agoActual - and rather different - title (as borne out by reading the article): Microsoft is taking steps to open-sourcing Windows 11 user interface framework
- donutshop 1y ago"We laid off most of the team despite record profits and need free labor to maintain what remains"
- dist-epoch 1y agoConfused, the Win 11 UI framework, Electron, is already open source.
- pjmlp 1y agoNo one in Windows development community cares about WinUI, other than those with sunken costs that bought into the WinRT/UWP dream and now are stuck with a dead technology. Too many burned bridges since Windows 8 came out. If anything, this is Microsoft confirmation that they are unwilling to fix all the broken issues, and hoping the community will somehow still care.
- bytefish 1y agoThis. Also DevExpress and Progress Telerik do not invest into their WinUI Controls at all, and that’s a sign they don’t buy into WinUI neither. WinForms and WPF are currently the only viable frameworks for Line of Business application. I have yet to see a WinUI3 application in the wild.
- MrZander 1y agoVery true. We just developed a brand new LOB desktop app and settled on sticking with WPF. WinUI has been dead for years imo. On a side note, I still love WPF after working in it for 10 years. Maybe it's just familiarity, and it's a little verbose at times, but man it's a great framework when you know that you're doing.
- bytefish 1y agoWe also settled on WPF for a new LOB Desktop application, this validates the decision. If you combine WPF with the CommunityToolkit MVVM, it’s a very nice framework to develop with.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- danzk 1y agoDevExpress supported WinUI for a little while but decided to abandon support. One of the biggest problems with WinUI compared to WPF is that DependencyProroperty is implemented as native code, so for .NET developers, there is a huge performance penalty getting or setting any property on control. https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/issues/1633#issuecomment-968612478 https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/issues/1633#i...
- ashoeafoot 1y ago[dead]
- p_ing 1y agoThe answer to this question depends on the knowledge and quality of engineers working on the kernel and the overall Executive. These continue to evolve with more advanced technologies, like VBS or the future usermode endpoints for EDR and possibly anti-cheat, pushing those out of the kernel, which presumably requires kernel work. David Cutler is still there but working on other stuff, last I understood. That does lead to the question of 'would they do it the same way and/or follow the NT OS/2 spec' to get a functionally identical Windows today.
- pjmlp 1y agoIronically, from his latest interview, he mentioned working on Linux on Azure racks that are actually repurposed XBoxes.
- bee_rider 1y agoDumb question from somebody who doesn’t do gui stuff: is this like a Window Manager, or more like GTK or QT or whatever?
- dagmx 1y agoIt’s a UI framework like QtWidgets but closer to QML
- wslh 1y agoMicrosoft has a long history of releasing numerous UI frameworks: VB, MFC, WTL, Silverlight, WPF, WinForms, and others. Yet despite this abundance, many of the core components Microsoft used in its own applications were never available to developers. They rarely ate their own dog food, and desktop UI development relied on third party components. For the past two decades, native desktop UIs have steadily declined in favor of web-based components, so it's unclear what the real benefit of another native framework would be today.
- bobajeff 1y agoAs someone reading the comments here and never made a real Windows app outside of a visual basic hello world a pretty long time ago. Why doesn't Microsoft just stop making these? They already own GitHub and vscode so why not just admit that electron/typescript is the Windows UI framework now?
- bob1029 1y agoFor Windows UIs I've been getting into Win32/GDI/DirectDraw/etc. Tools like CsWin32 and modern C# (ref returns) make working with these APIs a lot more approachable today. It used to be the case that you had to create a nasty C++ project to do any of this. Now you can just list the methods you need access to in your nativemethods.txt file and the codegen takes care of the rest. Win32 is a lot lower level than other things you'd typically consider to be a "UI framework", but the important tradeoff is that it is also a lot harder for Microsoft to remove or screw with in any meaningful way. I cannot come up with something that has been more stable than these APIs. The web doesn't even come close if we are looking at the same timescales.
- shortrounddev2 1y agoI think windows needs a community effort to create an actually good framework for native development on windows. Unfortunately I just dont think such a community is big enough.
- pjmlp 1y agoYou still need C++ in many places, because of the COM rulez attitude within Windows team. Windows Runtime Components was a lost opportunity to level up the play field for .NET. As such, if you want to do something like a shell extension, or context menu extension, it is C++ as always, or having your little C++ stub that calls out into a .NET process.
- hulitu 1y ago> Win32 is a lot lower level than other things you'd typically consider to be a "UI framework", From a user's perspective, Win32 is high level. No other Windows toolkit is able to draw buttons or scrollbars properly.
- CrimsonCape 1y agoYeah this entire discussion about these high level framework would be cooler to discuss the lower level APIs. As far as I know, the entirety of Windows rendering stack is built on either GDI or DirectX? With Win32 even being built on GDI? It would be much cooler to discuss building a ground-up Windows UI stack as close to metal as possible which I guess would necessarily be using DirectX...
- dehrmann 1y agoI wonder how much longer Microsoft stays committed to Windows as a whole. Windows is less than 10% of the company, users are migrating to phones, tablets, and Chromebooks (all of which can run Office), and with .NET on Linux, Windows servers are making less sense. It's a shrinking market.
- fsloth 1y agoI would guess Fortune 500 still runs on desktop windows? (Don’t know but this is just my guess).
- xcrunner529 1y agoYep. Most any regular company is majority windows. It’s not exciting but why would they bother throwing that influence away.
- fsloth 1y agoYup! Boring technologies are great.
- dehrmann 1y agoYes, but for how long? At some point, IT realizes everything's in the browser, and general-purpose computing is a security risk.
- 9dev 1y agoNot every company is a startup that only needs gmail and Figma, though. The ecosystem of LoB apps and device controller software is ginormous, and not going away any time soon.
- LeFantome 1y agoIt will be a long time before Microsoft Exchange, Active Directory, and Excel are not important enough to enterprises to justify the Microsoft subscription. And Visual Studio is still a huge part of the Microsoft capture strategy. Microsoft is working on separating all of the above from Windows without losing too much control but it is going to take a while.
- tekdude 1y agoI kind of wish Microsoft would just continue development of WPF. I've used it for years for various projects, and there is a learning curve but I've since enjoyed working with it. XAML, data bindings, ViewModels... all of it I actually like. But, WPF needs a few improvements to really make it perfect. I tried several of Microsoft's newer frameworks and the open source ones (Avalonia, Uno), but I either couldn't get the sample projects to even build successfully on my machine, or I never got comfortable with development workflow, and went back to what I know. My big idea to fix WPF is to rebuild the data binding system to use the .NET compile-time code generation feature instead of run-time reflection. I think that would solve a lot of problems. For one, projects could do an actual AOT build of their applications (right now, you either need to rely on an installed .NET runtime or "publish" the project with a lot of .NET libraries included for self-extract, bloating the final file size). Code generation would probably improve performance quite a bit too, maybe open up the possibility to compile for cross-platform, introduce type safety for XAML bindings (rather than getting vague runtime binding errors), remove the need for so much class scaffolding, etc... I've thought about starting an open source project to do it myself, but seems like a pretty big task and I would essentially be starting a project to help with my other project which I already don't have enough time to work on...
- S04dKHzrKT 1y agoYour second paragraph sounds like you're describing Avalonia. Avalonia has AOT, compile-time binding errors and cross-platform support. Maybe there have been some updates since you last tried it? I'm not very familiar with Avalonia or WPF though so maybe there's more to it than that. [0]: https://docs.avaloniaui.net/docs/basics/data/data-binding/compiled-bindings https://docs.avaloniaui.net/docs/basics/data/data-binding/co... [1]: https://github.com/kekekeks/XamlX https://github.com/kekekeks/XamlX
- tekdude 1y agoThanks, yes I'll probably have to give it another try some day. I might be confusing Avalonia and Uno, but I think I first attempted it a couple years ago, and then again last year. I remember spending a whole weekend trying to get it running but wasn't having success. Also, I was a bit turned off by how heavy the development environment was. I had to download and install a tool, then that installed more build tools and packages, and then there was also a "recommended" VS Code extension. With WPF, I've gotten used to writing XAML without a designer, so I can get by with just VSCode, the C# extension, and the .NET CLI.
- eska 1y agoMeanwhile a single developer makes performant native UIs in his first native program by actually learning how the OS and winapi work https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bUOOaXf9qIM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bUOOaXf9qIM
- userbinator 1y agoIronic that they're opening up all the new crappy stuff, but not the good old stuff like Win32. Maybe they're scared of WINE?
- bobmcnamara 1y agoSome of the old stuff was purchased any may never be open sourced.
- userbinator 1y agoI highly doubt Win32 was purchased from a third party.
- bobmcnamara 1y agoI highly doubt they're certain that every line is original.
- steve1977 1y agoMaybe there's no one there anymore who understands the source code? Guys like Russinovich are mostly focussing on Azure nowadays.
- specproc 1y agoI get there are old people and stuff, but why should anyone consider Windows these days?
- bobmcnamara 1y agoDesktop/Laptop market share: Windows: 72% Mac: 15% Linux: 5% ChromeOS: 2% Windows share has been on a downward trend for at least 15 years. But it's a gorilla.
- Austizzle 1y agoLots of games don't run on Mac or Linux Others, like adobe software, only run on Mac or windows Windows computers are generally cheaper than macs for the same hardware Plenty of stuff annoys me about windows, but for now it's still what I end up going with every time I need a new computer
- daft_pink 1y agoI want to spam them with pull requests every day to remove onedrive. (sarcasm)
- vachina 1y agoOpen source the mess and hope someone else picks up the tab. I hope nobody contributes to this, MSFT is a multi billion dollar company and they can afford to fix it themselves.
- whoknowsidont 1y agoAnother Windows UI. My goodness. 14 was enough.
- Woodi 1y agoIf abandonware of Win11 UI means Win12 then maybe I like that direction :) On the other hand it it is smpossibility that MS is working on something better, right ? They probably plan some worse UI prison... ASCI was [business] enforced by some EU project, POSIX - the same and probably there are more examples of such things so we just need some sanity __OS with UI__ project from someone...
- falcor84 1y agoFor a second there I read it as "Windows 3.11's UI" and it got me really nostalgic. I wonder if it's been long enough that it's ready to be hip again now.
- chiph 1y agoWhat I miss about UI development on Windows is the commitment to help me create applications that seamless blend in, and look like something that Microsoft themselves had created. The introduction of web technologies has allowed the visual language of the Windows experience to fragment. Not just because Microsoft hasn't kept older applications up to date (like the Control Panel), but also because the modern tooling isn't providing the libraries to match their style. From memory, this first started during Vista, where 3rd party devs just weren't able to match the translucency of the new Aero UI. And the lack of articles being published by the MSDN group with titles like "Here's how you add this new feature to your app" with examples in C, C# and Visual Basic.
- AraceliHarker 1y agoMicrosoft probably has no interest in WinUI anymore and intends to replace it with WebView, which is why they're making it 'open source.' Microsoft's open source is literally a graveyard.
- LarMachinarum 1y agoMany here point out, and rightly so, what an abominable mess UI frameworks have been on Windows for quite a while. That being said, I'd point out that the situation has been (and still is) unfortunately far from satisfying on the cross-platform and open-source side as well: GTK has also been a mess for quite long; Qt has - aside from the bloat - an increasingly repulsive licensing model for professional use (too bad the hopes from the early Nokia adoption days got smashed by MS mole Elop and the later owners of Qt), … … and while there are some nice solutions for specific niches (e.g. Dear Imgui), the overall situation in general-purpose cross-platform native UI frameworks looks quite bleak and unsatisfying imho. There's a huge gaping opening for a permissive-licensed open-source cross-platform UI/Widgets framework that compiles to native, has a good set of widgets and gives access to Vulkan contexts for 3D rendering.
- solarkraft 1y agoPeople like to hate on Electron and React Native (because web bad!!!!) but tend to fail to realize there’s basically no alternative if you want to be platform flexible. Microsoft could’ve made a real impact in this area with a great advantage to themselves, but both efforts I’m aware of were so half hearted they could never have worked out.
- jasonvorhe 1y agoHaving had to setup some Windows systems for a client of mine, all I can say it that they've long abandoned all hope of ever shipping a somewhat coherent UI. It's just not going to happen. Lipstick upon lipstick on frankensteined pigs just aren't going to work. At some point they'll have to start from clean slate or else we'll see 1990s ui remnants leaking through into the 2040s. It's just not going to happen until they start bleeding market share on the desktop. iirc it took desktop linux ~10 years from 1 to 2% and 1 year from 3 to 4% so there's movement in the market. DHH pushing desktop Linux for developers, Pewdiepie making videos about Linux and GrapheneOS, there's definitely an accelerationist argument to be made here.
- sershe 1y agoCool, I always wanted to have a non-movable toolbar in all my software, I miss 1997.
- solarkraft 1y agoIt’s kind of wild how much less flexible and powerful software has become, while (it seems) not becoming much less buggy either. I suppose this coincides with software development becoming much cheaper.