5 ms·

The churn would have been much worse if Microsoft was rolling out successful GUI framework after GUI framework. As it is you can still write a Win32 app if tha

The churn would have been much worse if Microsoft was rolling out successful GUI framework after GUI framework. As it is you can still write a Win32 app if that pleases you, or still write .NET (and damn that runtime download!) Microsoft has bought into ‘make a web app’ since 1988, they introduced AJAX, they got flexbox and grid into CSS and numerous HTML 5 features to support application UIs. They ‘frikin bought npm!. I use Windows every day but I almost exclusively develop cross-platform systems based on the WWW, Java, Python, etc. Whenever I have developed with .NET it has been for a cross-platform front-end like Silverlight or Unity/itch.io. I can’t say I have a desire to make a native Windows GUI app when I could make a web app: like if it worth doing from my computer isn’t it worth doing it on my iPad from anywhere with Tailscale? For all the complaints about modern JavaScript it gives you the pieces to make a very pleasant world in terms of DX and UX and you certainly don’t need to ship an Electron runtime for many applications.

judah 7mo ago
Your post is touching on a key question: why write a Windows-specific app? I'm a developer who has built and published several apps. I want the biggest possible audience for those apps. Why would I limit those apps to Windows? (Or even to any single platform/OS?) Web apps work everywhere. The web has grown increasingly powerful and capable. Why would I invest in a technology that can only run on a single OS? Doesn't make sense. Just build for the web. You can package web apps for all the major app stores using PWABuilder[0], no Electron needed. Just fast, lightweight apps distributed by app stores and accessible from the web. [0]: https://pwabuilder.com https://pwabuilder.com. Disclaimer: I work on this
- jemmyw 7mo ago
 I used to get hung up on this native vs web thing. But when it comes down to it, it's just one renderer or another unless you're actually drawing the controls yourself pixel by pixel. The sticking point is following the system style / theme. But all the popular desktop OSs seem to have deviated on this so much themselves I'm not sure how important this is.
 - skydhash 7mo ago
 The DOM is very ill-suited for most UI. Too complex and lots of missing features. It’s a whole bag of unneeded code and the resulting UI doesn’t fit anywhere.
 - jemmyw 7mo ago
 > The DOM is very ill-suited for most UI. Too complex and lots of missing features Can you expand on this, because I'm not seeing it myself. The DOM, html+css is very flexible. It easily encompasses most UI. Most UI is some kind of data display, so lists, trees, tables, forms. The need for JS might be what you're complaining about. I think we might be stuck with it as a UI control language forever.
 - skydhash 7mo ago
 The DOM(and CSS) is primarily built for documents and forms, even with the latest addition like Flexbox or Grid layouts. It is closer to typesetting tools like troff, latex, texinfo than any UI engines you can think of. And some that are not needed, like the difference between , <a>, , ,... Also with most GUI frameworks, there's some difference between widgets like label, button, menu, checkbox,... and containers that does layout management. And there are not a lot of elements in both sets. This is the reason why React Native has a very sparse components library. With simpler implementation, you have a simpler rendering path, and the developer have less elements to deal with. Also some have ready-made implementation of really useful widgets, like tree, grids, tables, lists, and other dynamic things. You can find libraries for those on the web, but the web implementation of scrollable container is janky.
 PaulHoule 7mo ago
 The GUI system for the NeXT was based on the Display PostScript system which in turn was based for the PostScript system designed for rendering to printers. Quartz in MacOS X is a further evolution of that. Inside HTML 5 you can find facilities for rendering documents and you can find facilities for rendering applications, including those forms. There is not a clear line between one and the other.
- kvuj 7mo ago
 > Web apps work everywhere. The web has grown increasingly powerful and capable. Why would I invest in a technology that can only run on a single OS? Doesn't make sense. For me, I see these following advantages: - Performance; Native & compiled is king. - Ram usage; Kilobytes vs Mega(giga?)bytes. - UI control which integrates with the rest of the OS (and updates when the underlying OS tweaks the UI) From a business standpoint, I get your point that these points don't really matter. Users have shown to not care in the slightest at the bloat in programs. However for code I write in my spare time, I would much rather write my native Linux program in compiled code than to ship a subpar experience to the few who will interact with it.
- bigstrat2003 7mo ago
 > Web apps work everywhere. The web has grown increasingly powerful and capable. Why would I invest in a technology that can only run on a single OS? There are other options besides "web app" and "only one OS". A cross platform app which uses something like GTK or QT will be a massively better experience for your users, one a web app cannot hope to equal.
 - GandalfHN 7mo ago
 [dead]
 - vscode-rest 7mo ago
 What’s an example of a well made GTK or QT app in your opinion? And what would be the steel man Web app to compare that to?
 - u8080 7mo ago
 Telegram Desktop (Qt)
 - vscode-rest 7mo ago
 We might contrast that with Slack, yes? This thread comes to mind: https://www.0xsid.com/blog/wont-download-your-app https://www.0xsid.com/blog/wont-download-your-app With Slack that’s trivial, Telegram impossible.
 u8080 7mo ago
 Except Telegram Desktop is opensource and they also have full-functional Web version. But tdesktop is really well-made Qt piece of software, snappy, feature-rich and multi-platform.
 vscode-rest 7mo ago
 Interesting, at first pass I’d say the source availability has little to do with the topic at hand. But on second thought it might be rather significant. No company would finance making 2x identical cross platform apps, but if you have a pool of OS folks who are free to contribute at their leisure, the calculus changes a bit.
- manytimesaway 7mo ago
 > Web apps work everywhere. The web has grown increasingly powerful and capable. Why would I invest in a technology that can only run on a single OS? Doesn't make sense. You mean the hypertext platform that has been shoehorned into Java's paradigm, suffering from the same boof-o-rama as Windows, and whose lowest common denominator to support must be Safari for iOS?
 - bad_haircut72 7mo ago
 still works everywhere? the snark doesnt get you firther than that
 - manytimesaway 7mo ago
 Works everywhere on modern hardware only.
 - deafpolygon 7mo ago
 Every time I open a browser on my aging Linux computer (which is running the latest Linux updates), I'm reminded of this...
 - wiseowise 7mo ago
 Majority of software doesn’t need to care about that.
 - PaulHoule 7mo ago
 Safari isn't that bad for most applications. Sure it is a hassle to get notifications working, but my take on that for years as a desktop user was "I need another source of spam about as much as I need to get raped". For years I had bottom of the line Android Tracfones and wondered "how is it people get so excited about apps?" because they just didn't work but once I got an iPhone I started to appreciate that the McDonald's app would send me a notification when my food was ready. Recently it was pointed out to me that the application behind these cards https://mastodon.social/@UP8/116086491667959840 https://mastodon.social/@UP8/116086491667959840 really would benefit from notifications ("your photos are ready!") and I am looking at the hurdles I can jump through and it looks possible but weird. Like why would I want people to install my app on the homescreen where it will get lost on page after page of twisty little app icons that all look alike? Then there is that PWA boondoggle, there is another app in that system that I can use to register those cards and it is a clear case where I might want to do it outside of cell coverage (say I was in the woods) save a form submission and upload when I get back in range. What can I say? That service worker system is insane, something like Kubernetes that only Google could subject us to. I mean, Google could have worked out the math for synchronizing a local database to a remote database, by then the Lotus Notes patents were mostly expired, we could have gotten something good. Or Google could have added an API to control the behavior of the browser cache. Instead we got something half baked and barely reliable and then Apple went out and made something a little bit worse. Had it been a good standard to begin with the outcome could have been entirely different.
- pjmlp 7mo ago
 Because many of those features aren't Web, rather Chrome OS Application Platform, but apparently folks forgot everything about IE history lesson.
- DeathArrow 7mo ago
 >Your post is touching on a key question: why write a Windows-specific app? Why write an anything-specific app?
- direwolf20 7mo ago
 Features. Speed. Do your web apps only work in Chrome by the way?
 - PaulHoule 7mo ago
 I am a Firefox-first developer, almost everything I write works in Firefox/Chrome/Safari without a lot of drama. I have one application at work that loads a table with 40,000 rows into a data grid that works really well on Chrome and lags on Firefox, that's the one case where the performance difference matters. This year I've been interested in biosignals applications that read data with the Web Bluetooth API and Web Serial API which are ordinarily Chrome-only. I was about to get one of my junk Android tablets out of mothballs when I found there is Bluefy for iOS which supports the Bluetooth API so I have no problem going to labs where they have a really klunky HRV system based on a PC and show them something sleek on my iPad and in 20 minutes i can demonstrate to you, with your own physiology, everything you actually need to know out of a big review paper on HRV.
- voidUpdate 7mo ago
 What happens when the user doesn't have internet access, or only has very slow internet? What if they're on a metered connection?
- baudmusic 7mo ago
 [flagged]
- PaulHoule 7mo ago
 Seems to me the point of the web is: no app store bullshit. On the web if I want to publish a web app... I publish the app. If Apple things my app isn't good for their business... tough luck for them. If I want to update a web app... I update the app. If a user wants to use an app... They visit a URL and the app is there! No having to face id, go looking for the app in an interface that's designed to hide the search function, that is filled with spammy trash imitation apps (that somehow get approved by the app store anyway) All the time I hear somebody crying that their developer account got canceled and I want to say "what did you expect? the contract for a developer account is a suicide pact for your business." Stay free!
bigstrat2003 7mo ago
> For all the complaints about modern JavaScript it gives you the pieces to make a very pleasant world in terms of DX and UX There is no such thing as pleasant UX in a web app. The best experience will always be a native app, a web app is at best a port in a storm solution.
- vscode-rest 7mo ago
  Figma is far superior to the native apps it replaced. As is VS Code. Slack.
  - Anamon 7mo ago
    One could (and I would) argue that they achieved that despite their web-tech-based UIs, not because of. At least those of us who were around for the days when most apps were still native, do notice and get bothered by the input lag, for instance. Slack is, in fact, one of the worst offenders. It is so incredibly sluggish. And it doesn't need to be, when I compare it to the speed (and memory consumption) of Pidgin with the Slack plugin.
    - PaulHoule 7mo ago
      Async comm in web apps often keeps them responsive when the native app experience is: spinner... spinner... spinner... spinner... lock up the window and you can't move it... spinner... spinner... spinner... "should i reboot the whole machine first thing or should i try killing the app with task manager and starting again?"
    - vscode-rest 7mo ago
      Their killer feature, being able to share a link with anyone at the company and instantly collaborate (live!), is made far easier on the web platform vs native. “The input lag” frankly does not matter in the big picture, imo.
  - neutronicus 7mo ago
    > As is VS Code. That is, uh, controversial. Along both "alleged replacement" and "alleged superiority" axes.
tannhaeuser 7mo ago
Windows until 24H2 (when Edge and the last remnants of IE were replaced by Chrome) supported HTML apps [1], introduced with Windows 98 Active Desktop. They weren't used much but actually not that bad for end-user needs. [1]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/ms536495(v=vs.85) https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/ms536495...
- zanderz 7mo ago
  It was decent, we shipped one but switched to .net because of high dpi scaling issues IIRC

judah 7mo ago

Your post is touching on a key question: why write a Windows-specific app? I'm a developer who has built and published several apps. I want the biggest possible audience for those apps. Why would I limit those apps to Windows? (Or even to any single platform/OS?) Web apps work everywhere. The web has grown increasingly powerful and capable. Why would I invest in a technology that can only run on a single OS? Doesn't make sense. Just build for the web. You can package web apps for all the major app stores using PWABuilder[0], no Electron needed. Just fast, lightweight apps distributed by app stores and accessible from the web. [0]: https://pwabuilder.com https://pwabuilder.com. Disclaimer: I work on this

jemmyw 7mo ago
I used to get hung up on this native vs web thing. But when it comes down to it, it's just one renderer or another unless you're actually drawing the controls yourself pixel by pixel. The sticking point is following the system style / theme. But all the popular desktop OSs seem to have deviated on this so much themselves I'm not sure how important this is.
- skydhash 7mo ago
 The DOM is very ill-suited for most UI. Too complex and lots of missing features. It’s a whole bag of unneeded code and the resulting UI doesn’t fit anywhere.
 - jemmyw 7mo ago
 > The DOM is very ill-suited for most UI. Too complex and lots of missing features Can you expand on this, because I'm not seeing it myself. The DOM, html+css is very flexible. It easily encompasses most UI. Most UI is some kind of data display, so lists, trees, tables, forms. The need for JS might be what you're complaining about. I think we might be stuck with it as a UI control language forever.
 - skydhash 7mo ago
 The DOM(and CSS) is primarily built for documents and forms, even with the latest addition like Flexbox or Grid layouts. It is closer to typesetting tools like troff, latex, texinfo than any UI engines you can think of. And some that are not needed, like the difference between , <a>, , ,... Also with most GUI frameworks, there's some difference between widgets like label, button, menu, checkbox,... and containers that does layout management. And there are not a lot of elements in both sets. This is the reason why React Native has a very sparse components library. With simpler implementation, you have a simpler rendering path, and the developer have less elements to deal with. Also some have ready-made implementation of really useful widgets, like tree, grids, tables, lists, and other dynamic things. You can find libraries for those on the web, but the web implementation of scrollable container is janky.
 - PaulHoule 7mo ago
 The GUI system for the NeXT was based on the Display PostScript system which in turn was based for the PostScript system designed for rendering to printers. Quartz in MacOS X is a further evolution of that. Inside HTML 5 you can find facilities for rendering documents and you can find facilities for rendering applications, including those forms. There is not a clear line between one and the other.
kvuj 7mo ago
> Web apps work everywhere. The web has grown increasingly powerful and capable. Why would I invest in a technology that can only run on a single OS? Doesn't make sense. For me, I see these following advantages: - Performance; Native & compiled is king. - Ram usage; Kilobytes vs Mega(giga?)bytes. - UI control which integrates with the rest of the OS (and updates when the underlying OS tweaks the UI) From a business standpoint, I get your point that these points don't really matter. Users have shown to not care in the slightest at the bloat in programs. However for code I write in my spare time, I would much rather write my native Linux program in compiled code than to ship a subpar experience to the few who will interact with it.
bigstrat2003 7mo ago
> Web apps work everywhere. The web has grown increasingly powerful and capable. Why would I invest in a technology that can only run on a single OS? There are other options besides "web app" and "only one OS". A cross platform app which uses something like GTK or QT will be a massively better experience for your users, one a web app cannot hope to equal.
- GandalfHN 7mo ago
  [dead]
- vscode-rest 7mo ago
  What’s an example of a well made GTK or QT app in your opinion? And what would be the steel man Web app to compare that to?
  - u8080 7mo ago
    Telegram Desktop (Qt)
    - vscode-rest 7mo ago
      We might contrast that with Slack, yes? This thread comes to mind: https://www.0xsid.com/blog/wont-download-your-app https://www.0xsid.com/blog/wont-download-your-app With Slack that’s trivial, Telegram impossible.
      - u8080 7mo ago
        Except Telegram Desktop is opensource and they also have full-functional Web version. But tdesktop is really well-made Qt piece of software, snappy, feature-rich and multi-platform.
        vscode-rest 7mo ago
        Interesting, at first pass I’d say the source availability has little to do with the topic at hand. But on second thought it might be rather significant. No company would finance making 2x identical cross platform apps, but if you have a pool of OS folks who are free to contribute at their leisure, the calculus changes a bit.
manytimesaway 7mo ago
> Web apps work everywhere. The web has grown increasingly powerful and capable. Why would I invest in a technology that can only run on a single OS? Doesn't make sense. You mean the hypertext platform that has been shoehorned into Java's paradigm, suffering from the same boof-o-rama as Windows, and whose lowest common denominator to support must be Safari for iOS?
- bad_haircut72 7mo ago
  still works everywhere? the snark doesnt get you firther than that
  - manytimesaway 7mo ago
    Works everywhere on modern hardware only.
    - deafpolygon 7mo ago
      Every time I open a browser on my aging Linux computer (which is running the latest Linux updates), I'm reminded of this...
    - wiseowise 7mo ago
      Majority of software doesn’t need to care about that.
- PaulHoule 7mo ago
  Safari isn't that bad for most applications. Sure it is a hassle to get notifications working, but my take on that for years as a desktop user was "I need another source of spam about as much as I need to get raped". For years I had bottom of the line Android Tracfones and wondered "how is it people get so excited about apps?" because they just didn't work but once I got an iPhone I started to appreciate that the McDonald's app would send me a notification when my food was ready. Recently it was pointed out to me that the application behind these cards https://mastodon.social/@UP8/116086491667959840 https://mastodon.social/@UP8/116086491667959840 really would benefit from notifications ("your photos are ready!") and I am looking at the hurdles I can jump through and it looks possible but weird. Like why would I want people to install my app on the homescreen where it will get lost on page after page of twisty little app icons that all look alike? Then there is that PWA boondoggle, there is another app in that system that I can use to register those cards and it is a clear case where I might want to do it outside of cell coverage (say I was in the woods) save a form submission and upload when I get back in range. What can I say? That service worker system is insane, something like Kubernetes that only Google could subject us to. I mean, Google could have worked out the math for synchronizing a local database to a remote database, by then the Lotus Notes patents were mostly expired, we could have gotten something good. Or Google could have added an API to control the behavior of the browser cache. Instead we got something half baked and barely reliable and then Apple went out and made something a little bit worse. Had it been a good standard to begin with the outcome could have been entirely different.
pjmlp 7mo ago
Because many of those features aren't Web, rather Chrome OS Application Platform, but apparently folks forgot everything about IE history lesson.
DeathArrow 7mo ago
>Your post is touching on a key question: why write a Windows-specific app? Why write an anything-specific app?
direwolf20 7mo ago
Features. Speed. Do your web apps only work in Chrome by the way?
- PaulHoule 7mo ago
  I am a Firefox-first developer, almost everything I write works in Firefox/Chrome/Safari without a lot of drama. I have one application at work that loads a table with 40,000 rows into a data grid that works really well on Chrome and lags on Firefox, that's the one case where the performance difference matters. This year I've been interested in biosignals applications that read data with the Web Bluetooth API and Web Serial API which are ordinarily Chrome-only. I was about to get one of my junk Android tablets out of mothballs when I found there is Bluefy for iOS which supports the Bluetooth API so I have no problem going to labs where they have a really klunky HRV system based on a PC and show them something sleek on my iPad and in 20 minutes i can demonstrate to you, with your own physiology, everything you actually need to know out of a big review paper on HRV.
voidUpdate 7mo ago
What happens when the user doesn't have internet access, or only has very slow internet? What if they're on a metered connection?
baudmusic 7mo ago
[flagged]
PaulHoule 7mo ago
Seems to me the point of the web is: no app store bullshit. On the web if I want to publish a web app... I publish the app. If Apple things my app isn't good for their business... tough luck for them. If I want to update a web app... I update the app. If a user wants to use an app... They visit a URL and the app is there! No having to face id, go looking for the app in an interface that's designed to hide the search function, that is filled with spammy trash imitation apps (that somehow get approved by the app store anyway) All the time I hear somebody crying that their developer account got canceled and I want to say "what did you expect? the contract for a developer account is a suicide pact for your business." Stay free!

bigstrat2003 7mo ago

> For all the complaints about modern JavaScript it gives you the pieces to make a very pleasant world in terms of DX and UX There is no such thing as pleasant UX in a web app. The best experience will always be a native app, a web app is at best a port in a storm solution.

vscode-rest 7mo ago
Figma is far superior to the native apps it replaced. As is VS Code. Slack.
- Anamon 7mo ago
  One could (and I would) argue that they achieved that despite their web-tech-based UIs, not because of. At least those of us who were around for the days when most apps were still native, do notice and get bothered by the input lag, for instance. Slack is, in fact, one of the worst offenders. It is so incredibly sluggish. And it doesn't need to be, when I compare it to the speed (and memory consumption) of Pidgin with the Slack plugin.
  - PaulHoule 7mo ago
    Async comm in web apps often keeps them responsive when the native app experience is: spinner... spinner... spinner... spinner... lock up the window and you can't move it... spinner... spinner... spinner... "should i reboot the whole machine first thing or should i try killing the app with task manager and starting again?"
  - vscode-rest 7mo ago
    Their killer feature, being able to share a link with anyone at the company and instantly collaborate (live!), is made far easier on the web platform vs native. “The input lag” frankly does not matter in the big picture, imo.
- neutronicus 7mo ago
  > As is VS Code. That is, uh, controversial. Along both "alleged replacement" and "alleged superiority" axes.

tannhaeuser 7mo ago

Windows until 24H2 (when Edge and the last remnants of IE were replaced by Chrome) supported HTML apps [1], introduced with Windows 98 Active Desktop. They weren't used much but actually not that bad for end-user needs. [1]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/ms536495(v=vs.85) https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/ms536495...

zanderz 7mo ago
It was decent, we shipped one but switched to .net because of high dpi scaling issues IIRC