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> cross platform That's one word that should never been used in an design meeting. None of the GUI I've used has managed to do this right. Even Emacs and Fire

> cross platform That's one word that should never been used in an design meeting. None of the GUI I've used has managed to do this right. Even Emacs and Firefox. The platform are totally different (and in the case of Linux/Unix, there's a lot of different HIG competing). So trying to be cross platform is a good illustration of the lesson in https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/ The best bet should be a core with the domain with a UI shell. And then you swap the shell according to the platform.

Gigachad 6mo ago
I want my applications to look consistent across platforms. Why would I want discord for example to look entirely different between MacOS and Linux? With the current state of things, once I use the app anywhere, I'll know where everything is on any platform.
- skydhash 6mo ago
  Take a good look around and check how often people do really change computer platform. And you already have so many things that are different that the "same look" is just an excuse. Gnome, KDE, macOS, Windows does not have the same UX in their file explorer which is a basic utility that everyone has to use. Same with connecting to a WiFi and creating a new user account. So why would you want Discord to be consistent, when you're mostly using the same desktop (or switch between at most two) for hours. The thing is when HIG were followed instead of everyone trying to create their "brand", everyone knows where the common actions were. You learned the platform and then can use any app. With the new trend, you would only have one computer, but any new app is a new puzzle to figure out.
  - Gigachad 6mo ago
    I don't really have any issues working out how to use modern electron apps, they all follow very simple UX patterns, I find them much easier to use than the average native wxWidgets/qt app. Simple, consistent UI is less about the color scheme and border radius being consistent and about things being simple and well laid out on a higher level. Two apps can have different CSS while being easy to understand because the core flows and ideas are the same. While many older native apps feel like junk draw UI with crap thrown everywhere and weird app specific quirks and patterns. Even if it all does use native inputs and windows.
    - GoblinSlayer 6mo ago
      Electron apps use the usual web 2.0 forced keyboard focus antipattern which breaks page up and page down scrolling, so they are difficult to use. Also blurry text rendering.
thayne 6mo ago
> The best bet should be a core with the domain with a UI shell. And then you swap the shell according to the platform. I've rarely seen that turn out very well. Typically it works ok on whatever desktop main developers use, and not so much on the others. That means using multiple frameworks, witht their own idioms and quirks and having to repeat a lot of work. Unless your UI is very simple it is pretty expensive to maintain multiple separate versions of it.
- skydhash 6mo ago
  The best way I’ve seen this implemented is having the domain be a library or a protocol/server. For a lot of saas, we already have people writing the mobile versions and the web version.. Yes. It’s more work than dumping Electron on users. Quality often is.
mghackerlady 6mo ago
It's not even that cross platform is necessarily bad, it's that we have so many cross platform toolkits and they compete with native ones. I think we'd all be better off if we just declared qt the standard gui library and rid ourselves of the chaos we find ourselves in

Gigachad 6mo ago

I want my applications to look consistent across platforms. Why would I want discord for example to look entirely different between MacOS and Linux? With the current state of things, once I use the app anywhere, I'll know where everything is on any platform.

skydhash 6mo ago
Take a good look around and check how often people do really change computer platform. And you already have so many things that are different that the "same look" is just an excuse. Gnome, KDE, macOS, Windows does not have the same UX in their file explorer which is a basic utility that everyone has to use. Same with connecting to a WiFi and creating a new user account. So why would you want Discord to be consistent, when you're mostly using the same desktop (or switch between at most two) for hours. The thing is when HIG were followed instead of everyone trying to create their "brand", everyone knows where the common actions were. You learned the platform and then can use any app. With the new trend, you would only have one computer, but any new app is a new puzzle to figure out.
- Gigachad 6mo ago
  I don't really have any issues working out how to use modern electron apps, they all follow very simple UX patterns, I find them much easier to use than the average native wxWidgets/qt app. Simple, consistent UI is less about the color scheme and border radius being consistent and about things being simple and well laid out on a higher level. Two apps can have different CSS while being easy to understand because the core flows and ideas are the same. While many older native apps feel like junk draw UI with crap thrown everywhere and weird app specific quirks and patterns. Even if it all does use native inputs and windows.
  - GoblinSlayer 6mo ago
    Electron apps use the usual web 2.0 forced keyboard focus antipattern which breaks page up and page down scrolling, so they are difficult to use. Also blurry text rendering.

thayne 6mo ago

> The best bet should be a core with the domain with a UI shell. And then you swap the shell according to the platform. I've rarely seen that turn out very well. Typically it works ok on whatever desktop main developers use, and not so much on the others. That means using multiple frameworks, witht their own idioms and quirks and having to repeat a lot of work. Unless your UI is very simple it is pretty expensive to maintain multiple separate versions of it.

skydhash 6mo ago
The best way I’ve seen this implemented is having the domain be a library or a protocol/server. For a lot of saas, we already have people writing the mobile versions and the web version.. Yes. It’s more work than dumping Electron on users. Quality often is.

mghackerlady 6mo ago

It's not even that cross platform is necessarily bad, it's that we have so many cross platform toolkits and they compete with native ones. I think we'd all be better off if we just declared qt the standard gui library and rid ourselves of the chaos we find ourselves in