6 ms·

Because native GUI on Windows and OSX is better for those users and already exists?

by cwyers 11y ago

JupiterMoon 11y ago
I'm new to GUI programming and foreign to both Windows and OSX so please forgive my ignorance. In what way are the native GUIs better? Are they faster/more responsive or do they look better? Which would be more work over the e.g. 1,2 and 5 year period maintaining three guis or one? (Or is QT not quite cross platform so one ends up maintaining three inferior versions anyway?)
- jdub 11y ago
  They behave exactly the way you'd expect, because they don't attempt to copy the expected behaviour. They define the expected behaviour.
  - matt_kantor 11y ago
    Not in this case. Unity's editor has a very "unique" UI. It doesn't try to follow OS-specific conventions most of the time. https://youtu.be/DEumkKjE2YQ?t=8m15s https://youtu.be/DEumkKjE2YQ?t=8m15s
  - JupiterMoon 11y ago
    Until your user has your program installed on e.g. mac and windows and now it works differently on each... This is actually an annoying problem. As a linux user lack of consistency between apps is frustrating but similarly I know people that struggle with changing from mac to windows regularly.
- zanny 11y ago
  Qt is cross platform. The difference is that there are UI rendering (say, scaling) behaviors the native toolchains use Qt does not. It comes as close as possible within its widget layout engine it can get away with to native on every platform it supports (which when you consider thats everything from Android to Windows is a feat) but is never a perfect reproduction. Its not something that is going to be "work" for you - you just aren't going to fix it. You get a portable codebase without any of the if WIN else OSX soup, but the experience will never be perfectly native. Though nowadays I don't even know what native Windows means anymore, is it that ribbon crap, or the metro thing? Because Qt apps just use oldschool Windows Forms style menubars / buttons / etc. You can just go test it yourself, go run VLC and see how "native" it feels. Its using Qt everywhere except Android. But if you want to develop cross platform native looking software... Qt is absolutely it. Only option. And it gets better each release. Otherwise you are going the route of the Unity guys, rewriting your program for every single system.
  - nzp 11y ago
    > But if you want to develop cross platform native looking software... Qt is absolutely it. Only option. If you want to develop cross platform native looking software, Qt most certainly is not the only option, wxWidgets is. In fact, as you yourself pointed out, Qt isn't really native, just tries to fake the native look and feel. wxWidgets actually is, as it's a thin wrapper around the native toolkits.
throwaway24242 11y ago
I think native UIs are overrated and just cause headaches for developers. E.g. take the most popular UI system: HTML/CSS/JS: users have no problem with the fact that all their favourite websites look different. IMHO it is a better idea when the application enforces the same UI across platforms (like QT) than the platform expecting the same UI for all programs. On top of that QT does support native look&feel.
- zanny 11y ago
  Theres a major difference between a website and a native application. I'm used to websites having no consistency and having elements all randomly over the page. I'm only there for a few minutes, after all. A lot of productivity software uses Qt. If it were not using native look and feel it would piss everyone and their grams off when system level keyboard shortcuts didn't work, when menu bars weren't oriented system native, when it didn't use the system file dialog, etc. Integrating with the OS is essential to workflow unless the application literally is your entire workflow.
- rdsnsca 11y ago
  The truth is Mac user expect a Ui to look and feel native, otherwise you will be savaged in reviews, no matter how good your feature set. You last sentence tells me you have never used a QT app on a Mac, because it does not look and feel native.
  - shaan7 11y ago
    There are ones that don't (Quassel for example) and there are ones that do (VLC for one). At the end there is always some polish a developer needs to do, no matter how awesome the toolkit gets. If the developer won't do that, your app will look crap. And its not just OSX, you write your Qt app on Windows and then you run it on Linux, you will need some fine tuning to look perfect. I still prefer it over any other free IRC client for OSX simply because the feature set rocks.
  - throwaway24242 11y ago
    But do the users care? I do not think so. Otherwise a lot of famous websites would have native UI clients.
zanny 11y ago
There is some insane technical debt maintaining three versions of your application with platform specific plumbing. It almost never is worth the investment to become portable after the fact, but when you start out it always strikes me as incredibly shortsighted to lock yourself into a native toolkit in the first place when Qt is so good nowadays.
- panic 11y ago
  You could also make this argument in the other direction: it's incredibly shortsighted to lock yourself into Qt when there are some things you can do only with a native toolkit. Using native libraries on each platform gives you flexibility and intra-platform consistency at the expense of lots of extra effort. It really just comes down to whether you're willing to expend this effort or not.
  - throwaway24242 11y ago
    What are examples that you can just do with a native toolkit?
    - panic 11y ago
      One example that comes to mind is adding custom force touch events on Apple's new trackpads.

Because native GUI on Windows and OSX is better for those users and already exists?

by cwyers 11y ago

Because native GUI on Windows and OSX is better for those users and already exists?

I'm new to GUI programming and foreign to both Windows and OSX so please forgive my ignorance. In what way are the native GUIs better? Are they faster/more responsive or do they look better? Which would be more work over the e.g. 1,2 and 5 year period maintaining three guis or one? (Or is QT not quite cross platform so one ends up maintaining three inferior versions anyway?)

jdub 11y ago
They behave exactly the way you'd expect, because they don't attempt to copy the expected behaviour. They define the expected behaviour.
- matt_kantor 11y ago
  Not in this case. Unity's editor has a very "unique" UI. It doesn't try to follow OS-specific conventions most of the time. https://youtu.be/DEumkKjE2YQ?t=8m15s https://youtu.be/DEumkKjE2YQ?t=8m15s
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  Until your user has your program installed on e.g. mac and windows and now it works differently on each... This is actually an annoying problem. As a linux user lack of consistency between apps is frustrating but similarly I know people that struggle with changing from mac to windows regularly.
zanny 11y ago
Qt is cross platform. The difference is that there are UI rendering (say, scaling) behaviors the native toolchains use Qt does not. It comes as close as possible within its widget layout engine it can get away with to native on every platform it supports (which when you consider thats everything from Android to Windows is a feat) but is never a perfect reproduction. Its not something that is going to be "work" for you - you just aren't going to fix it. You get a portable codebase without any of the if WIN else OSX soup, but the experience will never be perfectly native. Though nowadays I don't even know what native Windows means anymore, is it that ribbon crap, or the metro thing? Because Qt apps just use oldschool Windows Forms style menubars / buttons / etc. You can just go test it yourself, go run VLC and see how "native" it feels. Its using Qt everywhere except Android. But if you want to develop cross platform native looking software... Qt is absolutely it. Only option. And it gets better each release. Otherwise you are going the route of the Unity guys, rewriting your program for every single system.
- nzp 11y ago
  > But if you want to develop cross platform native looking software... Qt is absolutely it. Only option. If you want to develop cross platform native looking software, Qt most certainly is not the only option, wxWidgets is. In fact, as you yourself pointed out, Qt isn't really native, just tries to fake the native look and feel. wxWidgets actually is, as it's a thin wrapper around the native toolkits.

throwaway24242 11y ago

I think native UIs are overrated and just cause headaches for developers. E.g. take the most popular UI system: HTML/CSS/JS: users have no problem with the fact that all their favourite websites look different. IMHO it is a better idea when the application enforces the same UI across platforms (like QT) than the platform expecting the same UI for all programs. On top of that QT does support native look&feel.

zanny 11y ago
Theres a major difference between a website and a native application. I'm used to websites having no consistency and having elements all randomly over the page. I'm only there for a few minutes, after all. A lot of productivity software uses Qt. If it were not using native look and feel it would piss everyone and their grams off when system level keyboard shortcuts didn't work, when menu bars weren't oriented system native, when it didn't use the system file dialog, etc. Integrating with the OS is essential to workflow unless the application literally is your entire workflow.
rdsnsca 11y ago
The truth is Mac user expect a Ui to look and feel native, otherwise you will be savaged in reviews, no matter how good your feature set. You last sentence tells me you have never used a QT app on a Mac, because it does not look and feel native.
- shaan7 11y ago
  There are ones that don't (Quassel for example) and there are ones that do (VLC for one). At the end there is always some polish a developer needs to do, no matter how awesome the toolkit gets. If the developer won't do that, your app will look crap. And its not just OSX, you write your Qt app on Windows and then you run it on Linux, you will need some fine tuning to look perfect. I still prefer it over any other free IRC client for OSX simply because the feature set rocks.
- throwaway24242 11y ago
  But do the users care? I do not think so. Otherwise a lot of famous websites would have native UI clients.

zanny 11y ago

There is some insane technical debt maintaining three versions of your application with platform specific plumbing. It almost never is worth the investment to become portable after the fact, but when you start out it always strikes me as incredibly shortsighted to lock yourself into a native toolkit in the first place when Qt is so good nowadays.

panic 11y ago
You could also make this argument in the other direction: it's incredibly shortsighted to lock yourself into Qt when there are some things you can do only with a native toolkit. Using native libraries on each platform gives you flexibility and intra-platform consistency at the expense of lots of extra effort. It really just comes down to whether you're willing to expend this effort or not.
- throwaway24242 11y ago
  What are examples that you can just do with a native toolkit?
  - panic 11y ago
    One example that comes to mind is adding custom force touch events on Apple's new trackpads.