4 ms·

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 res

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.

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.