10 ms·

The correct thing to use is AppKit on OS X, WPF on Windows, GTK+ on Gnome, and Qt on KDE. Yes, this requires more code, but it results in a much, much better ex

by glorien 11y ago

The correct thing to use is AppKit on OS X, WPF on Windows, GTK+ on Gnome, and Qt on KDE. Yes, this requires more code, but it results in a much, much better experience. As an OS X user, it's so obvious when an app isn't properly using AppKit.

rockdoe 11y ago
You're just describing what sits underneath the XUL or HTML.
- IshKebab 11y ago
  No he isn't?
  - reubenmorais 11y ago
    Well, most of it isn't, but some things are. Radio buttons and checkboxes on Gtk for example: https://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/widget/gtk/gtk2drawing.c https://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/widget/gtk/gt...
basch 11y ago
Camino was discontinued 3 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camino_(web_browser) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camino_(web_browser) k-melon for windows http://kmeleonbrowser.org/ http://kmeleonbrowser.org/
phkahler 11y ago
I'm used to agree. That's how you get a native look and feel, but I don't think that's necessarily what people want. I find the use of tabs in the browser to be very telling - it means the way OSes have handled multiple instances of an application are not satisfactory, so people want the browser to handle that. Once it's in the browser people will want it to be the same on all platforms.
- kaolinite 11y ago
  There's nothing wrong with designing custom UI elements, so long as they're done properly on each platform. For example, Safari's tabs are completely custom (as far as I know) - they can't be used in other applications, they aren't part of Cocoa - but they're tastefully designed and they work well.
- blt 11y ago
  Someone should survey software end users to figure out if they care about native-looking UIs. I have a feeling most users don't care very much. My most-used GUI apps are Chrome, Visual Studio, Ableton Live, and Photoshop. All of them have heavily customized user interfaces. Their custom controls and tiling/layout systems are tailored to the application domain. Except for Chrome, these are "do your life's work" applications. They should aim for maximum productivity, even if it makes the application harder to use. I think they would suffer if they tried to "look native". Most everything else is done in web apps these days. Users don't seem to have a problem dealing with different button CSS in different web apps. Certain things, like the "open file" dialog, really suffer if they look non-native. But I think users don't care about most other cases.
  - pcwalton 11y ago
    In a sense, Chrome has been moving further and further away from being native over time; in-content preferences, for example.
kaolinite 11y ago
Could not agree more. Firefox has traditionally not been very popular on Mac for this very reason. They've gotten better at imitating OS X slightly, but even today it's still out of the question for me (and I suspect many Mac users) to use Firefox. It feels really awful to use. Whilst Chrome and Safari have nice native scrolling, rubber banding and smooth zooming, just like any other native app, Firefox feels jarring. It only just supports gestures (there's no nice animation like in Safari or Chrome). My day-to-day browser is Safari. Not because it's faster or technically better (it really isn't) but because it's fully native and integrates properly with the system, e.g. it integrates properly with the downloads folder (showing the progress bar on the file and on the folder icon) and it looks and feels like any other Mac app. Chrome may be faster, Firefox may be more extensible - but I choose Safari because it works properly with the OS. I really love Mozilla and I would love to use Firefox. I really hope they go with a OS-specific native shell - although I suspect they'll go with building the UI in HTML/CSS. But if they do, there's a good chance I'll switch.
- ndesaulniers 11y ago
  It's hard for me to believe someone telling me "if it's not 100% native look and feel it's not good" when they're trying to sell something and build a content silo. > The correct thing to use is AppKit on OS X, WPF on Windows, GTK+ on Gnome, and Qt on KDE. WHAT?! Personally, being asked to rewrite the UI for X different native platforms is rage-inducing. Some people who write their apps in Web technologies have done native UIs and are sick of the duplicated effort. ;)
  - jfb 11y ago
    Web UIs are great for developers, much, much less so for people who don't have an ideological axe to grind or a limited development budget.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - marssaxman 11y ago
jarek 11y ago
As a non-OS X user, I would very much prefer Firefox developer time to be concentrated on things other than platform-specific UI code.
- seanalltogether 11y ago
  Well they're either going to have people writing platform specific code, or people writing code to emulate and keep current with platform specific features.
- cookiecaper 11y ago
  Agreed. I strongly dislike the philosophy espoused by the parent. "I recognize that other products are technically superior and allow me to do more things without inflicting undue hardship or learning curve, but because the animations aren't as nice, I'm just going to use this other thing." I have no interest in humoring those with such a vain and frankly indefensible perspective.
  - paublyrne 11y ago
    Look and feel are important to me in a product, amongst other things. I don't see that as something that needs defending.
  - worklogin 11y ago
    What a comment! You made a binary discussion from a nuanced one. The question is whether an attractive UI (which, surprise, matters to many people) is worth focusing developer effort. Several comments in this thread advocate that non-native UIs look tacky, and that it would do well for the product to have native rendering. As an aside, it's the no. 1 reason I don't use Atom: An ugly, slow UI that doesn't render native elements. So no, it's not indefensible. I think your conspirator's OP comment "As a non-OSX user, I don't care about your UX" is more vain.
    - jarek 11y ago
      > I think your conspirator's OP comment "As a non-OSX user, I don't care about your UX" is more vain. Sure it's vain. We all have personal priorities. People suggesting that Mozilla spend time developing the perfect OS X product are expressing their priorities as well. I could say that I'm a BeOS user and I really think that Firefox should have a fully-integrated native UX because the way a product looks and works is important. But no one cares about BeOS UX because they're vain. It looks like OS X users are the only ones who really care. Windows users have been dealing with non-standard UIs since tabs first stopped being MDI, and, comparing Chrome's adoption with how it looks, they're mostly fine with them. Linux users are mostly just straight-up crazy and Firefox is fine for them. Smartphone users have seen more non-standard than standard UIs and it doesn't seem to have been a problem for the Facebook app. The question is then is it worth caring as much about OS X UI, or is it more useful to make a better product for the 80+% of users who don't use OS X?
malkia 11y ago
So if you don't use Gnome or KDE - what should be used? I'm using XFCE at home, and Cinnamon at work.
- mappu 11y ago
  XFCE and Cinnamon are both primarily GTK+-oriented. Although your point isn't lost. In 2015 Mozilla probably won't release a Motif build for the WindowMaker users.
inDigiNeous 11y ago
This would result in bugs between different UIs on different platforms, resulting in duplicated effort and codebase, and many frustrated developers who want to work on feature Y on platform X, and cannot port it to platform Z because of missing support or different implementations. I don't really care if an application is native or not, Firefox works great for me on Os X and I really appreciate I can run the same browser on all platforms I have to use or developer for.

by glorien 11y ago

rockdoe 11y ago

You're just describing what sits underneath the XUL or HTML.

IshKebab 11y ago
No he isn't?
- reubenmorais 11y ago
  Well, most of it isn't, but some things are. Radio buttons and checkboxes on Gtk for example: https://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/widget/gtk/gtk2drawing.c https://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/widget/gtk/gt...

basch 11y ago

Camino was discontinued 3 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camino_(web_browser) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camino_(web_browser) k-melon for windows http://kmeleonbrowser.org/ http://kmeleonbrowser.org/

phkahler 11y ago

I'm used to agree. That's how you get a native look and feel, but I don't think that's necessarily what people want. I find the use of tabs in the browser to be very telling - it means the way OSes have handled multiple instances of an application are not satisfactory, so people want the browser to handle that. Once it's in the browser people will want it to be the same on all platforms.

kaolinite 11y ago
There's nothing wrong with designing custom UI elements, so long as they're done properly on each platform. For example, Safari's tabs are completely custom (as far as I know) - they can't be used in other applications, they aren't part of Cocoa - but they're tastefully designed and they work well.
blt 11y ago
Someone should survey software end users to figure out if they care about native-looking UIs. I have a feeling most users don't care very much. My most-used GUI apps are Chrome, Visual Studio, Ableton Live, and Photoshop. All of them have heavily customized user interfaces. Their custom controls and tiling/layout systems are tailored to the application domain. Except for Chrome, these are "do your life's work" applications. They should aim for maximum productivity, even if it makes the application harder to use. I think they would suffer if they tried to "look native". Most everything else is done in web apps these days. Users don't seem to have a problem dealing with different button CSS in different web apps. Certain things, like the "open file" dialog, really suffer if they look non-native. But I think users don't care about most other cases.
- pcwalton 11y ago
  In a sense, Chrome has been moving further and further away from being native over time; in-content preferences, for example.

kaolinite 11y ago

Could not agree more. Firefox has traditionally not been very popular on Mac for this very reason. They've gotten better at imitating OS X slightly, but even today it's still out of the question for me (and I suspect many Mac users) to use Firefox. It feels really awful to use. Whilst Chrome and Safari have nice native scrolling, rubber banding and smooth zooming, just like any other native app, Firefox feels jarring. It only just supports gestures (there's no nice animation like in Safari or Chrome). My day-to-day browser is Safari. Not because it's faster or technically better (it really isn't) but because it's fully native and integrates properly with the system, e.g. it integrates properly with the downloads folder (showing the progress bar on the file and on the folder icon) and it looks and feels like any other Mac app. Chrome may be faster, Firefox may be more extensible - but I choose Safari because it works properly with the OS. I really love Mozilla and I would love to use Firefox. I really hope they go with a OS-specific native shell - although I suspect they'll go with building the UI in HTML/CSS. But if they do, there's a good chance I'll switch.

ndesaulniers 11y ago
It's hard for me to believe someone telling me "if it's not 100% native look and feel it's not good" when they're trying to sell something and build a content silo. > The correct thing to use is AppKit on OS X, WPF on Windows, GTK+ on Gnome, and Qt on KDE. WHAT?! Personally, being asked to rewrite the UI for X different native platforms is rage-inducing. Some people who write their apps in Web technologies have done native UIs and are sick of the duplicated effort. ;)
- jfb 11y ago
  Web UIs are great for developers, much, much less so for people who don't have an ideological axe to grind or a limited development budget.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- marssaxman 11y ago

jarek 11y ago

As a non-OS X user, I would very much prefer Firefox developer time to be concentrated on things other than platform-specific UI code.

seanalltogether 11y ago
Well they're either going to have people writing platform specific code, or people writing code to emulate and keep current with platform specific features.
cookiecaper 11y ago
Agreed. I strongly dislike the philosophy espoused by the parent. "I recognize that other products are technically superior and allow me to do more things without inflicting undue hardship or learning curve, but because the animations aren't as nice, I'm just going to use this other thing." I have no interest in humoring those with such a vain and frankly indefensible perspective.
- paublyrne 11y ago
  Look and feel are important to me in a product, amongst other things. I don't see that as something that needs defending.
- worklogin 11y ago
  What a comment! You made a binary discussion from a nuanced one. The question is whether an attractive UI (which, surprise, matters to many people) is worth focusing developer effort. Several comments in this thread advocate that non-native UIs look tacky, and that it would do well for the product to have native rendering. As an aside, it's the no. 1 reason I don't use Atom: An ugly, slow UI that doesn't render native elements. So no, it's not indefensible. I think your conspirator's OP comment "As a non-OSX user, I don't care about your UX" is more vain.
  - jarek 11y ago
    > I think your conspirator's OP comment "As a non-OSX user, I don't care about your UX" is more vain. Sure it's vain. We all have personal priorities. People suggesting that Mozilla spend time developing the perfect OS X product are expressing their priorities as well. I could say that I'm a BeOS user and I really think that Firefox should have a fully-integrated native UX because the way a product looks and works is important. But no one cares about BeOS UX because they're vain. It looks like OS X users are the only ones who really care. Windows users have been dealing with non-standard UIs since tabs first stopped being MDI, and, comparing Chrome's adoption with how it looks, they're mostly fine with them. Linux users are mostly just straight-up crazy and Firefox is fine for them. Smartphone users have seen more non-standard than standard UIs and it doesn't seem to have been a problem for the Facebook app. The question is then is it worth caring as much about OS X UI, or is it more useful to make a better product for the 80+% of users who don't use OS X?

malkia 11y ago

So if you don't use Gnome or KDE - what should be used? I'm using XFCE at home, and Cinnamon at work.

mappu 11y ago
XFCE and Cinnamon are both primarily GTK+-oriented. Although your point isn't lost. In 2015 Mozilla probably won't release a Motif build for the WindowMaker users.

inDigiNeous 11y ago

This would result in bugs between different UIs on different platforms, resulting in duplicated effort and codebase, and many frustrated developers who want to work on feature Y on platform X, and cannot port it to platform Z because of missing support or different implementations. I don't really care if an application is native or not, Firefox works great for me on Os X and I really appreciate I can run the same browser on all platforms I have to use or developer for.