Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?
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I observe that more and more desktop applications are turned into single-purpose browsers (effectively embedding webkit or trident) and doing all their GUI stuff with HTML. Almost everything made by Cisco. Skype. I think that Adobe stuff now is mostly this (looking alien on every platform).
I'm not entirely happy about this. Don't know if that's a WTF. A WTF for sure is the fact the applications want to ship a copy of webkit, which bloats them and brings hilarity when webkit needs a security hole patched.
Well, maybe they bring the costs down, but that brings another question: why maintain native toolkits like GDI and Cocoa and GTK+, when an OS's graphical subsystem could include HTML support and be done with it? (Surely a WTF, but a logical step in all this "bring cost down" stuff)
Another WTF is that vendors don't care about OS integration anymore over their "brand" look.
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@wft said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
why maintain native toolkits like GDI and Cocoa and GTK+, when an OS's graphical subsystem could include HTML support and be done with it?
The HTML support sits on top of the basic native toolkit.
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@wft said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
Another WTF is that vendors don't care about OS integration anymore over their "brand" look.
They never did.
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Look, when I write a program, I want it to work on Windows, Linux, and any other OS I want without having to rewrite the entire graphical front-end. If OSs can't get their shit together and give me a way to do that while making the program look "native", then it's their own damn fault. You sure as hell can't ask developers to rewrite their entire presentation layer 3 times, that's wrong on multiple levels.
Also, clarification: GDI is not a GUI toolkit, it's a low level graphics library. The GUI logic runs on the user side (even if it's a library that's included with the OS), and the graphics system only sees pixels/vectors, and it's the same in Linux. So you actually can just use GTK+ or WinForms everywhere, but I guess people prefer the more neutral HTML look?
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@anonymous234 HTML seems less ugly than GTK...
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@Arantor QT is less ugly than GTK and less WTF than HTML
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I can do that easily!
No you fucking can't! Get back in your fucking box.
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Native toolkits are still used by the platform vendors. They are also used by those narrow-minded developers who only develop for the specific platforms.
However if you try to develop something for multiple platforms, situation is no less disastrous than 20 years ago. Every platform has its Different™ GUI framework, that in many cases can only be used from Different™ set of languages.
So you either have to multiply most of the work by the platforms — and the number of platforms increased by the mobile ones, Android, iOS and WinRT — or find something portable. And on that front only Qt still valiantly fights the losing fight. However, HTML works everywhere. So everybody uses HTML.
On a side note, if the application uses only embedded HTML and does not include bits off the wild internet, vulnerabilities are not a problem. But usually the applications use the web view provided by the platform — or should and if they don't, that is
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@Bulb There is Java too, with it's own toolkit
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@Bulb said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
However if you try to develop something for multiple platforms, situation is no less disastrous than 20 years ago. Every platform has its Different™ GUI framework, that in many cases can only be used from Different™ set of languages.
Actually, it's worse. Different platforms have different interaction idioms, and those are a lot harder for a toolkit to hide; what's natural on desktop Windows is really strange on iOS on an iPhone, and any app that wants to work equally well across both is in a fairly difficult place. Even with HTML.
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@dkf Make it work in the most limited device, (that would be a phone with a small screen), and it will work well on desktop. Maybe it won't use the desktop's large screen well, but it's the cost of developing an interface only once.
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@candlejack1 said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
@dkf Make it work in the most limited device, (that would be a phone with a small screen), and it will work well on desktop. Maybe it won't use the desktop's large screen well, but it's the cost of developing an interface only once.
There is a rodent on these forums that would like to have a word with you.
And by "have a word", I mean yell at you.
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@Polygeekery said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
@candlejack1 said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
@dkf Make it work in the most limited device, (that would be a phone with a small screen), and it will work well on desktop. Maybe it won't use the desktop's large screen well, but it's the cost of developing an interface only once.
There is a rodent on these forums that would like to have a word with you.
And by "have a word", I mean yell at you.
Not just he. Lots of people don't want to see
on a desktop application.
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@aliceif said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
@Polygeekery said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
@candlejack1 said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
@dkf Make it work in the most limited device, (that would be a phone with a small screen), and it will work well on desktop. Maybe it won't use the desktop's large screen well, but it's the cost of developing an interface only once.
There is a rodent on these forums that would like to have a word with you.
And by "have a word", I mean yell at you.
Not just he. Lots of people don't want to see
on a desktop application.I was going for maximum comedic effect, not maximum correctness.
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@candlejack1 said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
Make it work in the most limited device, (that would be a phone with a small screen), and it will work well on desktop
No. ;)
You need to make a fully responsive UI, which is a lot more complex. And you need to adapt to the other differences in idiom as well. For example, with desktop systems there's often an expectation that you can print immediately to a printer that is somewhere relatively close to the computer, so printing is a local operation, whereas for phones the expectation is that the phone isn't going to be near a printer any time soon so the right approach is to print via a service (which you either collect from or have mail the output on to you). It's totally different, despite both approaches being about the “same thing”.
I've seen software that tries to address this by saying that you can only print via a service, on the grounds that then “it works everywhere”. It's fucking frustrating when you know you've got a decent printer plugged into the USB port, and the only services offered are based in another country so you also have international mail charges to deal with as well…
(Thanks, Google. Fuck heads.
)
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@dkf said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
print via a service (which you either collect from or have mail the output on to you)
Print via email?
@dkf said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
international mail charges
Wait...what? You meant that you print something and it gets printed and dropped in the post to you? You're shitting me, right?
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@Polygeekery said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
You meant that you print something and it gets printed and dropped in the post to you?
Probably thinking of something like
Snapfish | Personalized Gifts, Cards, Home Decor, Photo Books & More
Design and send the best personalized gifts, cards, home decor, photo books, and prints with Snapfish.
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@Yamikuronue I thought of that, but it sounded like everything was getting printed that way.
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@Polygeekery said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
it sounded like everything was getting printed that way.
How else would you print from a phone?
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@dkf said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
How else would you print from a phone?
Well, I never need to anymore. I don't know if I ever have needed to. I used to have an app on my phone that would let me print from it, but I never used it.
Of course, I try not to print at all. My printer was once broken for almost an entire year and the only reason I fixed the issue was because it came to tax time and my accountant is old school and wants everything printed out.
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@Polygeekery said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
Of course, I try not to print at all.
While I'm exactly the same, there's a few things which still need to be physical.
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@dkf said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
there's a few things which still need to be physical.
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@dkf said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
You need to make a fully responsive UI, which is a lot more complex
Not at all. See http://www.motherfuckingwebsite.com for reference.
@dkf said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
For example, with desktop systems there's often an expectation that you can print immediately to a printer that is somewhere relatively close to the computer, so printing is a local operation, whereas for phones the expectation is that the phone isn't going to be near a printer any time soon so the right approach is to print via a service (which you either collect from or have mail the output on to you). It's totally different, despite both approaches being about the “same thing”.
Printing is a browser function. If you're doing anything in your website related to printing you're
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@candlejack1 This is not about responsive web design, I thought.
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@aliceif said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
@candlejack1 This is not about responsive web design, I thought.
From the site:
It's responsive
You dumbass. You thought you needed media queries to be responsive, but no. Responsive means that it responds to whatever motherfucking screensize it's viewed on. This site doesn't care if you're on an iMac or a motherfucking Tamagotchi.
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@candlejack1 This thread.
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@aliceif Now it is
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@candlejack1 Which is great because there was already a software measure of "responsiveness" but now the same word means too totally different things, which isn't at all confusing, good job software developers, you're so intent on terrible usability that you can't even make easy JARGON.
So you can say Discourse was responsive but wasn't responsive, but to contrast that, NodeBB is responsive but isn't really responsive.
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@blakeyrat said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
So you can say Discourse was responsive but wasn't responsive, but to contrast that, NodeBB is responsive but isn't really responsive.
Huh what? NodeBB fails at being either.
Oh wait ... responsive web design has no proper definition! You can call literally any piece of shit turd "responsive" (in the web design sense) and it will fit someone's definition!
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@aliceif responsive = "layout changes when you hit one or more arbitrary viewport widths".
Whether a particular site is good responsive design is another matter entirely
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@Jaloopa said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
@aliceif responsive = "layout changes when you hit one or more arbitrary viewport widths".
What about functionality?
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@aliceif I've seen sites that are responsive in my site but still assume you can hover over flyout menus in the small layout
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@blakeyrat said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
now the same word means too totally different things
Wanna buy an MP5 player? It's like an MP4 player, but it also has a digital camera.
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@dkf said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
what's natural on desktop Windows is really strange on iOS on an iPhone
Also really strange on any other OS that doesn't treat each disk drive as its own independent file hierarchy. Same cuts the other way as well - the GTK file picker on Windows is every bit as jarring as the Mono file picker is on Linux.
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@candlejack1 said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
Make it work in the most limited device, (that would be a phone with a small screen), and it will work well on desktop.
The brain worms are well entrenched with this one.
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@flabdablet said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
Also really strange on any other OS that doesn't treat each disk drive as its own independent file hierarchy. Same cuts the other way as well - the GTK file picker on Windows is every bit as jarring as the Mono file picker is on Linux.
Of course, my real point was that there are many ways in which different platforms just don't act the same in ways that are hard to cover up. It's not one thing, it's lots. The entire metaphorical language of the system is different because there's not One True Way to do things, but many ways that work fine. It's often easier to take a step back and reimplement the application from scratch than it is to make the application really port over transparently.
Desktop metaphors are mostly similar enough that you can have a single codebase work across all of them (with difficulty; it's not easy to get right). Mobile devices are much more alien. Indeed, that was the big change that blindsided especially MS with smartphones: they shouldn't work like desktops, and so you shouldn't force the two to work like each other.
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@dkf said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
they shouldn't work like desktops
You're just a Luddite who fears change.
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@blakeyrat said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
NodeBB is responsive
When it actually bothers to respond, it is reasonably fast, yes.
Filed under: 2 refreshes to open composer
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@candlejack1 said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
Wanna buy an MP5 player? It's like an MP4 player, but it also has a digital camera.
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@flabdablet said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
You're just a Luddite who fears change.
I've got no problem with change, so long as the coins are no smaller than 5p…
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@dkf said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
How else would you print from a phone?
I've seen a few printers with wireless printing, so you can just print a document from your phone as normal.
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@dkf I thought services running on your local network like bonjour are supposed to deal with that? either way, I know Apple offers AirPrint&tm; which somehow offers a system-wide printer to apps.
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@Polygeekery said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
@dkf said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
there's a few things which still need to be physical.
Finally, a good use for 3D printing.
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@coldandtired said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
I've seen a few printers with wireless printing, so you can just print a document from your phone as normal.
But then shitty websites wouldn't get some money from that printing services
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@Polygeekery said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
@candlejack1 said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
@dkf Make it work in the most limited device, (that would be a phone with a small screen), and it will work well on desktop. Maybe it won't use the desktop's large screen well, but it's the cost of developing an interface only once.
There is a rodent on these forums that would like to have a word with you.
And by "have a word", I mean yell at you.
I have a lot of disagreements with him, but I wouldn't call @flabdablet a rodent. And he's spot on with the everything is a phone brain worm. Like the ulcers are caused by bacteria guy, he'll probably get a Nobel in a few decades.
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@Polygeekery said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
Print via email?
I have an hp printer and we can email a special address or something and it will print...eventually...takes some time to go through the tubes, but the chicks here have used it (it's connected to my machine so I don't have to suffer indignities like that).
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@dkf said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
While I'm exactly the same, there's a few things which still need to be physical.
Most of my printing is Cub Scout related.
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@boomzilla said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
I have a lot of disagreements with him, but I wouldn't call @flabdablet a rodent. And he's spot on with the everything is a phone brain worm. Like the ulcers are caused by bacteria guy, he'll probably get a Nobel in a few decades.
Wrong person. Rodent who despises anything "responsive", but does not use the term "earworm".
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@boomzilla said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
I have an hp printer and we can email a special address or something and it will print...eventually
That is exactly what I first thought of, then he made it seem like the post is involved somehow.
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to fun.