I wish all platforms gave access to their rendering engine similar to DOM on the web, imo SwiftUI/WinUI (or WPF, but they are very similar) are not that good.
Haven't built anything native on Linux, though, no idea how good those are.
But good point, I actually think AppKit might be a good abstraction level. I'll play with it a bit and see if I can abstract it behind a good component model.
Windows definitely shot themselves in a foot with building multiple renderers while building them on top of each other.
Third-party tools have tried to reimplement it but it's either been by bastardizing the native W11 horizontal taskbar to be vertical (eg: Windhawk) or just restoring the old W10 taskbar code (eg: StartAllBack).
The news being discussed is not about explorer being open sourced.
All I want is something simple to work with to make applications for Windows, and so far I'm still using Win32 with WTL.
I think that's because you chose "packaged" application, these apps need to be installed so that capabilities are handled correctly.
To be fair, macOS has the same issue, although they won't show in Launchpad, they still can be indexed by Spotlight.
winui3 was abandoned the moment it was conceived.
I really wonder what they expect from open-sourcing it. Just to pretend how open they are? Or is there any real benefit to developers who target windows?
MAUI is not exactly a competing product and is more about enabling cross platform UI development. Different intent.
WinUI is actually ok tech. It’s evolved over the years through a few iterations, now on WinUI 3.
Im mostly with you though. Until they rebuild the entire OS in it, including all of the administrative controls and tools, I don’t trust the longevity.
UWP came along in windows 10.
I don’t trust WinUI at all.
I was surprised, when I spoke to a former colleague, to find that an internal tool I wrote 25 years ago is still being maintained. Win32 as well.
Just remember, cobol is still in active use, today
It's not like external contributions will suddenly turn it into something usable, and they'll just have a skeleton crew maintaining it, like they do WinForms and WPF.
People are tired of Microsoft and their ever growing graveyard of ill thought out, half-baked, "native" UI frameworks.
Or a 2 row taskbar?
So I can easily switch between my 40 windows open? What is good for productivity?
BoorishBears•4h ago
Windows and an absolutely baffling array of UI frameworks with various pitfalls, uncertain futures, and no clear winners.
(honorable mention to WinForms though.)
politelemon•3h ago
jiggawatts•2h ago
A framework that has just one show-stopper missing feature or problem is... unusable. You can't embark on a large, complex application development journey if you even suspect that you'll be painted into a corner.
For example, many of WPF-derived frameworks had atrocious performance, with fundamental mistakes in their design that made them incompatible with list virtualization. It wasn't until they had to eat their own dogfood and use WPF for Visual Studio that they started fixing these issues.
Win UI 3 meanwhile dropped all support for HDR, wide-gamut, etc... going backwards to SDR sRGB only in an era where all mobile phone manufacturers were starting to standardise on OLED HDR displays. The logic behind this decision? Microsoft wanted a UI framework that is "mobile compatible"!