GUI libraries

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 11/29/13 9:03 AM, thedeemon wrote:
> On Thursday, 28 November 2013 at 13:30:53 UTC, Luís Marques wrote:
>> Whatever API / bindings you use, please don't expose non-native UIs to
>> users (drawn from scratch, either mimicking the native UI or not).
>> They never completely integrate with the OS, subtly deviating from the
>> native behaviour in ways that range from awkward to infuriating, and
>> are always playing catch-up to the latest OS changes.
>
> This is pure Mac talk.
> In Windows the "native" UI elements are so scarce and primitive, that
> most apps with decent UI end up making their own. For example, one would
> assume that UI elements that can be found in MS Office are native and
> can be used in other apps. But they are not, Office used its own UI
> library and never shared it with anyone. Ribbon implementation that
> comes with recent Visual Studio is a completely different implementation
> made by custom drawing, mimicking the look of Office. Actually, there
> are even several different implementations, for different languages.
> Relying purely on native controls leads nowhere.

I haven't used Windows in a while, but even years ago Office and MSVC 
were heavy-hitters that notably diverged from Windows' own widgets (and 
even interface design guidelines). These were (and are) immense and 
immensely successful applications that for which designing specific 
widgets was a small incremental cost (and I speculate a way to say "we 
own the OS so we may as well design widgets that nobody else got"). Most 
other Windows program were (and may as well still be, I haven't 
followed) totally fine with the stock widgets.


Andrei