On Thursday, 28 November 2013 at 14:49:33 UTC, Chris wrote:
I don't know, but there are apps out there that do their own thing rather than relying on the system. I think Chrome and Opera are implemented like that.
My point was that non-native UIs will result, to different degrees, in less than optimal experiences for end users. I accept that other (business) concerns may eventually override a preference for non-native UIs, although I personally strongly discourage it. In the case of a browser like Chrome, you have several reasons why the problems with non-native UIs are mitigated, although not fully solved:
- A browser mostly displays content, and has little UI "chrome". Nevertheless, Chrome (the browser) still has a worse experience showing non-content interfaces, such as in plugins (compare, say, LastPass for Firefox and for Chrome) and preferences, and has/had non-native text rendering issues (antialiasing, etc.).
- Chrome is highly actively maintained, and quickly and automatically updated. Still, you still see lag in adoption of OS features, like when OS X made scrollbars appear when you rest two fingers on the trackpad when the pointer is over a scroll view. Chrome lagged in adopting that (it was a subtle feature), when fully native applications automatically got the new behavior with the old binaries.
- The business model of Chrome benefits somewhat from a lowest common denominator approach, where native platform features are not celebrated, focusing instead in the strengths of the web.
- Chrome still, nevertheless, uses a lot of native UI/OS features. For instance, native download progress indicators in the files themselves (viewable in the Finder, etc.).
Also, when writing bindings to native widgets, you're always playing catch-up too. Once you've got your bindings, the native toolkit has new methods, features and classes.
Yes, but you still automatically get a lot of new behaviors/styles with your old application binaries. That's especially important for applications that are not as aggressively maintained as Chrome is. Also, you don't have to have generic UI libraries (or even bindings): a reasonable alternative might be the approach of applications like Transmission, which have a common core and several native UI frontends (Cocoa, GTK, Web, etc.).
I hope I didn't sound too disagreeable :-) thank you for your feedback.
