On Thursday, 23 May 2019 at 01:22:20 UTC, Manu wrote:
That's a different discussion. I don't actually endorse this. I'm a fan of instantaneous response from my productivity software... 'Instantaneous' being key, and running without delay means NOT waiting many cycles of the event pump to flow typical modern event-driven code through some complex latent machine to finally produce an output.
Yes, you are of course right if the effort is spent where it matters. In my mind CygnusED (CED) on the Amiga is STILL the smoothest editor I have ever used and it was because it used smooth hardware assisted scrolling (Copper lists) so my eyes could regain focus very fast. I guess also the phosphor on the screen helped, because other editors that try to spin down a scroll gradually does not feel as good as CED did. *shrugs*
One could certainly come up with a better UI experience by combining a good understanding of visual perception with low level optimization and good use of hardware.
But that sounds like different project to me. One would then have to start with a good theoretical understanding of human perception, how the brain works and so on. Then see if you can pick up ideas from interactive software like games.
That would however lead to a new concept for user-interface design. Which would be interesting, for sure, but requires much more than coding up a UI framework.
You should use as little memory as possible. I have no idea how a webpage eats as much memory as it does... that's a perfect example of the sort of terrible software engineering I'm against!
In chrome each page runs in a separate process for security reasons, that's how. AFAIK.
Also, service workers are very useful, but it is probably tempting to let them grow large to get better responsiveness (from the network layer). Basically a proxy replicating the web server within the browser, so that you can use the website as an offline app.
You're placing your resentment in the wrong place. My 8mhz Amiga 500 ran 60hz gui's without breaking a sweat...
But people also used the hardware almost directly though, you could install copper-lists even when using the OS with UI (in full screen mode).
In my mind the copper-list concept was alway more impact-full than the blitter. I'm not sure where they got the idea to expose it to ordinary applications, but it had a very real impact on the end user experience and what applications could do (e.g. drawing programs).
