On Friday, 29 November 2013 at 02:00:50 UTC, Chris Cain wrote:
On Friday, 29 November 2013 at 01:44:34 UTC, Dicebot wrote:
Still lacking proper beard ;)
A programmer without a beard! Blasphemy! Witch!
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But anyway, going along with what you guys are saying, if
you've ever seen reviews on Android apps, a lot of apps get
lots of bad reviews for not adhering to the Android design
standards. Using cross-platform toolkits are usually a death
sentence for your rating. So, there's a lot to be said about
making sure your app looks consistent in the OS it's running in.
Some apps do "get away" with something that is somewhat custom.
Take, for instance, Steam on Windows. It doesn't look like a
"proper" Windows application, but it works very well for it
regardless. That said, Steam on Mac is terrible because it
feels too much like a windows app there (mainly in regards to
scrolling behavior).
That all said, if I were writing a GUI app in D right now, I
would probably write my own toolkit and make something super
simple (but "good" looking) to test out some new ideas. I think
we really need an easy, straight-forward, and powerful UI
toolkit that takes advantage of D's unique features (such as
compile-time specialization, maybe using DSLs that compiled &
used at compile-time instead of runtime) while reflecting well
in comparison to the newest paradigms of application design
(think how Android & iOS apps are made and maybe even a bit of
web design). I can't quite precisely quantify what we need, but
I think a fresh approach to the UI programming interface could
set D apart in this area.
Simply using a translation of an old UI toolkit is "easy" but
will not make UI applications pleasing to develop.
+1
This is why with DOOGLE I have made shaders for e.g. controls
completely overridable at app, system and user levels. Shaders
control all looks of the app. Although this does mean a bit of
calculation and binding of information regarding screen and
component size.
What does this mean? Maintainers for a distro or OS can easily
make it look like what is expected for that OS.
With regards to feel that would have to be hard coded at this
point.
Is it just me or is a button a layout? As far as I'm aware most
gui toolkits think of it as not. It gives much more control over
it.
Just my 2 cents over how I feel with them.
Eventually I would like to have DOOGLE emit html/css/js and work
like GWT (Google Web Toolkit [1]). This really would be hugely
beneficial for making a desktop application into a web app. And
set it apart.
[1] http://www.gwtproject.org/
