Re: My Personal UI Rant, Was: Think Java, not Electron! was: Apache HTML/Java UI instead of

[Chuck Davis]

Scott, thanks for saying it so well.  I absolutely loathe and despise
trying to get any real work done with a browser interface.

On Tue, Mar 13, 2018 at 8:06 AM, Scott Palmer  wrote:

> Sometimes I think the world has gone crazy.
>
> Here are a few simple observations:
>  - JavaFX is the best UI tech that Java has going for it these days.
>  - Swing/AWT has been heading towards obsolescence for several years now.
> It works, but the future of desktop UI with Java is JavaFX.
>  - HTML is a HORRIBLE way to render an application.  It works very poorly,
> if at all, and not consistently across browsers. (Look what people have to
> go through to try to get something as simple as a table with scrolling data
> and static column headers, for example.)
>  - Javascript is junk.  The interesting thing about stuff like Electron is
> that they managed to get it to work at all.  We give it extra credit simply
> because it was done with technologies that make it so much harder to do.
> (It also tends to be slow IMO.) That’s cute and all, but ultimately wasted
> time.  It would be that much better and cheaper to develop if done with
> better tech like Java/JavaFX.
> - The popularity of Web UIs has done a disservice to the development
> community.  They have lowered the bar so far that we accept the utter
> rubbish and awful user experience of most web apps as ‘normal’.  We have a
> generation of developers that don’t even understand why Javascript is
> garbage or how crippled applications are that run in a browser. Have you
> noticed when you see an interesting web app that you are more impressed
> because it is a web app?  If it were a desktop app you wouldn’t give it a
> second thought.
> - I don’t know why anyone would want to bring HTML UI into a Java
> application (when they don’t have to) as it is such a massive step
> backwards.
>
>
> So stopping running around like the sky is falling.  Swing/AWT, JavaFX
> aren’t going to disappear.  Oracle wasn’t doing anything significant with
> Swing.  If they stop, we aren’t likely to notice.  JavaFX is the greater
> concern, because it is the better tech and still needs feature
> development.  The community around it can keep it going as long as there is
> a consistent vision for it  Ideas of using HTML for UI on a desktop app
> programmed in Java are ridiculously insane. We already have a much better
> cross-platform UI technology, no need to put work in to move backwards to
> an inferior UI tech.
>
> Scott
>
>
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Re: My Personal UI Rant, Was: Think Java, not Electron! was: Apache HTML/Java UI instead of

[Bernd Ruehlicke]

Scott, you are writing what my heart also was telling me. Still, it 
never occurred to me to look at anything which had he letters "HTML" in 
their api's as I always link this to "web" and my app is super heavy 
non-web-desktop-app-monster-size-local-file-reading-not-usually-associated-to-browser 
thingy. Though the "What is the HTML/Java project goal? To be a portable 
abstraction over such pipeline!" is exciting and I now know that this 
is/could be the way forward. Thank for the good discussion - lots of the 
comments were an eye-opener to me as I live in my little desktop 
Swing/AWT/JavaFX world.


Bernd

On 3/13/2018 10:06 AM, Scott Palmer wrote:

Sometimes I think the world has gone crazy.

Here are a few simple observations:
  - JavaFX is the best UI tech that Java has going for it these days.
  - Swing/AWT has been heading towards obsolescence for several years now. It 
works, but the future of desktop UI with Java is JavaFX.
  - HTML is a HORRIBLE way to render an application.  It works very poorly, if 
at all, and not consistently across browsers. (Look what people have to go 
through to try to get something as simple as a table with scrolling data and 
static column headers, for example.)
  - Javascript is junk.  The interesting thing about stuff like Electron is 
that they managed to get it to work at all.  We give it extra credit simply 
because it was done with technologies that make it so much harder to do. (It 
also tends to be slow IMO.) That’s cute and all, but ultimately wasted time.  
It would be that much better and cheaper to develop if done with better tech 
like Java/JavaFX.
- The popularity of Web UIs has done a disservice to the development community. 
 They have lowered the bar so far that we accept the utter rubbish and awful 
user experience of most web apps as ‘normal’.  We have a generation of 
developers that don’t even understand why Javascript is garbage or how crippled 
applications are that run in a browser. Have you noticed when you see an 
interesting web app that you are more impressed because it is a web app?  If it 
were a desktop app you wouldn’t give it a second thought.
- I don’t know why anyone would want to bring HTML UI into a Java application 
(when they don’t have to) as it is such a massive step backwards.


So stopping running around like the sky is falling.  Swing/AWT, JavaFX aren’t 
going to disappear.  Oracle wasn’t doing anything significant with Swing.  If 
they stop, we aren’t likely to notice.  JavaFX is the greater concern, because 
it is the better tech and still needs feature development.  The community 
around it can keep it going as long as there is a consistent vision for it  
Ideas of using HTML for UI on a desktop app programmed in Java are ridiculously 
insane. We already have a much better cross-platform UI technology, no need to 
put work in to move backwards to an inferior UI tech.

Scott


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