Linked by Eugenia Loli-Queru on Fri 13th Jul 2007 06:18 UTC, submitted by Sander Jansen
Jeroen van der Zijp, the author of Fox Toolkit, has kindly given kerkythea.net
an interview. The Fox Toolkit is a platform independent GUI that has matured over the last years to become one of the fastest and well structured APIs.
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RE[4]: I think you're right
by navaraf on Fri 13th Jul 2007 22:08
in reply to "RE[3]: I think you're right"
Member since:2005-07-08
Note that even MS is using non-native widgets in almost any application (e.g. MS Office) and nobody really complains.
I do complain, but I guess my voice is lost in the outcry.
I'm the first one to complain that MS itself breaks their own GUI guidelines. Unfortunately that makes other corporations follow the trend and do the same (at least from my experience as software developer). In a risk of getting a bit off-topic I recommend taking a few seconds to read http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2004/07/28/199589.aspx (Edited: Don't miss the discussion ...
Theming APIs are now good enough to integrate non-native widgets in a way that you will not notice unless you are looking very carefuly
I perfectly agree on this. My point though was that you can imitate the controls now (with themes and stuff), but you can't imitate how will they behave in the next Windows release (or another platform for that matter).
Qt, U++, OpenOffice, Firefox all are using this approach and I have not noticed people complaining about e.g. Firefox appearance in Win32 or Linux...
Yay, very true, these are the few cases where the imitation of the native controls is almost perfect and most importantly it's *maintained* and *updated*.
Example of the other kind could be Firefox 2.x on MacOS X where some key behavior is different from the native controls and people used to "the standard" notice it.
Overall you make a good point, so you deserve a (moderation) point from me too ;-)
Edited 2007-07-13 22:24
Member since:
2005-11-20
To me the disadvantage of non-native controls is that they usually don't fit with the rest of the environment. No matter how much you try to imitate the look and feel of the platform you're doomed to fail, because new version of the platform can be advanced somehow (themes, spell checking, IME or other such feature) and your custom controls won't reflect that.
While there is a lot of truth in your statement, I do not see it as critical. Note that even MS is using non-native widgets in almost any application (e.g. MS Office) and nobody really complains.
Theming APIs are now good enough to integrate non-native widgets in a way that you will not notice uless you are looking very carefuly (e.g. like GUI Toolkit author trying to do this right :-).
Qt, U++, OpenOffice, Firefox all are using this approach and I have not noticed people complaining about e.g. Firefox appearance in Win32 or Linux...
Edited 2007-07-13 15:59