[okanat]

Cross platform GUI libraries suck. Ever used a GTK app under Windows? It looks terrible, renders terrible, doesn't support HiDPI. Qt Widgets still have weird bugs when you connect or disconnect displays it rerenders UIs twice the size. None of those kinds of bugs exist for apps written in Microsoft's UI frameworks and browsers.

The problem with cross platform UI is that it is antithetical to the purpose of an OS-native UI in its reason of existence. Cross platform tries to unify the UX while native UI tries to differentiate the UX. Native UI wants unique incompatible behavior.

So the cross platform UI frameworks that try to use the actual OS components always end up with terrible visual bugs due to unifying things that don't want to be unified. Or worse many "cross platform" UI frameworks try to mimic the its developer's favorite OS. I have seen way too many Android apps that has "cross platform" frameworks that draw iOS UI elements.

The best way to do cross platform applications with a GUI (I specifically avoid cross platform UI) is defining a yet another platform above a very basic common layer. This is what Web had done. What a browser asks from an OS is a rectangle (a graphics buffer) and the fonts to draw a webpage. Nothing else. Entire drawing functionality and the behavior is redefined from scratch. This is the advantage of Web and this is why Electron works so well for applications deployed in multiple OSes.

[qsera]

> Ever used a GTK app under Windows?

I have created and used them. They didn't look terrible on windows.

>What a browser asks from an OS is a rectangle (a graphics buffer) and the fonts to draw a webpage. Nothing else. Entire drawing functionality and the behavior is redefined from scratch. This is the advantage of Web..

I think that is exactly what Gtk does (and may be even Qt also) too..

I think it is just there there is not much funding going to those projects. Web on the other hand, being an ad-delivery platform, the sellers really want your browsers to work and look good...

[johnnyanmac]

There's loads of funding. But the ones funding Qt and GTK aren't parties interested in things like cohesion or design standards. They just needed a way to deliver their product to the user in a faster way than maintaining 2-3 OS platform apps. Wanting that shipping velocity by its nature sacrifices the above elements.

The remnants of the dotcom era for web definitely helped shape it in a more design contentious way, in comparison. Those standards are created and pushed a few layers above that in which cross platform UI's work in.

[okanat]

Here is Bleachbit, a GTK3-based disk cleanup utility. It is a blurry mess and GTK3 Window headers are completely out of style and behavior with Windows.

https://imgur.com/a/ruTGUaF#ntnfeCJ

https://imgur.com/yGhgkz2 -> Comparison with another open source app Notepad3 under Windows.

> I think that is exactly what Gtk does (and may be even Qt also) too..

The problem is they half-ass it. Qt only does it with QML. Qt Widgets is half-half and it is a mess.

Overall these do not invalidate my point though. If you want a truly cross-platform application GUI, you need to rewrite the GUI for each OS. Or you give up and write one GUI that's running on its own platform.

> I think it is just there there is not much funding going to those projects. Web on the other hand, being an ad-delivery platform, the sellers really want your browsers to work and look good...

Indeed, Google employs some of the smartest software developers and ones with really niche skills like Behdad Esfahbod who created the best or the second best font rendering library out there. However, Qt has a company behind (a very very incompetent one, not just the library but operating a business). I have seen many commercial libraries too, they are all various shades of terrible.