Feedback to Xojo's Blog Post: The Benefits of Native Apps

[Jürg_Otter]

A couple of days ago Xojo has published a Blog post written by @Gavin_Smith: The Benefits of Native Apps

It has hit a nerve of mine…

Just looking at the Blog post - yes, it’s all true. Well done. What Xojo delivers looks up-to-date, native and does what one expects…
…on macOS.

Xojo creates native apps and uses the native user interface toolkit on each platform.

Aehm… are you sure?
Let’s take the MessageDialog that’s being featured in this Blog post. And Xojo’s claim about x-platform.

This is what you get using Xojo’s MessageDialog on Windows:

Xojo creates native apps and uses the native user interface toolkit on each platform

• Native app
• the native user interface (gray, because yes, it’s native, but…)
• native user interface toolkit (yes, yes - one could argue this needs to be a check, too - depends on what you think of when reading “toolkit”)

This is what I would expect when I read native user interface toolkit:

@Gavin_Smith: Again, your MessageDialogs will look correct on each version of macOS, which means less work for you!

Good that you’ve mentioned macOS…

@Alyssa_Foley: we’ve all used apps that didn’t feel quite right, often Java or Electron-made apps

…and sometimes Xojo-made apps, too

So that’s my Feedback about this Blog post. I hope I could explain that I both agree, but have to disagree with some aspects. Especially when combined with Xojo’s claims about x-platform and native user interface toolkit.

I hope Xojo takes this as a chance to further improve their Framework for all their supported Platforms.
Some thoughts and maybe suggestions:

• Please consider to always include ScreenShots of all supported Targets in Blog, Videos, … - this helps to show off the x-platform capabilities. And it might help you internally to see where there is still work to be done.
• Work more often with Windows and Linux. Not just to create some examples and quickly test a couple of things. I’d love to see your passion about macOS spread to the other targets, too.
• Add a couple more macOS features that many are missing for quite some time, so that your users can build up-to-date apps (thinking of SideBar, blur-effects, Monospaced System Font, Toolbar-modes), support your professional users (thinking of Build Automation / Universal Builds), while also tackling the long standing issues on Linux and Windows sooner rathen than later (especially thinking about Multi-Monitors with different scaling)

And the day will come when one can put that Check-symbol to what the Blog post suggests:

• Xojo creates native apps and uses the native user interface toolkit on each platform

Until then you’re almost there. With the help of Workarounds, Declares and Plugins it can be done.

[MarkusR]

a bit more unit tests will handle this
i think we will all agree that xojo is not perfect and everything around is changing daily.
generally speaking i have a problem with all this untruths / misrepresentation in “sales promotion”.

[LangueR]

The Windows look hasn’t changed since I started in RB just over 10years ago now. Since that time the MacOS look has changed every single time that Apple updates the toolkit, and within a year of that happening. The history speaks 100% the story of this tool. Xojo will give you native feel every single time in MacOS. It will not give you the native look on Windows, and it hasn’t been doing that for many years. No amount of more time will change that. So even though I agree with the Blog as it represents a MacOS view, it is indeed a myopic view as it only deals with one OS. I really don’t care much anymore because the apps I build are for industrial use and they honestly could not care about native looks. They actually do care about ONE common view regardless of which platform they use (and that appears to be true among other industries - they care about consistency in the interface between platforms).

[Christian_Schmitz]

Windows has a couple of different dialog APIs.
Xojo uses one and the quoted dialog picture uses a different one.
And check our TaskDialogMBS class for more options.

[Ivan_Tellez]

@Christian_Schmitz

Windows has a couple of different dialog APIs.
Xojo uses one

That is a LIE, the Xojo MessageDialog does NOT use any dialog, is just a regular window with a really crappy looking, they don’t even try to mimic the sizes, colors, order, alignments or even behavior.

It really sucks that they deprecated the Msgbox in favor of the Not native, ugly looking MessageDialog class.

I made a Feature request to make them native in 2019 but, the release in 2021 is still the same half baked feature

<https://xojo.com/issue/58113>

@Jürg_Otter

This is what I would expect when I read native user interface toolkit:

Sure, it could be great if xojo implement that class, but to be fair, they could have used the basic native dialog:

well, They at least now use the native icons, in the first release even those were custom and ugly.

Same with the deprecated Tooltip classs and the “New” Application.ShowTooltip. New name, same not native not functional behavior:

Also a case for that:

<https://xojo.com/issue/54584>

[Alain_Bailleul]

@Christian_Schmitz

Xojo uses one and the quoted dialog picture uses a different one.

But why can’t we have the modern looking one? The point is if it is a MacOS change, Xojo is fast to react. Not so for Windows and that does reflect in the blog posts that are almost always with MacOS screenshots. As a Windows/Linux user, we do not get the correct picture, so to speak. So just like the OP suggests, show also the Windows and Linux ones when making a blog post. Simple request I would think. This is a crossplatform tool, no?

[Joseph_E]

Windows needs a lot of attention, it has been neglected. While Apple changed OS’s numerous times requiring a lot of resources from Xojo, the stability of windows and that you can still run software from the 90’s probably allowed them to keep their Apple products alive.

It’s time to give Windows some love and modernize it and expose all the new things Win 10 has to offer.

[Christian_Schmitz]

Fill a feedback case and wait.
In the meantime, please try our class.

[Dana_Brown]

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