geek question

Jan 28, 2008 14:02

Could people with cross-platform GUI app experience - usage or development - give me some opinions on what toolkits are good ( Read more... )

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Comments 8

jynxzero January 28 2008, 14:33:29 UTC
My expert opinion as an Internal Software Development Consultant for a java software house is: not Java! :D

Java GUIs suck in more ways than I can list, they don't even manage to act consistently with other Java apps.

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thinkstoomuch January 28 2008, 18:23:34 UTC
Well, it doesn't need to cooperate with anything other than a simple server over tcpip, surely Java can handle that. However, I tend to dislike the look of Java GUIs, there are other options, and I respect your opinion. So I'm happy to cross Java off.

Poor Java, you were such a good idea in your time. I hear J2EE is actually useful and impressive.

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illarion_ds January 28 2008, 17:32:59 UTC
I've yet to see a cross platform app that looks and feels any better than "usable". No idea on toolkits, sorry.

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thinkstoomuch January 28 2008, 18:16:11 UTC
Does that mean that you've seen non cross-platform apps that are much better than just usable? What I'm building is pretty trivial, so examples of really good apps might not be applicable anyway, but I'm still interested ( ... )

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illarion_ds January 28 2008, 18:30:42 UTC
You're right about FF - I retract my statement. FF is, interface wise, a pleasure to use. True about the memory footprint and leaks, and I've heard the same about v3.

Greasemonkey, unfortunately, is pretty damn useful :( I would prefer not to lose it.

I've used a number of java apps, most notably KoLMafia (which I've done some development on).

I don't personally like the Skype interface *at all* - it's horribly space inefficient, and cluttered with crap. Each to their own :)

Interface wise, I like applications to be spare and simple, MDI if appropriate, toolbar at the top. TextPad, FF, and the VB6 IDE are good examples of apps I enjoy using. I loathe non-standard buttons/skins/placement (eg winamp) - why make things difficult to find/non-standard?

For utilities (as opposed to apps), I prefer shell integration, eg context menu (this is pretty much the only way I use winamp, winrar and the like).

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thinkstoomuch January 28 2008, 20:27:56 UTC
Well, the thing with Skype is that I hardly touch the interface... I don't really like it as such, I just don't notice it, and it was an example of a QT app you'd used ( ... )

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agent101 January 28 2008, 21:06:37 UTC
I liked developing with QT when I did so. Found that doing basic graphicy stuff wasn't too bad, (I used it to display the contents of one of my dissertation's memory as it evolved).

I didn't try using it cross platform. Although I can't remember why, this was 5 years or so ago.

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thinkstoomuch January 29 2008, 09:38:47 UTC
They had different licensing terms 5 years ago, maybe that was a factor?

One vote against Java, one for QT, none either way for GTK, looks like I'll learn QT :)

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