Re: [boost] Re: Java style GUI in C++

From: Mathew Robertson (mathew.robertson_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-08-24 18:01:08

> > My experience, mostly from reading the documentation, is that there are no
> > GOOD cross-platform C++ GUI libraries out there.
> 
> I agree. You point out two major failing of most C++ frameworks: lack of modern 
> C++ use and lack of exception safety. I see the rest of this thread talking a 
> lot about C++ techniques, but there seems to be one major component that 
> everyone is overlooking: producing a good user experience.
> 
> Perhaps as a Mac developer I am more aware to the importance of a good user 
> experience; one of the major failings of every cross-platform C++ framework on 
> Mac OS is a poor user experience -- usually due to reinventing OS-provided UI 
> wheels, and thus often making the UI subtly inconsistent with the rest of the 
> OS. This kind of subtle (or less subtle) inconsistency is what makes users 
> (entirely justifiably) bitch and moan and shoddy ports, and give bad product 
> reviews.

umm... which part of "cross-platform" and "use native functionality" is more important?

If you have some functionality provided by one OS, while another doesn't provide it... what do you do?

MacOS is a hard creature to make apps portable to - as its UI is significantly different to most other OS's, that making a cross-platform library which appears to work as a native OSX app is hard, real hard.   Take Mozilla/Firefox/OpenOffice - each of these suffers the "not quite OS integrated, compared with native apps", even though these apps are propably some of the highest profile cross-platform applications.

Mathew