All the screenshots you linked look, and most importantly, work, better than pretty much every "blank canvas" application I have encountered, though I'll admit the last one is worst implemented. Worst, yet still beats the pants off Electron and the like.

> Worst, yet still beats the pants off Electron and the like.

I disagree. Sure, Electron uses a lot of memory, but I have a lot of memory and I don't have a lot of tolerance for awful looking UI widgets that I have to stare at all day.

I'll take ugly if it means low, predictable latency. And even having lots of memory, I might have other uses for it than just one electron app.

Wait, so can you explain what exactly was awful about those screenshots? I'm genuinely interested since I don't see anything horribly wrong with them (aside from some dated gradients).

Huh, you shouldn't, because there's nothing intrinsically wrong with a mullet. It's not awful, it just probably doesn't serve the function we expect our haircuts to serve (it might, for the right kind of person, of course).

The issue is this analogy absolutely doesn't fly. I sincerely hope software developers don't treat the UIs as haircuts.

> The issue is this analogy absolutely doesn't fly.

Forget the haircut.

It's about taste. I'm not going to waste my time trying to "rationally" explain why something looks bad. It should be obvious to you, if it isn't, no amount of explanation will make you see it.

> It should be obvious to you, if it isn't, no amount of explanation will make you see it. This is exactly the kind of logic that's often held by design non-professionals and which leads to an unusable mess of a UX if applied. This is not how design works.

I'm not talking about usability. I'm talking about looks. An ugly UI may be very functional and intuitive to use, an ugly button design may well drive the point home that it is indeed a button.

That's not going to change the fact that I hate looking at it and therefore don't want to use it. It's not an either-or, you can have both, either or neither. However, if you use MFC, your app will look bad, end of story.

I'm aware that some people, perhaps most programmers, aren't actually that sensitive when it comes to looks. All I can say is that it matters to me. I can't put it in words any better than I can explain why your haircut looks bad, but it does! On the other hand, if something is annoying or difficult to use, I can explain why.

>I'm not talking about usability. I'm talking about looks. It was clear. >However, if you use MFC, your app will look bad, end of story. That's only your opinion, and my point was it doesn't look bad per se. There's nothing wrong with it aesthetically. It's just your bias/conditioning/what have you, same as with the haircut.

First of all, please fix your quoting, it's unreadable.

Secondly, you can say "it's just your bias/conditioning" about almost anything. Of course it's subjective. There's no such thing as "objectively bad taste". Nothing looks "objectively bad". That's why explaining bad looks is such a waste of time.

Of course it's just my opinion, but when I immediately reject an application because in my opinion it looks like crap, that's the only opinion that matters. Whether or not that hurts your bottom line is a different story. Microsoft isn't exactly known for good taste, yet it's a trillion dollar company.

It would be an ok answer, but the whole discussion started with you saying "On Windows, the native widget toolkits are just awful" which is more than just a statement of an opinion. Then you were asked what makes the screenshots bad and you answered with a sub-par analogy. Only after that you narrowed your aim down to "taste". So, please, fix your discussion tactics, it's bad.

Nothing looks "objectively bad" only in complete isolation and in the absence of context. When you add the world to an object it unavoidably begets aesthetic meaning. So you're wrong there.

I'm sorry for the formatting, can't get used to putting two linebreaks.

What's a real waste of time is arguing with strangers over the internet.

> It would be an ok answer, but the whole discussion started with you saying "On Windows, the native widget toolkits are just awful" which is more than just a statement of an opinion.

To the contrary, that's about as opinionated as an opinion gets.

> So, please, fix your discussion tactics, it's bad.

If it wasn't obvious that it was an opinion on aesthetics from the first reply, it should've been obvious from the second and third. I'm not actually discussing my opinion with you, I'm trying to explain to you why it's pointless to explain further.

You may have noticed that other people chimed in and said things along the lines of "oh no the other stuff is ugly!". I'm not gonna argue with that, those are valid opinions, valid subjective perceptions.

> Nothing looks "objectively bad" only in complete isolation and in the absence of context. When you add the world to an object it unavoidably begets aesthetic meaning. So you're wrong there.

http://journal.sjdm.org/15/15923a/jdm15923a.html

> What's a real waste of time is arguing with strangers over the internet.

You're setting yourself up for it, because even four replies in, you insist on criticizing something I never intended to say.

If you think linking to a paper obscures the fact that you're calling me out on 'bullshit', it doesn't. It's rude and in this case just shows your lack of education in a field. Just so you know, there's a whole section of philosophy dealing with beauty and taste, you're free to think it's all bullshit of course, but I hope less people would do so.

> If you think linking to a paper obscures the fact that you're calling me out on 'bullshit', it doesn't.

It's not supposed to obscure it. What you wrote is a specific kind of bullshit that is described in the paper.

> It's rude and in this case just shows your lack of education in a field.

Whatever education made you write that sentence is probably bullshit as well. Or maybe you just didn't give a very good impression of it.

> Just so you know, there's a whole section of philosophy dealing with beauty and taste, you're free to think it's all bullshit of course, but I hope less people would do so.

There are, of course, whole sections of philosophy that are bullshit.

In the words of Judith Butler:

"The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power."

> There are, of course, whole sections of philosophy that are bullshit.

I'd like to see how you approach design thinking aesthetics is bullshit. I'd be surprised it's any good. Anyway, you should consider the simpler explanation: it's just over your head so you call it bullshit.

> Microsoft doesn't even use them anymore in many of their apps, they often use "free form UI", they also seem to use HTML/Javascript a lot.

Yeah, and I and many other users fucking hate it. It's awful to work with, it's inconsistent, it looks like shit... I don't think it was a decision based on better UX, but rather that it is easier and cheaper to hire kids with no experience with anything but webshit.