> Sadly, the dream of write-once, run-anywhere and look nice is dead.
It's a shame no one invented the web browser yet :)
It's a shame no one invented the web browser yet :)
That being said, byuu is absolutely correct. It's one thing to make a program look like all the other programs on the target platform, but it's something else entirely to make it feel like one as well. You'll need to compromise quite a bit, as even when you go into raw event-handling no two systems are alike. You can see olddocs/areaplan.md in my repo as an example of where this gets especially hair-pulling, or all the places in the documentation where I mark some subtlety as implementation-defined or system-defined.
Not even the big packages are immune. Look at Qt's QFormLayout type, which is a dedicated layout for aligning labels properly on each platform. (I'm going to have a similar thing eventually; that's why my docs presently have a TODO on vertical alignment with Label.)
And yes, human interface guidelines can differ in very subtle ways. As an example, take multiple-selection listboxes. There are two ways you can implement this: as a normal listbox that you can select multiple items of, or as a list of items with checkboxes that you check to mark as selected.
Microsoft's guidelines (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dn74...) say (emphasis preserved) > Given this clear indication of multiple selection, you > might assume that check box lists are preferable to > standard multiple-selection lists. In practice, few tasks > require multiple selection or use it heavily; using a > check box list in such cases draws too much attention to > selection. Consequently, standard multiple-selection > lists are far more common.
GNOME's guidelines (https://developer.gnome.org/hig-book/stable/controls-lists.h...) say > Consider using a check box list for multiple-selection > lists, as these make it more obvious that multiple > selection is possible:
And Apple's guidelines (https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/UserEx...) don't say anything too clearly, but DO say that - scrolling lists are selected traditionally (not checkboxed) - but a menu-style list should use check marks instead
So there's that.
I was merely pointing out that the market seems to be pretty content with web apps as a solution to "write once, run anywhere, look nice" (even if here, the "look nice" doesn't include "look native" - but those are 2 different things)
The web is also the antithesis of platform consistency. Every last web page and web app is increasingly more and more about demonstrating artistic style.
Plus I really don't like being at the mercy of web apps. Google has shown me that they'll yank them away whenever they want, or just radically redesign it overnight and force me to use the new version, even if it loses functionality I needed.