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.NET MAUI is coming to Linux and the browser

(avaloniaui.net)
303 points vyrotek | 2 comments | 11 Nov 25 22:50 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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judah ◴[11 Nov 25 23:49 UTC] No.45894501[source]▶
This is interesting for sure. Kudos for bringing this capability to the web!

One issue the demos reveal is, it doesn't _feel_ like the web. That is, I can't hit Ctrl+F to find text on a page. I can't select text with my cursor. I can't copy the address of a hyperlink. On my phone, I can't hard press on an image and share it to others. Screen readers can't handle it. I can't press a shortcut key to make everything larger.

These all may seem pedantic, but they contribute to the feeling "this is not the real web."

This is the same problem with Java applets in the late '90s, Flash and Silverlight in the early 2000s. They are islands of richness within a web page, but those islands are, well, opaque to browsers, search engines, and virtually all web tooling.

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taftster ◴[11 Nov 25 23:55 UTC] No.45894544[source]▶
That's not pedantic at all! Indeed, without these capabilities, it is by some definition not the real web.

This hits into that concept of what exactly the "web" is. Is it just a media transport system? Or is it something more than that. Of course, we could cite Tim Berners-Lee here or Roy Fielding in this discussion.

But at minimum, I think a lot of us are tired of the app-lification of the web and somewhat wish we could have a bit of the old.

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xg15 ◴[12 Nov 25 01:03 UTC] No.45895172[source]▶
It's also an interesting question, why, in traditional rich desktop applications, I can't say I have ever missed the ability to select and copy text from the UI chrome - whereas on the web I'd definitly miss it and in badly designed mobile apps, I often do.

I think some part of UI design degraded with the web, where there used to be a clearer distinction between "user data" and "app chrome" areas than there is today.

I'd also like if we could get back to selections of more complex data types at some point and not just treat everything as text. UI toolkits have all kinds of lists and treeviews to model selectable entities, whereas in the browser, there just a single huge wall of text for everything.

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1. croon ◴[12 Nov 25 08:06 UTC] No.45897528[source]▶
While I do occasionally miss it there as well, I think the main difference is that I very rarely use desktop applications for information gathering.

I never "read" a desktop application, whereas that is mostly what I use a browser for. And if I can't properly interact with text on a website, then I would likely reach for something else.

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2. majormajor ◴[12 Nov 25 08:33 UTC] No.45897741[source]▶
Back in ye olden days desktop applications for information gathering like Encarta let you select and copy text because they were thoughtfully designed and knew that "information you were gathering" should be different than "application chrome" - that's the distinction being made here.

Information-oriented desktop apps still do this - any good email client, for instance, should make it trivial to copy a subject line or "to"/"from" address even if it's in the UI chrome.