[HN Gopher] The new desktop Outlook is a bad idea
___________________________________________________________________
The new desktop Outlook is a bad idea
Author : thesuperbigfrog
Score : 65 points
Date : 2023-06-29 14:11 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.windowscentral.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.windowscentral.com)
| snowwrestler wrote:
| At work I switched from the Outlook client app to the web version
| as soon as we migrated our email from on-prem Exchange to MS365
| (cloud hosted).
|
| Specifically, I get my email at outlook.office.com. Works great
| in Safari and Chrome on Mac.
|
| Searching old emails is way faster and easier in the web version.
| It takes up no space on my machine, and there are not thousands
| of potentially sensitive emails sitting on the hard drive of a
| laptop I carry around. Way better all around.
|
| I also run Teams in a Chrome tab instead of the Mac app. It runs
| way more efficiently that way for some reason.
| procarch2019 wrote:
| Occasionally I find myself somewhere I need to access email but
| have no network connection. No local cache means a big ol'
| screw me
| grudg3 wrote:
| > Searching old emails is way faster and easier in the web
| version. It takes up no space on my machine, and there are not
| thousands of potentially sensitive emails sitting on the hard
| drive of a laptop I carry around. Way better all around.
|
| Do Mac computers not encrypt their drives? Like Bitlocker on
| Windows?
|
| Having sensitive information on your laptop should not be a
| worry if your IT team does their job right.
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| I _acquired_ Office 21 LTSC because I really hated the new design
| so now I 'm safe for the next 5 years.
|
| Realize there are probably hundreds of UI designers working at MS
| who need to look busy.
| KronisLV wrote:
| > I acquired Office 21 LTSC because I really hated the new
| design so now I'm safe for the next 5 years.
|
| I'm personally using various free alternatives to Microsoft's
| offerings - Thunderbird for mail, LibreOffice for office work,
| something like Nextcloud for cloud file storage etc.
|
| While things aren't always great, it's still surprising to me
| how viable this alternative path is nowadays, especially when
| it feels like control over the software we use is getting taken
| away from us (for a variety of reasons).
|
| Either way, software that meets the users and their needs where
| they are is great! Someone will benefit from cloud based
| software, someone else with local software that's very popular,
| whereas others will just be happy to get by for free.
|
| Of course, it's also great that we even have those options and
| alternatives in the first place!
| mxuribe wrote:
| > ...While things aren't always great, it's still surprising
| to me how viable this alternative path is nowadays,
| especially when it feels like control over the software we
| use is getting taken away from us (for a variety of
| reasons)...
|
| You said it best right there! I've also been using open
| source alternatives for many, many years...and have plenty of
| scars to prove it...but nowadays the options are so great. I
| also admit, there's still room for improvement.
|
| Funny enough, i think Google Docs opened the opportunity for
| products like LibreOffice, etc. to make some
| headways...because people who have simpler use-cases see that
| the previously more limited features of an online tool like
| google docs served the user good enough (not great, just good
| enough)...that office productivity tools became less a
| strategically essential tool, with obvious exceptions for
| niche cases, or cases where someone is using an excel file as
| a full database when they should not. So, i think this gave
| products like Libreoffice a chance to catch up, and users
| with non-niche use cases felt that this offereing is good
| enough, though of course nowadays its so much better! As you
| rightly stated: "it's also great that we even have those
| options and alternatives"!!
| GartzenDeHaes wrote:
| I bought an Office 2007 Pro DVD on Ebay last year and it works
| great on Win 10.
| badrabbit wrote:
| Been using outlook web only for several years now. No messing
| with outlook pst/ost/sync issues and one less app hogging
| resources.
| cheapliquor wrote:
| They literally said "ah yes let's change our iconic industry
| standard UI that everyone has been familiar with for 20+ years to
| a terrible standalone desktop version of the Outlook Web App"
| [deleted]
| tanseydavid wrote:
| I seriously thought they were silently abandoning the desktop
| version of Outlook.
|
| I have not been able to get it working again for more than a
| year, after setting up O365 account.
|
| The attempts to get it working again involve MS-developed special
| utility program(s) -- but this has never fixed the problem for
| me.
|
| I gave the problem to our IT support people. They tried but
| ultimately gave up and asked if I would just use the web-based
| Outlook instead. What was I going to do? Say, no?
| jmaker wrote:
| Microsoft has been dismantling the desktop UX for me over the
| past few years. I think they're migrating the entire UI into the
| browser. The Office macOS UI appears and feels substantially
| worse to me than its Windows counterpart. I had to migrate from
| Windows to macOS because I was no longer feeling comfortable on
| Windows. My UX with the Apple office suite is by far better. Put
| formally, the set difference between the features of Word and
| Excel and the features of Pages and Numbers is empty for my use
| cases. Same with PowerPoint and Keynote. Outlook used to be good,
| a proper PIM, it never had been excellent, but it used to be
| good, even a decade ago. The only thing I regret now is that I'd
| extended my Microsoft 365 by three years before I realized what
| they're up to.
| donmcronald wrote:
| > Microsoft has been dismantling the desktop UX for me over the
| past few years. I think they're migrating the entire UI into
| the browser.
|
| I think it's more about trapping you in the MS365 silo than
| anything. They want all your data in the cloud because it makes
| it makes it non-portable. I think the big push they'll make
| after the desktop apps are replaced will be about data
| governance because it let's them increase lock-in.
|
| First they'll make a 100% online workflow a possibility. Next
| they'll convince businesses to abandon local files because it's
| "too risky". Then they'll start locking down everything that
| could be used for "data theft", including copy / paste. At that
| point they effectively own your data.
|
| And it's not far fetched for them to lock down things like copy
| / paste. I think that's why there's been a big push for TPM and
| things like Passwordless. It's a solid base for authenticated /
| authorized actions. Yeah, they'll use it for authenticating to
| websites first, but there's no reason a similar system can't be
| used to support signed / authorized actions between apps.
|
| So, when you copy text, it doesn't go straight onto the
| clipboard. Instead, the office app uses a TPM managed key to
| send a signed request to MS365. The TPM will have a key
| enrolled for office apps and will only encrypt/sign for trusted
| (think code signing) office apps, so Microsoft knows the
| request came from an official office app. You'll be logged in,
| so MS can check if you're authorized to copy the content to the
| clipboard. The public half of your TPM managed key will be
| stored in your MS365 account.
|
| If you're authorized to copy content to the clipboard, MS will
| encrypt it with your public key and send it back. Your
| clipboard will have an encrypted copy of the text. When you go
| to paste, the receiving app will need to ask the TPM to decrypt
| the payload and (remember) the TPM will only let the key be
| used for a specific set of trusted apps, so the copied text
| will never touch an app that's not authorized.
|
| Think of taking Passwordless, adding a TPM as a requirement,
| and using it for a workflow of app actions rather than auth
| actions. That's where we're headed IMO.
| chinabot wrote:
| 100% afree, its all about lock in these days and I'm so over
| it
| odux wrote:
| That article should be one line long:
|
| The new Desktop outlook is a bad idea because it supports only
| Office 365 and not on-prem exchange.
|
| (Which itself is a speculative claim with no substantiation
| except one anecdote)
| optimus_slime wrote:
| Couldn't have agreed more. What a waste of 5 minutes.
| cmos wrote:
| We use MS365 at work. Outlook for the web is ok until you try to
| use the 'groups' feature. I need to hold a 10 minute tutorial on
| the backwards UI for the group view within outlook.
|
| The 'groups' functionality is decent.. so sad they hide buttons
| and kinda just stopped working on it.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| > businesses might stop purchasing newer versions of Microsoft
| Office if it doesn't come bundled with traditional Outlook.
|
| I can't imagine someone who needs Excel dealing with non-
| Microsoft equivalents because Outlook is making its webapp its
| official app like Teams - and you could see the writing on the
| wall there for a long time.
| mrcsharp wrote:
| I've switched to Thunderbird after hearing about this a couple of
| weeks ago. I simply do not want yet another WebView/Electron-
| based application on my machine. They feel slow and out of place
| compared to native applications.
|
| Microsoft, in the past 10 years, have failed to provide a good UI
| option for developers. WinForms is legacy. WPF is legacy. WinRT
| is dead. UWP is dead. MAUI is a mess. WinUI looks to be either
| abandoned or not getting enough attention to make it a viable
| option.
|
| From the above, it is understandable why teams in MS are building
| new products with Web tech. The Windows team should consider this
| a failure because Windows now has no good, viable option for GUI
| development.
| unregistereddev wrote:
| First, I agree. Microsoft has failed to provide a viable
| platform for native GUI development, and IMO there is still a
| place for native desktop applications. Part of the reason
| Windows stayed so prevalent for so long is its rich software
| ecosystem - arguably, an ecosystem that partially resulted from
| MS's focus on developers.
|
| However, there may be additional reasons for building new
| products with web tech. Someone already needs to maintain the
| web versions of these applications. If you're going to offer
| web access to Outlook, a team needs to be responsible for
| maintaining that web application. By replacing the native
| desktop app with a wrapper around their existing web
| application, Microsoft reduces the need to separately build and
| maintain features in both platforms.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > By replacing the native desktop app with a wrapper around
| their existing web application, Microsoft reduces the need to
| separately build and maintain features in both platforms.
|
| True, but it's at the price of having an inferior product.
| But perhaps Microsoft doesn't care about that.
| SyneRyder wrote:
| Thunderbird is good, but I'll also suggest Postbox for people
| looking for alternatives. It's a commercial fork of Thunderbird
| (so about as "native" as Thunderbird is), but I find Postbox
| has a nicer UI, and at the time I switched its local email
| search was significantly faster. Layout is customizable, you're
| not restricted to the design (or theme) in their screenshots:
| https://www.postbox-inc.com/
|
| It has some support for Thunderbird plugins. I use a self-
| modified version of h.ogi's Priority Switcher to bring back the
| user-editable priority column that Eudora used to have. (I
| don't understand how people can process their mail without
| sorting it by Priority....)
|
| Won't be for everyone - it's not open source, not free and
| there's no Linux version (yet?). Personally I'm happy to pay
| for a professional / premium email client experience, since
| it's so mission-critical to my work.
| AJ007 wrote:
| If you don't like the original Thunderbird UI, try the new
| Thunderbird Supernova - https://www.thunderbird.net/en-
| US/download/beta/
|
| They are updating the UI, and doing a good job https://blog.t
| hunderbird.net/2023/02/thunderbird-115-superno...
| V__ wrote:
| I'm also a Postbox user and quite happy so far but I don't
| know if I would recommend it. Development seems to have
| stopped and Thunderbird is making good progress on the
| redesign.
| AnonC wrote:
| Sadly, Thunderbird is becoming (or has become) a non-option in
| companies that use Outlook365/Microsoft365. Microsoft seems to
| have been quite effective in disabling IMAP and SMTP as a
| default in these tenants and scaring companies that even with
| OAuth2, these are insecure and not as safe as sticking with
| Outlook as the client.
|
| Companies (actually the information security teams) may be
| taking shortcuts based on Microsoft's recommendations to reduce
| their work while imposing a huge cost on every worker.
|
| It used to be that companies were locked in with Windows and MS
| Office. But there were some alternative options for those. IMO,
| now companies are heavily locked in to Microsoft by subscribing
| to Microsoft365. There is no migrating out or exit path for
| this. They just have to suffer through whatever Microsoft puts
| them through.
| Propelloni wrote:
| Well, there is Owl [1], which I have mentioned before. Of
| course, it is the old "chase the rabbit" game we know since
| the 2000s -- MS365 is just a faster moving target than
| Exchange on MS Windows Server.
|
| So far the devs have kept up well, I can count the instances
| I had to fall back to OWA on one hand over the last year. And
| I use it daily within my company.
|
| [1] https://addons.thunderbird.net/en/thunderbird/addon/owl-
| for-...
| AJ007 wrote:
| Outlook's UI design by itself really is terrible. I don't know
| how so many people accept using it. I have a single business
| account I used Outlook for, switched to Thunderbird, and it is
| vastly less painful to use. I can find, read, and sort emails
| at least 3x quicker than with Outlook.
|
| Modern commercial UI/UX design really has drifted far away from
| "good." Photoshop suffers the same problem - 10 years ago the
| UI was quick, responsive, and efficient. Now it feels like
| wading through mud.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > I don't know how so many people accept using it.
|
| Everyone I know who uses it only does so because their
| employers require them to.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| Were the last Outlook versions actually native? Say starting
| around Office 2016. They always felt very... off. Extremely
| laggy. Weird scrollbar behavior.
|
| I don't usually use windows, but my employer uses Office 365,
| so I've been using Outlook web for several years now. It felt
| much snappier and more pleasant to use than the native client.
| I understand there are some features missing, but since I'm a
| very basic user (the most advanced thing I use is combining
| messages into conversations), it never bothered me.
|
| The new Outlook UI looks extremely similar to the web one, and
| the app feels snappier on my machine. The thing I dislike the
| most is the empty space at the top of the window, but I guess
| that's just the current fashion.
| msh wrote:
| Oh how i loved winforms back in the day. IMHO the best desktop
| toolkit there ever was.
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| Well bloody good luck with that mate, I'm desperately looking
| to switch away from Thunderbird (started using it last year)
| and while I genuinely hate Microsoft (see many of my past
| posts), Outlook just plain _works_. Thunderbird has just been
| one bug after another.
| tmikaeld wrote:
| The native views of thunderbird are wonderfully performant,
| especially when browsing thousands of e-mails in lists and
| sorting through them.
|
| I'd never be able to go back to scrolling with "skeleton rows"
| that's the web default because it can't render fast enough..
| pohuing wrote:
| Provided thunderbird is finished fetching mails. Why that is
| happening on the ui thread is beyond me, but thunderbird is
| always frozen for a couple dozens seconds after opening it
| after a bunch of new mail came in.
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| What's funny is that Thunderbird UI is not native. It uses
| XUL which is Mozilla's version of something like Electron
| that has existed since before Electron was even conceived as
| an idea. That it feels like a native application shows just
| how really shit Electron is.
| tonyarkles wrote:
| I think the interesting part about XUL and why I really
| enjoyed it back in the day is that it's what HTML-for-
| applications could have been. It's still a "document" in
| the way any XML is a "document", but the markup is way more
| application-focused than document-focused. But instead we
| keep using a markup language that's designed for documents
| and try our best to make it usable in a very not-a-document
| way.
|
| Edit: one detail I don't recall is what XUL actually uses
| for rendering components on-screen.
| codethief wrote:
| > The native views of thunderbird are wonderfully performant
|
| Are we using the same Thunderbird? For me it feels rather
| sluggish.
| rektide wrote:
| Vscode feels blitz fast. Which apps have you tried that feel
| slow?
| klodolph wrote:
| VS Code is reasonably fast but it's somewhat an exception in
| the world of slow Electron apps. I've seen performance issues
| with Slack and Discord. Spotify isn't Electron, it's CEF, but
| it has the same problems. The parts of Apple's Music app
| which run inside the web view are noticeably worse than the
| other parts.
| rektide wrote:
| These two apps seem to be the number one and two most
| popular desktop-packaged webapps & they have done
| immeasurable damage to the perception of the web as a
| technology.
|
| It's cemented the perception of web desktop tech in many
| people's mind & I question whether it's possible to de-
| infect what has become a quite strongly held dogmatism.
| There's few apps broadly actually uses these days, so the
| opportunity is also troublingly slim. I want to ask, what
| are the contestible assertions, what would change your
| mind? But even for me it's hard to imagine finding
| sufficient leverage, having enough examples, to really
| challenge the negative perceptions.
|
| For what it's worth, discord load time is a bit obnoxious
| but I've found it to be pretty performant once loaded, and
| I'm a fairly intense user who is on many dozens of servers.
| [deleted]
| pc86 wrote:
| Not compared to literally any non-Electron text editor. It's
| barely faster than native full IDEs.
| recursive wrote:
| Any? No.
|
| It's pretty comparable to Sublime on this machine. There
| are some operations where VSC is even clearly faster.
| jupp0r wrote:
| Can it inline quote emails properly on MacOS? The regular outlook
| client was still unable to do so in 2022, last time I tried.
|
| I have no idea why people would like Outlook, it's an inferior
| experience compared to other email clients and calendar
| applications in my opinion. I can't even have my personal gmail
| calendar imported into my work calendar so nobody can schedule
| meetings for me when I'm picking up kids from a school event or
| have a dentist appointment. I have to sync calendars by hand.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| Outlook + Exchange is the best example of email/calendar
| integration and group scheduling I've ever used, and I say this
| as a pretty devoted hater of MSFT. I mean, my daily environment
| is OSX, and I read most of my mail in the native Mac mail
| client, but I keep Outlook running in a VM to deal with
| calendaring and scheduling because it's so good at it.
|
| There definitely ARE limits to it -- I've never tried to merge
| personal stuff into my work cal, as you seem to want to do --
| but for what it does, it's the best I've seen.
| PTOB wrote:
| Business user here.
|
| I remember how much work I could get done in Outlook 2007 using a
| 1024x768 monitor on a crap workstation with 1GB RAM. I admit that
| this performance was often chilled by the many pitfalls of on-
| premise Exchange setups, lack of interop with non-Exchange
| services, and lack of standards-compatible email formats. Today's
| Outlook is less buggy, but slower.
|
| This new version gives me the chills.
|
| I can understand the platform change. I can begrudgingly learn to
| live with oversized UI elements, fat content spacing, etc.
|
| I shuddered when finding that from an efficiency and automation
| standpoint it's a real downgrade. Things I experienced in one day
| of "Try the new Outlook": - Keyboard shortcuts
| (some changed, some missing entirely) - Context menu key
| did not work - No single key operations in context menu
| (e.g. right click, d for Delete, a for Archive, etc) -
| Limited view customization - Janky UI reaction speed
| - Window and component refresh lag / jank - Reduced rule
| functionality - There were a few more, but the traumatic
| experience wiped them out of my memory
| [deleted]
| tanseydavid wrote:
| When there are problems with fundamental features like this, it
| ends up feeling the software is "gaslighting" me.
|
| _Context menu key does nothing? That 's weird -- I must need a
| new keyboard._
| LorenDB wrote:
| The main problem is that Microsoft is trying to use a WebView. If
| they really want a single cross-platform app, they should develop
| a _native_ framework that will work everywhere instead of shoving
| everything into a web engine.
| bitwize wrote:
| Name a native UI framework that enables seamless cross-platform
| deployment without extensive testing on _each_ platform.
|
| Go ahead, I'll wait.
| timeon wrote:
| One would expect Microsoft puts Windows before cross-
| platform.
| wvenable wrote:
| Microsoft no longer seems to be in the business of putting
| Windows first. Since they're completely out of the mobile
| market, they're always going to have be a cross-platform
| software company now. They want to sell software
| subscriptions and that requires going to where the users
| are.
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| Sure. Electron or similar tech are doing a very simple thing:
| they're externalizing development costs by transferring them
| to the individual users in the form of storage costs,
| performance costs, and user experience costs, to name a few.
|
| Meanwhile, Microsoft is a behemoth. Your argument makes total
| sense for a small shop with limited bandwidth to test.
| Companies like Microsoft don't get that excuse. They're
| simply padding their bottom line at our collective expense,
| and they can do it because they have extremely sticky
| services in a lot of areas (in this case, corporate email
| infra).
| ulfw wrote:
| There's two platforms. Two. Windows and MacOS. Let's not
| pretend there's dozens. Why does one have to jump through
| hoops for two simple platforms? Just write the UI code twice.
| It's not rocket science really.
|
| Same goes for Android/iOS.
| duderific wrote:
| Presumably that would at least double the cost.
| Additionally, you have to find native Windows and MacOS
| developers, which are harder to find than web devs. Given
| that, it's not surprising that companies are moving toward
| web tech like Electron.
| johnny22 wrote:
| you just mentioned 4. that's not 2, that's 4. And you
| forgot chromeOS.
| wvenable wrote:
| There are 5 platforms Microsoft wants to support: Windows,
| MacOS, Android, iOS, and Web.
|
| These new Microsoft applications run on all these platforms
| identically across all these platforms and mostly with the
| same code.
| Alifatisk wrote:
| I'll try, Flutter?
| jeremycarter wrote:
| Flutter doesn't use native UI. It recreates similar UI.
| sharikous wrote:
| Tauri is quasi-native in that it uses native WebViews. It
| ought to be the best of both worlds once we accept that web-
| based UI is the only way now
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Does webui _not_ require testing on each platform+browser
| combo? Or are we just accepting that sometimes it is going to
| break and not allowing the same consideration for native GUI
| frameworks?
| wvenable wrote:
| The web browser is a native cross-platform GUI framework that
| works everywhere -- including on the web. It's the best and
| most used cross-platform GUI framework that has ever existed.
| Why should Microsoft roll their own solution? Nobody has ever
| been able to make this work outside of the web browser.
| wpm wrote:
| >It's the best and most used cross-platform GUI framework
| that has ever existed.
|
| Just because it's the best on that has ever existed, doesn't
| make it _good_. It 's just the least bad.
|
| >Nobody has ever been able to make this work outside of the
| web browser.
|
| Sure would be nice if everyone would give up then and we
| could go back to having nice, native apps using native
| controls, file operations, encoding, hardware access,
| performance, UI/UX patterns, and security features, instead
| of letting all that rot on the vine while we reinvent the
| wheel on the browser.
| j-krieger wrote:
| > Just because it's the best on that has ever existed,
| doesn't make it good. It's just the least bad.
|
| The web browser features a set of technologies that are
| standardized across a wide array of different
| implementations. Except for a few minor differences, you
| can view a website in Safari, Chrome, FireFox, Edge, Brave,
| the list goes on.
|
| It's a technological wonder. I'm still amazed people hate
| on it.
| Affric wrote:
| There are three implementations you've listed for actual
| rendering: WebKit, Blink, Gecko. And it's unlikely we
| will ever see another due to how complicated they are to
| build. It's been becoming less diverse for almost two
| decades now.
|
| And you've ignored the fact that every web view we have
| had on desktop so far is kinda crappy and sluggish when
| at least well built native apps generally feel snappy.
|
| Webviews are one step about shitty Java apps (you know
| the ones) in terms of UI.
|
| Beyond that there's the RAM usage.
|
| Be no longer amazed that people can have these problems
| which no web app they have used has overcome on three or
| four different computing platforms.
| wvenable wrote:
| We are absolutely reinventing the wheel on the browser but
| in the end up we have single broadly compatible platform
| across devices both small and large, with multiple
| implementations, and mostly all open source. It runs
| completely untrusted sandboxes applications. The browser is
| the ultimate OS for anything that doesn't require raw
| performance or deep integration.
|
| People have been trying to make that since the dawn of
| computers. But designing something like that top-down has
| proven virtually impossible to get right. Building it
| bottom-up like we have with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and now
| even WASM ensures that what gets built is actually secure
| and practical. It might not be pretty but it works.
|
| Even performance, which is the number one criticism of
| electron apps, is something that can be solved. When you
| Microsoft looking at making the webview a common reuable
| component again, what is native between something like
| WPF/XAML and DOM/HTML is merely a matter of perspective.
| LorenDB wrote:
| Wrong - I can use Qt and QML to make an app that compiles and
| runs, unmodified, on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, and
| others. It can even run on web with WASM. And I wouldn't call
| web apps "native" or "the best".
| wvenable wrote:
| Developers want to take their web applications and turn
| them into desktop applications, not the other way around.
| The web is the master platform.
|
| Qt has had decades to win over this space and failed.
| Github slapped Chromium together with Nodejs and took over
| the entire market of cross platform GUI development
| overnight.
|
| I might not like it but I understand it completely.
| tredre3 wrote:
| > I can use Qt and QML to make an app that compiles and
| runs, unmodified, on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS,
| and others.
|
| As someone who is currently working on several QT apps that
| also work on mobile: That's an absolute lie. You need a lot
| of extra work to get it to work on both the desktop and
| mobile. Realistically you have to build the UI twice, QML
| is nowhere near as "responsive" as html/css. It's also
| prone to sluggishness.
|
| I stick with Qt because I enjoy working in C++, it's just
| simpler to have the whole app in one language. My users
| also told me they dislike electron like you. But it's very
| disingenuous to tell people that Qt is "just as easy" to
| build desktop/mobile hybrid apps, they'll be sorely
| disappointed if they take your word.
| LorenDB wrote:
| That may be your experience, but for the right kind of
| app (e.g. simpler apps) I can confirm from experience
| that apart from setting up the Android app manifest, Qt
| apps don't need modifications to port, especially if you
| design convergence in from the get-go.
| meepmorp wrote:
| What I don't understand is why the Electron-based desktop
| application is so bad, but the web client isn't. Somehow they
| can make a usable web app but their all-webview client is
| trash.
| Zelphyr wrote:
| All Microsoft needed to do is look to the Apple Music app to
| know how bad an idea building it on WebView is.
|
| But, yeah, I wholeheartedly agree that they should either
| develop or use a native framework (Flutter perhaps?) rather
| than trying to shoehorn a technology that has never been very
| good for application development.
| hulitu wrote:
| > All Microsoft needed to do is look to the Apple Music app
| to know how bad an idea building it on WebView is.
|
| Teams.
| jupp0r wrote:
| Teams is just a horrible product overall. It wouldn't be
| better with a completely native app.
| adamrezich wrote:
| it's one thing when third parties do this, and quite another
| when it's the operating system manufacturer. it's as though
| Microsoft doesn't want Microsoft Windows users to feel good
| about being Microsoft Windows users when they use their
| Microsoft software from within Microsoft Windows.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Microsoft appears to have stopped caring about how Windows
| users feel about using Windows quite a long time ago.
| gochi wrote:
| They already have MAUI. I don't have direct professional
| experience with it, but the message I'm getting from those who
| have used it, is that it's cumbersome. With people instead just
| sticking with XF/Uno/Avalonia (Avalonia being closer to Flutter
| in how it doesn't actually tap into the platform's native
| frameworks).
| francisl wrote:
| Even if its cumbersome, it's still a win-win for them to use
| it.
|
| The outlook app will be native desktop and mobile (except
| linux for now).
|
| Plus it will give the maui project more credibility, help
| grow its userbase. Make the framework better by providing a
| real world project for the maui team to benchmark,
| highlighting pain point, provide in-house feedback, feature
| request.
| gochi wrote:
| I would be interested to know from anyone at the
| Office/Outlook team why they went with what they did, and
| if they had any awareness of MAUI happening at all. Fully
| agree with the noted benefits, so any non-MAUI team insight
| would be really interesting
| happymellon wrote:
| Has the Office team ever paid that much attention to what
| Windows was actually recommending?
|
| All the releases that I can think of shunned the standard
| UI toolkits for their own homegrown UI. Presumably to
| show the Windows folks that the Office team is it's own
| little empire.
| danzk wrote:
| Excel even had its own custom C compiler.
| wvenable wrote:
| My guess would be that they're looking for parity with
| web apps. I have teams installed on my corporate desktop
| but I just use the web application any other time and
| it's... identical.
|
| If you want an identical experience with identical code
| across the Web, iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, Linux then
| there is only one solution.
| tracker1 wrote:
| Biggest issue with MAUI imo is the lack of a Linux desktop
| option, wether a wrapper over GTK, QT or whatever. There's
| been some effort, but MS is pretty much willfully ignoring
| it. Not that Linux desktop is huge, but it's approaching half
| of where OSX is and given the early adopter focus is for
| Developer, it's IMO a massive miss.
|
| Cross-platform desktop apps, should at least cover Windows,
| OSX and Linux (appImage/Flatpak) as a baseline. Avalonia
| works well enough, but MAUI just muddied the waters. With the
| massive efforts towards web-ui in general, it's really not
| surprising that many devs/shops are just shrinkwrapping with
| Electron. Even if there are far lighter options for embedded
| browser usage of the system's browser engine. In the end, the
| state of desktop apps sucks all around.
| jupp0r wrote:
| vscode is an Electron app and is great and more responsive than
| its "native" competitor apps from JetBrains.
| tracker1 wrote:
| In fairness, the core of VS Code is really well-crafted
| highly performant code. It was designed to be fast and to
| work for a web integrated code editor from the start. After
| trying Atom and Brackets, I almost didn't touch VS Code when
| it came out, I'm glad I did decide to try it as I really do
| like it.
|
| Of course most Electron apps don't have near the same level
| of effort or foresight when it comes to performance. Discord
| probably the second most common electron app, and Teams being
| third. Both of which, at the very least, have issues. Some
| could be overcome, or at least be more consistent with WASM
| built controllers, but that whole space needs some maturing
| and improved tooling. I've played with Tauri and Yew and
| think it's pretty nifty, but there's a lot of work to getting
| parity with say React+MUI.
|
| React+MUI itself is pretty good. But even then, on a
| relatively large team with some relatively inexperienced
| devs, you can wind up with dependency trees that are insane,
| huge and slow. Taking that and going through the extra
| hurdles that the likes of Electron, Tauri or others add is
| burdonsome to say the least. It can be very nice, but usually
| isn't.
|
| And while I empathize with the teams using Electron, I can
| even support the ideas. In the end, it's the outcome that
| matters. I'm not one of the never-electron types. But I also
| recognize the issues. I use Tabby for my terminal, which is
| fast enough, but still takes 3-4 seconds to load. I use VS
| Code which is usually a couple seconds as well. It drops off
| dramatically from there.
|
| There are massive advantages a browser renderer offers... it
| gets all taken away by importing whatever library comes up in
| your npm search for any given thing.
| wrapperup wrote:
| JetBrains' IDEs are very heavyweight, it's apples to oranges.
| And while there is some native code in them, they're still
| driven by the JVM mostly. There is fleet, but it's not an
| improvement to vscode at all IMO.
|
| How about vscode vs sublime, neovim, or any other native text
| editor with LSP support? vscode is slow comparatively.
| JohnFen wrote:
| That's damning with faint praise, though, isn't it?
| jupp0r wrote:
| Is it? I'm pretty happy with vscode. I realize that if you
| actually measure responsiveness there are better options,
| but subjectively I'm happy while other "IDEs" are
| completely unusable for me (Visual Studio, JetBrains IDEs,
| Eclipse, ...).
| smusamashah wrote:
| There is simply no comparison between the two. Its like
| comparing MS Notepad with MS Visual Studio. Jetbrains IDEs
| are so much ahead of even Visual Studio.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| Until you install the enough addons to VSCode to give it the
| same functionality JetBrains products have out of the box,
| then it gets slower.
| skydhash wrote:
| VS Code is primarily an editor, while JetBrains's products
| are IDEs. You can add extensions to make VS Code more an IDE.
| And I'd like to see benchmarks proving your point. If you're
| using VS Code as an editor, others like Sublime Text,
| Notepad++, Kate and TextMate make it seem very slow.
| jmhammond wrote:
| I mean, it's faster than Emacs on my Mac m1.
| jupp0r wrote:
| If your definition of IDE is that everything has to be done
| using menus and that it needs to be super slow, you are
| right. If you look at actual functionality then VSCode is
| as much of an IDE as Eclipse.
| skydhash wrote:
| The actual slow part is the source code analysis (that is
| quite robust). Apart from that, I've never noticed any
| real slowness. I have an M1 MBA and WebStorm is quite
| responsive. I've not touched Eclipse since 2015, but I
| remember it was fast even then.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| I don't know about slow, IntelliJ is plenty fast on my
| "utlrabook" with a basic CPU.
|
| But you're wrong on the menu side. They have keyboard
| shortcuts for everything. And you can program your own if
| you don't like the provided ones.
| Wojtkie wrote:
| PowerBI's UI runs off of WebView and it's the most frustrating
| thing. That whole software feels like someone mashed together
| different colors of play-doh and called it a new one. There are
| multiple ways to do the same thing within the software, but
| they have differing levels of efficiency. It's a Frankenstein's
| Monster of technologies bundled up into this lacking
| visualization software.
| smodo wrote:
| Don't most Microsoft products feel that way? I'm occasionally
| forced to use a windows machine the office gave me. Windows
| 11 is a new kind of janky and it also packs all the fun stuff
| from earlier versions.
|
| Anyway, they don't care. Nadella has us all by the monthly
| subscripted balls.
| Wojtkie wrote:
| >Don't most Microsoft products feel that way?
|
| They really do. A lot of their products feel like a "too
| many cooks" situation where there's too many things being
| packed into a UI that can't exactly handle it. To make
| matters worse, the errors you get when something fails
| aren't too helpful and they are used across various
| Microsoft platforms. You have to always ensure you're
| looking for help on PowerBI vs PowerBI developer or
| PowerQuery.
| gr33nq wrote:
| We had a few users try it out before we had a chance to block it
| using Group Policy. It was an abysmal experience for those who
| opted-in, and I can't imagine it ever replacing the native client
| without massive backlash in its current state. It clearly caters
| to a subset of basic users who only send/receive individually.
| Shared calendars, shared mailboxes, rule management, plugins,
| etc. were all absent and are features that a majority of our
| users rely on day to day. There's clearly a huge gap between the
| folks working on this new version and the native app's userbase
| -- and sadly, as we've all observed, that's becoming the norm
| with a lot of releases coming out of Redmond lately.
| ano-ther wrote:
| The new outlook also shows other Office365 apps in an icon column
| on the left -- which I really don't need because I already have
| them in the Windows task bar.
| LordShredda wrote:
| I honestly don't think the windows devs even use windows
| donatj wrote:
| I would love if instead of replacing Windows Mail they just FIXED
| its email rendering. Windows Mail's UI is far more touch screen
| friendly, decent and clean, VASTLY moreso than the new Outlook.
|
| However the number of times I need to log into Gmail to see my
| email because it doesn't render correctly in Windows Mail is just
| too dang high.
|
| My intuition tells me Windows Mail is using the old pre-Blink
| Edge engine and if they could just switch that to new Blink Edge
| then that would make me so very happy.
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| What are some _usable_ alternatives on macOS you folks use? I
| also need the calendar thing. Outlook is quirky and I essentially
| pay for it. If this ships, this will only become worse.
| JimtheCoder wrote:
| I was using the new Outlook.
|
| For unrelated reasons, I found myself in a state of rage and
| removed the Edge browser from my Windows installation in it's
| entirety.
|
| Outlook no longer works...I guess you need Edge, or maybe some
| components are shared...
|
| I am now using Thunderbird.
|
| I just felt like sharing...
| 2devnull wrote:
| What a terrible ad laden website.
| fnordlord wrote:
| That's what I was thinking. Funny to read criticism about
| usability and aesthetics from a website covered in popups and
| banner ads.
| jupp0r wrote:
| I did not see any ads. Must be my adblock.
| happymellon wrote:
| There was lots of whitespace from the ad placeholders having
| unique names though.
| CommieBobDole wrote:
| I tried it, and it's not great. Probably OK for light home or
| school use, but I have work to do, and as terrible as desktop
| Outlook is, it's powerful and terrible.
| thesuperbigfrog wrote:
| "In April 2023, Microsoft started pushing an option to Microsoft
| 365 users to switch their desktop Outlook programs to the New
| Outlook as well. This has been optional for Insiders for a while,
| but now everyone gets a taste of the New Outlook. One of the key
| benefits appears to be full support for 3rd party e-mail and
| calendars, such as the very popular GMail. No doubt that many
| home users will welcome this option, but if Microsoft 365, which
| shares its code base with perpetually licensed Microsoft Office
| packages, loses Outlook, this will be one less reason for
| Microsoft to keep improving it."
|
| All the Microsoft Office seems to be going to web programming for
| use on the Microsoft 365 websites and a unified codebase for PWAs
| / "native" clients that are WebViews or similar.
|
| This leads me to believe that the future of Windows is as a
| ChromeOS-like thin client with everything happening in Azure to
| maximize Azure use, enable Copilot / AI, and increase
| subscription revenues.
| lencastre wrote:
| I hate the new outlook more than the old outlook. The insider
| beta version of the desktop version sometimes doesn't render
| properly and search is painful to use, granted the new version is
| missing million features from the desktop version so I use both.
|
| I use the web version when I need only my "online" inbox, to
| check email and answer quickly, like a first parse including
| flagging, categorizing, and replying quickly. Because hotkey
| shortcut combos are different or non-existent and access to local
| mailbox PST files is not available I use the desktop version for
| the archiving, filing, and eventual researching and answering
| with attachments, etc.
|
| I make extensive use of categories and the search folders feature
| of the desktop version and I made my workflow into just two
| archive folders INBOX and SENT where every single message that
| was saved is properly categorized.
|
| The new outlook cannot access my archive and it's also horrible
| at search, like it's desktop brethren.
|
| Finally, I use Outlook because it is m365 and mandated by IT.
|
| For personal email I use Gmail and mailspring.
| rickcarlino wrote:
| In 2023 it seems like no one wants to use anything other than JS
| and CSS to build a native desktop application. I would be
| interested in seeing a desktop environment that just cuts to the
| chase and makes the entire desktop a web view so that developers
| don't need to package things into extra layers. Weren't there a
| few failed mobile OSes that tried this in the early 2010s?
| rektide wrote:
| Palm Pre's webOS (2009) is the most famous. After an
| acquisition by HP (2010-2013), it was acquired by LG's (with
| patents going to Qualcomm). The only other major entrant,
| Firefox, was short lived (2014-2015). Chrome OS (2011-) only
| sort of counts; I don't think the OS chrome is using Chrome,
| just the same underlying drawing libraries, but it does run
| webapps.
|
| Before that was a neat Linux project Pyrodesktop (2007) which
| was an x11 window manager using Firefox guts to render. There
| was also a trend of trying to mate Javascript technologies to
| gnome back then, with efforts like gjs seeing some adoption. I
| don't know how popular it is, but a spinoff of css was/is used
| for styling in GNOME for a while.
|
| These days there's tons of web desktop projects.
| https://github.com/syxanash/awesome-web-desktops . Only sort of
| in the spirit but i quite adore Greenfield, an html5 Wayland
| desktop/compositor. https://github.com/udevbe/greenfield
|
| I absolutely think there is all-in potential for the web. I
| think we're missing a visible rallying point, where a stronger
| community of app makers can cooperatively advance beyond-the-
| web capabilities. Project Fugu & WICG help a lot but are also
| working with Safari (and sort of Firefox) handcuffed to them.
| johnny22 wrote:
| css is still used in gtk (but a very minimal version) and
| javascript is used to write gnome extensions.
| hundchenkatze wrote:
| There were a couple posted on HN recently.
|
| Capyloon https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36262627
|
| Kera https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36260589
| happymellon wrote:
| You want Active Desktop?
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Desktop
| mike_hearn wrote:
| That's ChromeOS.
|
| You may be thinking of Palm webOS which failed in the market,
| partly because it felt slower than Android, iirc.
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