I don't respect the self-imposed "x-platform native UI experience" constraint anymore. Even windows slowly rebuilt its user interface and experience over the years.
It isn't a user demand, it doesn't put any pressure on support, frankly I have no idea what these people who spread all this custom drawn vs native control polemic were thinking.
Also, if you are making money, who cares if you drew some of your controls on a canvas instead of trying to goad some restricted native elements into acting and drawing like you want them to?
> who cares if you drew some of your controls on a canvas instead of trying to goad some restricted native elements into acting and drawing like you want them to
Because now your app will break in HiDPI, for screen readers, automation tools, the next version of Unicode. Expected behavior like tabbing, keyboard shortcuts, system spell-checking breaks.
Why, then, doesn't firemonkey have any scaling or layout problems? Not all applications need any of the system level services that are coupled tightly with the system widgets.
> Why, then, doesn't firemonkey have any scaling or layout problems? Not all applications need any of the system level services that are coupled tightly with the system widgets.
I can't speak for Firemonkey specifically, but a lot of cross-platform toolkits of its ilk have horrible problems when rendered on 4K displays.
Because then you will have an interface that has been goaded into acting and drawing like you want it to, instead of having an interface which looks and acts in ways which feel normal and familiar to users of the target platform.
Maybe you want that, as an app developer, but as a user I'd really like it if you'd stop, and I'm happy when the platform makes this sort of thing difficult.
What really changed my mind was the MLOC delphi application I maintain as part of my dayjob. People don't think "oh wow I wish this was a ctrl-v instead of shift-ins and what am I ever gonna do if this file dialog looks kinda weird and unfamiliar? and oh no, the context menu in this grid is actually a window with a handle and not the default menu that was originally intended by the win32 api gods? Give me cancer or give me death"
No, they just busily work X hours and go home. They only care about getting their job done and if that means getting used to the interface they do so. We actually have users who've been around for about 20 years and you should see how fast they can enter some of the stuff.
Well, sure, employers are free to waste their employees' time and make their lives complicated in all sorts of ways; that's what the paycheck is for. So what? It's still a crappy way to design apps, and I'm not going to respect it just because people successfully get away with it.
Were you ever forced to use something like SAP? The UI gives its users cancer because "for historic reasons" they do everything themselves instead of using normal widgets and shortcuts.
I've used SAP, Oracle Forms, Navision and a custom made framework written over 20 years in my current company. They all impose constraints on their users with their weird interfaces. However, users just need to get used to it and I haven't met a single person other than the developers themselves who overthink this subject in such an obsessive manner.
In the early days of windowed operating systems, absolute consistency in the look and feel helped people navigate unfamiliar apps. The proliferation of widgets on the web, and the use of different devices with different standards, has destroyed that rationale. The only thing consistency is good for anymore is establishing branding.
It isn't a user demand, it doesn't put any pressure on support, frankly I have no idea what these people who spread all this custom drawn vs native control polemic were thinking.
Also, if you are making money, who cares if you drew some of your controls on a canvas instead of trying to goad some restricted native elements into acting and drawing like you want them to?