Now note that i'm not saying this is something that matters for all sorts of applications or is always a deal breaker
The more serious issue that nobody here has yet mentioned is lack of accessibility, e.g. for blind users with screen readers, in many toolkits. I say that is a deal-breaker if you're developing any kind of application that someone is going to use in their job, education, or other important tasks, unless the task is already inherently visual in nature. Qt has passable accessibility on Windows, Mac,and desktop Linux. GTK is accessible as part of GNOME. Electron, for all its faults, is as accessible as Chrome (pretty good these days). FLTK, FOX, Nuklear, TK, and a thousand other toolkits have zero accessibility. I've grown weary of bringing this up, and some of you may be tired of seeing it, but I feel compelled to do everything I can to make sure nobody overlooks this point, lest someone develops an inaccessible application that prevents someone else from doing a job, taking a course, etc.
Edit: I realize that was a rant. What rubbed me the wrong way about your comment was the suggestion that the problems with cross-platform toolkits are mainly cosmetic things or extra functionality that only spoiled Mac users care about.
Uh, i think you need to read again what i wrote as i explicitly write that there are more issues than just cosmetic things and accessibility is one of these - i just brought simple examples that anyone can test by themselves right now.
But also yes, not every program has to care about these, including accessibility. An image editor or a level editor for some game or some internal and/or throwaway tool that has a very explicit "audience" has no reason to bother about these.
Nah I agree accessibility is super important, and exactly the thing you'd want a UI framework to encapsulate. I don't necessarily think it's essential--people should be able to determine their target userbase themselves--but if you want to be a mainstream UI framework that competes with Electron, it's table stakes.
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The more serious issue that nobody here has yet mentioned is lack of accessibility, e.g. for blind users with screen readers, in many toolkits. I say that is a deal-breaker if you're developing any kind of application that someone is going to use in their job, education, or other important tasks, unless the task is already inherently visual in nature. Qt has passable accessibility on Windows, Mac,and desktop Linux. GTK is accessible as part of GNOME. Electron, for all its faults, is as accessible as Chrome (pretty good these days). FLTK, FOX, Nuklear, TK, and a thousand other toolkits have zero accessibility. I've grown weary of bringing this up, and some of you may be tired of seeing it, but I feel compelled to do everything I can to make sure nobody overlooks this point, lest someone develops an inaccessible application that prevents someone else from doing a job, taking a course, etc.
Edit: I realize that was a rant. What rubbed me the wrong way about your comment was the suggestion that the problems with cross-platform toolkits are mainly cosmetic things or extra functionality that only spoiled Mac users care about.
Uh, i think you need to read again what i wrote as i explicitly write that there are more issues than just cosmetic things and accessibility is one of these - i just brought simple examples that anyone can test by themselves right now.
But also yes, not every program has to care about these, including accessibility. An image editor or a level editor for some game or some internal and/or throwaway tool that has a very explicit "audience" has no reason to bother about these.
Nah I agree accessibility is super important, and exactly the thing you'd want a UI framework to encapsulate. I don't necessarily think it's essential--people should be able to determine their target userbase themselves--but if you want to be a mainstream UI framework that competes with Electron, it's table stakes.