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If you start adding traditional GUI application features - toolbars, tooltips, shortcuts, clipboard, drag and drop... You can get very close with all of those things in HTML, but not in the "native look and feel" way where the OS and framework actually knows what's going on and helps coordinate behavior.

Basically, the web's features are there to help you create advertisements and e-commerce frontends. They aren't productivity-focused, and the type of UI you get out of them by default reflects that.



Judging by the last decade, Microsoft itself doesn't know what a Windows "native look and feel" is. I doubt anyone would miss stylistic touches, colors or form elements. Just get the basics right - alt-activated menu, ctrl-scroll to zoom etc.


All kinds of great ergonomic UI design principles were forgotten overnight when the web hit.

It feels like lost magic from an ancient forgotten empire. There was a time in the ancient misty past when we thought about computing from the perspective of cohesion, reducing cognitive load, and helping users create things.

Go find a copy of Office before the “ribbon” or Visual Studio before XAML.

Apple is the only company that even tries anymore, and they aren’t great just somewhat cohesive compared to the mess on Windows and Linux. Linux is arguably better than Windows these days in some ways.


Good point. I don’t try too hard to get to native look and feel because as this article implies, that question has already become moot IMHO.




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