Auto layout is more or less declarative UI (or well along the road to it). And that is a pretty different paradigm to drag-and-drop, which is the camp Xojo is in. Not that they can’t coexist at some level, but some thought should be put into that.
Bingo. There are fewer attempts to use “native” controls and layouts, and more platforms adopting pixel-perfect approaches (AvaloniaUI makes this a key point; Flutter does as well. Notably, both render via Skia). And users don’t seem to care. I think there are lots of reasons for this:
- The web UI thing mentioned above, but also that users are drawn to slick, clean interfaces. Something that looks like a crappy refit because it was designed in another platform’s native look probably isn’t appealing
- Users have multiple devices and platforms now, so they are used to all of the differences
- Platform UIs change frequently. How many different UIs does Windows support at the moment? What is The native Windows UI look and feel?
What users expect are consistent interactions – consistent in the sense of how things basically work everywhere now. Case in point: I think it was interesting that it was noted that textfield behavior across platforms was natively – and noticeably – different.