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Discussion on: UI Layout: Natural versus dependent size

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nestedsoftware profile image
Nested Software • Edited

This is probably a reasonable idea if you're developing an application, but I would say it's not reasonable if you're making a UI framework. You can be opinionated about your own specific app. But if you're making a framework, and a person using that framework has what they consider to be a valid use-case for absolute sizes, then they won't use your framework if you don't have some way to support what they want.

In general, a framework always has to find some kind of balance between the philosophy of the framework author and the demands of the actual users. I suspect making this work well is not easy in practice: If you're not opinionated enough, you create a kind of kitchen sink of technology that becomes messy and unpleasant to use; if you're too opinionated, you turn people off by telling them "sorry, I know better than you what you need."

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mortoray profile image
edA‑qa mort‑ora‑y

Yes, an engine needs to allow people to be creative and experiment with UX. If it didn't allow this then no progress could ever be made in that area, and the apps would all end up the same, for better or for worse.

Like all frameworks, and languages, this allows people to create bad UI's. I fixed several issues in Fuse found by people doing things I considered a bad design. It's not my job to judge their approach though, rather to find the inconsistency and correct it. Features, of course, were priotized on known use-cases though.

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johannesvollmer profile image
Johannes Vollmer • Edited

Okay, I must confess, a library probably shouldn't prohibit using absolute sizes (but it should not promote them).

But all UI engines allow absolute sizing, so you won't make progress by implementing absolute resizing, just as every other engine already does. :D

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mortoray profile image
edA‑qa mort‑ora‑y

Don't worry, I'll be talking lots about responsive layout.