At least we finally have a system that is multiplatform- but my web browser is seriously hungry, added to that most websites dictate how they will display their information to me- I seem to get less choice year on year. (and yes, I know I can plug my browser full of add-ons which give me back some control, but if JS doesn't run for instance, I don't even see the page in many cases, and this serves to increase how hungry the browser is)
> and they have shoddy tools
I don't intend to argue with you, but my personal experience is one of discovering recently that javascript is a decent language and the browser dev tools, especially Chrome, are bigger and better than most of the C++ dev tools I've ever used. And they come with the browser, no crazy developer packages to install, and you can always debug on anyone's machine anywhere.
It is true that web developers usually have to make browser specific adjustments, but its fairly minor these days, an occasional polyfill you can find online, and I don't think this even compares, not even a little, to the issues you have to deal with when writing native cross-platform code (mac/win/linux).
I'm less happy that everyone treats their webpage as an app, and thus crams it full of huge amounts of code, when really they're mostly serving text and images, with only little bits of javascript needed.
Sure there are some desktop apps which suck as much as their web alternatives (Outlook for email is a great example) but overall I would much rather work with a dozen desktop apps than a dozen web services.
And then all of the other things you mentioned come into play such as code signing, no control over updates which might break my process, etc.
Yet you say you miss native apps, which absolutely dictate everything about how they work?
* CLI tools present in my terminal's specified fonts and colours. Near total control. The main exceptions are ANSI escapes, and even those I can limit to black-and-white -- usually normal, bold, and reverse-video.
* Most desktop apps integrate into some desktop enviornment (or environment(s)) for font size(s), colours, etc. OSX is actually something of an exception, which I realised when trying to see how I might set that up for a visually disabled friend.
* Even where desktop apps don't have systemwide configuration tools, you're generally seeing the same toolkit (or limited set of toolkits) in use. Most of the experience is highly uniform.
* Straight-up text presentation is typically quite good. Far superior to Web tools.
They let you change colours, typefaces and shapes slightly. You could do that with Windows 1.
That's not the same as what CSS allows (complete reconfiguration).
Back then a browser was just another application on your computer, almost like a calculator something. It was just a tool. Now the web browser is probably the most complex bit of software on your computer. Crazy how far things have come in the past 20 years.
Also it is great to see FLTK in use, it is a nice little toolkit albeit not the prettiest :)