I have seen users having trouble with pixel soup UIs. They may not think "This should be in a native toolkit", but they do think "How the hell do I subscribe to a folder in the new Outlook?".

The problem in these usability cases is pretty much always layout and constant redesigns rather than the exact theme the button has. I've seen plenty of unusable native ui soup UIs and very clean and simple custom UIs.

You could call it the exact theme when a clickable UI element looks just like regular text (it was not inside any kind of button-like shape in the Outlook case that I saw), but it's super common to have that in web-based UIs.

(And of course, nobody changed any theme in the outlook case)

Right, but bad UI's was not uncommon before webviews, if anything the spartan-ness of the web often simpified patterns whilst reliance on weird hotkeys in desktop apps isn't uncommon.

>reliance on weird hotkeys in desktop apps isn't uncommon

The only examples I can think of are actions that are intentionally not easy to reach. How exactly it's done is platform-specific, but the (mis)feature doesn't come from the platform and can be implemented in other ways on other platforms.

- Apple UIs hide some power user functionality behind obscure hotkeys

- Similar: Shift-Delete to permanently delete (Windows, KDE) - Similar: Shift-right click to "Open With..." (Windows, KDE)

- In desktop apps that FOR SOME REASON try to look more like web apps, the hidden menu bar can be restored with Alt or Alt-M (Firefox, KDE)

> ironically the only group of users I've found that actually care about native UI, are other developers and Mac purist.

One group of people who routinely carry the can for poor product usability and another who by definition care about the Mac platform; entirely what would be expected.