[IMPROVEMENT] allow windows users to enable the WinUI based interface again OR adjust the Avalonia UI to match it more closely

[staticanimal]

Please confirm these before moving forward.

• I have searched for my feature proposal and have not found a work-in-progress/duplicate/resolved/discarded issue.
• This improvement refers to an existing feature. If you want to suggest a new feature, please use this template.
• This improvement is not a bug. If you want to report a bug, please use this template.

Describe the improvement

the old WinUI based interface for this program was perfectly fine and did not require switching out in my opinion. when i first received the update introducing the new Avalonia based UI i immediately changed it back but another more recent update appears to have removed that setting.

while i believe the Avalonia UI can more closely match its WinUI based counterpart and as such fit in with the rest of microsoft's design language more seamlessly, i also believe that more time is required for it to be able to do so.

i'll list some suggestions for how to potentially achieve this below, alongside some issues i've noticed [i'm aware some of these more ideally belong in a bug report as opposed to a suggestion for Improvements but i'd much rather avoid making multiple posts if at all possible]:

• increase the animation time and smoothen the easings of the slide animation when navigating the Settings and readd animations that are outright missing such as expanding the sidebar on the left
• darken the outline around certain UI elements such as search bars, buttons in the Settings menu and the different filter types on the left as they contrast too much with the rest of the UI [i use dark mode]
• decrease the size of fonts for items in list views [Discover Packages, Software Updates, Installed Packages]
• increase the left-hand margins for items in the Sources filter so the horizontal position of the checkboxes lines up with the horizontal position of the checkboxes in the Filters tab below
• fix the width of individual Filter Subcategories jittering when the Filters Sidebar Filters Sidebar is resized to a width that requires word wrapping on the text within the individual Filters Subcategories

i feel that the forced switch to Avalonia UI Framework was poorly thought through and required either:

• keeping the ability to switch back to the WinUI based interface around for longer, allowing the developers work out more of Avalonia's issues and dissimilarities OR
• more time for devs to sort out problems with Avalonia before introducing it to begin with

Describe how this improvement could help users

perhaps reducing the amount of glaring dissimilarities could help reduce distractions when interacting with the software?

[LettuceManOfficial]

To be honest, I agree. The Old UI felt much nicer than this current one.
The option for a button to go back to the old WinUI one would be nice to have.

Also the Avalonia UI feels more jank and unfinished.

[mamoreau-devolutions]

The old WinUI frontend had to be removed early in order to reduce pressure on CDN costs that went sky high. You'll notice that the latest release is significantly smaller in size, and we have further size reduction optimization coming up. This isn't just for CDN costs, we've had users complain about the larger package size, so we knew we couldn't keep both WinUI and Avalonia for long.

This being said, we are more than happy to work on improving the new Avalonia UI frontend based on user feedback, which is your second suggestion. Please open issues with specific details on the UI you'd like to be improved and how, and we'll go through them.

[Anixx]

Man, the WinUI and all that WinRT abomination does not support the system themes. That means that all programs that use a different toolkit have to just imitate it. If for some reason Microsoft would decide to change the appearance, all other programs and toolkits would have to be re-designed manually. So, you will ask for changing shadows or whatever forever.

The only real approach to have consistent interface is to use the system themes from uxtheme, as do Winforms, Qt and GTK toolkits.

[UDPSendToFailed]

I managed to revert the sources to the old interface, seems to be working so far. I can't promise anything, but I might upload a fork that uses the WinUI interface as I have time for it. It will support Windows only though, as I have no devices nor the motivation to test and build for other platforms.

[Zseli22]

Another angle to consider this from is that of accessibility with screen readers. I have been using this program for around a year and ever since this new UI was introduced, I dismissed it and switched back to the original one that was at least workable. This new UI is a very big downgrade when it comes to keyboard navigation, item labeling, etc. If the only path forward is improving the Avalonioa UI, much more work needs to be put into making the interface cleaner and navigable with standard keyboard controls and not needing to move around the screen manually. Something as simple as choosing the correct package in a list of results after a search, reviewing the list of installed packages, or choosing which package to update should not require the use of extra screen reader commands to move to and interact with the required information. As it stands, I can not use my arrow keys to move in the list that serves this purpose, among many other things.