Now if only they had a better way to design UIs than using clunky XAML. WinJS + CSS I think is a little better, but still not comparable to what iOS or even Android has.
Can you elaborate what you find ugly in xaml? I am using right now winJs but, in my opinion, xaml allow to be really fast in ui design and binding data. Used in combo with Blend (and I know too many people who totally ignore even the existence of that sw) is a win-win
After building UI's for the two major platforms, I love using the layout and binding engine that MS brought to devices. I have background with ASP.net which is only so far removed from XAML, but it was a very small step to get up to speed and helps me be more productive than the model Android uses and, definitely, less annoying than the tooling available for iOS.
It might be verbose but at least it is logical and well suited for GUIs as opposed to HTML+CSS which were designed to produce linked documents that may occasionally contain dancing monkeys (JS) and now need to be patched with frameworks such as Angular and Bootstrap.
PS: Apple and Google don't care about developer's experience as much as Microsoft does, they just care about customer's experience.
You can't be serious. Android's layout XML somehow manages to combine the general awkwardness of HTML+CSS with the overbearing verbosity of enterprise XML formats.
It's probably because Android's format was originally designed for simple keypad-operated mobile layouts, and then was painfully extended for touchscreen applications.
Loads of HTML5 applications around the web say otherwise. While the HTML approach is indeed rather awkward to use to build applications UI, its flexibility more than makes up for it. Compared to Android XML Layout files, I still prefer HTML.
