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EspañolWIDGET TOOLKIT
In computer programming, 'widget toolkits' (or 'GUI toolkits') are sets of basic building units for graphical user interfaces. They are often implemented as a library, or application framework.
See the article on widgets for a list of widgets.
''(This section deals mostly with High-level widget toolkit characteristics)''
A high-level widget toolkit is an API that manages the creation and behavior of a graphical user interface:
★ The graphical user interface is often created as a tree of widgets, some of them supporting interaction with the user (labels, buttons, check box, ...), others being containers that group the other widgets (windows, panels, ...).
★ The content of the widgets tree, and the properties of the widgets, can often be modified at runtime (widgets can be added or removed from the tree).
★ The toolkit handles the user events, as for example when clicking on a button. The action following the detection of the event is not the responsibility of the toolkit, but of the application. ''For example, if the user selects a file in a file dialog, the file dialog widget behavior and the detection of the user event are managed by the widget toolkit, but the actual action to perform on the file after selection must be performed by the application''.
Widget toolkits must have a means to position the widgets in their containers. The simplest way to define their positions is by defining their absolute (on the screen) or relative (to the parent) position in pixels or common distance units, but it is also often possible to lay out the widgets by setting their relative positions without using distance units (see layout manager).
Also, the look and feel of the widgets can be hardcoded in the toolkit, but some widget toolkit APIs decouple the look and feel from the definition of the widgets, allowing the developer to define them at the initialisation of the application or even at runtime (see pluggable look and feel).
Integrated in the operating system
★
★ The Mac OS toolbox, or Macintosh APIs, formerly located in ROM, but in "new world" Macs, on disk. A cleaned up version for Mac OS X is called Carbon.
★
★ The Windows API used in Microsoft Windows.
★
★ The X Window System contains primitive building blocks, called Xt or "Intrinsics", but they are used only by Motif, most other toolkits such as GTK+ or Qt bypass them and use xlib.
★
★ The Amiga OS Intuition was formerly present in the Amiga Kickstart ROM and integrated itself with a medium-high level widget library which invoked the Workbench Amiga native GUI. Since Amiga OS 2.0, Intuition.library became disk based and object oriented. Also Workbench.library and Icon.library became disk based, and could be replaced with similar third-party solutions.
On Amiga OS
★
★ BOOPSI (Basic Object Oriented Programming System for Intuition) was introduced with OS 2.0 and enhanced Intuition with a system of classes in which every class represents a single widget or describes an interface event. This led to an evolution in which third-party developers each realised their own personal systems of classes.
★
★ Magic User Interface (MUI): system of Amiga Widget Classes.
★
★ Zune (GUI toolkit) is an object-oriented GUI toolkit which is part of the AROS project and nearly a Open Source clone, at both an API and look and feel level, of Magic User Interface.
★
★ ClassAct: another system of Amiga Widget Classes which evolved in AmigaOS 3.9 and 4.0 into Reaction based GUIs.
★
★ ReAction: Evolution of the ClassACT system.
★
★ Triton
★
★ BGUI
★
★ StormWIZARD: IFF-based, developed by Thomas Mittelsdorf
★
★ Feelin: XML-based, developed by Olivier Laviale
On Macintosh
★
★ Cocoa - used in Mac OS X ''(see also Aqua)''.
★
★ MacApp Macintosh framework.
★
★ MacZoop Macintosh C++ framework.
★
★ PowerPlant Macintosh framework.
On Microsoft Windows
★
★ The Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC), used by most developers on the Microsoft Windows platform.
★
★ The Windows Template Library (WTL), a template-based extension to ATL and a replacement of MFC
★
★ SmartWin++, an MFC/WTL replacement using templates based on STL and Boost
★
★ The Object Windows Library, Borland's alternative to MFC.
★
★ The Visual Component Library (VCL) is Borland's toolkit used in its C++ Builder and Delphi products.
★
★ Windows Forms is .NET's set of classes that handle GUI controls. In the cross-platform Mono implementation, it is an independent toolkit, implemented entirely in managed code (not wrapping the Windows API, which doesn't exist on other platforms) [1].
★
★ The Windows Presentation Foundation is the graphical subsystem of the .NET Framework 3.0. User interfaces can be created in WPF using any of the CLR languages (e.g. C#) or with the XML based language XAML. Microsoft Expression Blend is a visual GUI builder for WPF.
On Unix, under the X Window System
Note that the X Window system was originally primarily for Unix-like operating systems, but it now runs on Microsoft Windows as well using, for example, Cygwin, so some or all of these toolkits can also be used under Windows.
★
★ Xaw, the Project Athena widget set for the X Window System.
★
★ Motif used in the Common Desktop Environment.
★
★ Lesstif, an open source (LGPL) version of Motif.
★
★ InterViews, a toolkit written in C++.
★
★ IRIS ViewKit by Silicon Graphics (and its free implementation Hungry ViewKit) is a C++ class library for developing Motif applications.
=Based on Flash=
★ Adobe Flash allows creating widgets running in most web browsers and in several mobile phones.
★ Adobe Flex provides high level widgets for building web user interfaces. Flash widgets can be used in Flex.
★ Flash and Flex widgets will run without a browser in the forthcoming Apollo runtime environment.
★ The Free Software reimplementation of Flash, GNU Gnash, which is under development, can also run Flash widgets outside of a browser.
=Based on XML=
★ XUL
★ XAML with Silverlight
★ Trixul A lightweight XML/JavaScript/C++ toolkit, inspired by XUL, for use in desktop applications, and providing cross-platform, native support for Cocoa, .NET Forms, and Gtk+.
★ XUI (software) A Java and XML toolkit for building Rich Internet Applications.
=Based on AJAX=
Main articles: JavaScript library
★ Backbase AJAX
★ TIBCO General Interface has many rich AJAX GUI components including vector charts and is now also available through an open source BSD license.
★ Qooxdoo Could be understood as Qt for the Web
★ jQuery
★ Dojo Toolkit
★ Google Web Toolkit
★ WAML
★ Yahoo! UI Library, or simply YUI
★ Ext JS
★ Cooee
=Based on SVG=
★ airWRX is an application framework that runs from a USB flash drive, and turns its PC host and other nearby PCs into a multi-screen, web-like digital workspace.
★ SPARK (software) is an application framework built upon SVG.
=Based on Java=
★ The Abstract Windowing Toolkit is used in Java applications. It typically uses another toolkit on the selected platform in turn.
★ Swing is Sun Microsystems's replacement for AWT in newer Java versions.
★ The Standard Widget Toolkit is a native widget toolkit for Java that was invented as part of the Eclipse project. SWT will use a standard toolkit for the running platform (such as the Windows API or GTK+) underneath.
=Based on C or C++ (including bindings to other languages)=
★ Agar is a set of cross-platform graphics libraries which includes a comprehensive GUI toolkit. Agar supports OpenGL rendering as well as simple frame buffer displays with SDL.
★ CEGUI, open source (MIT License), configurable GUI designed for game development.
★ CLX (Component Library for Cross-platform), used with Borland's Delphi, C++ Builder, and Kylix, for producing cross-platform applications. It is based on Qt, wrapped in such a way that its programming interface is similar to that of the VCL toolkit.
★ FLTK, open source (LGPL), cross-platform toolkit designed to be small and fast.
★ FOX toolkit, open source (LGPL), cross-platform toolkit.
★ GLUI, a very small toolkit written the GLUT library.
★ GTK+, open source (LGPL), primarily for the X Window System, ported to and emulated under other platforms; used in the GNOME and XFCE desktop environments.
★ Juce provides GUI and widget set with the same look and feel in Microsoft Windows, X Window Systems, and MacOSX
★ Lgi (software) (LGPL), Ports for Windows, Cygwin, Linux (Xlib), BeOS and MacOSX (in progress). Compiles with VC++ 6 and 7, gcc 3 & 4 and XCode 1.5. Cross platform and native widgets (including stand alone HTML engine), graphical dialog designer, translatable Unicode applications, IDE, and small binaries.
★ NovaTK, a GUI Toolkit for X11. It is written in C++ and depends only on Xlib.
★ Qt, open source (QPL, GPL) available under Unix and Linux (with X Window), MS Windows, Mac OS X and embedded Linux systems; also available in commercial versions under these platforms; used in KDE.
★ Tk, a widget set accessed from Tcl and other high-level script languages (interfaced in Python as Tkinter).
★ The Visual Component Framework (VCF) is an open source (BSD license) C++ framework project.
★ wxWidgets (formerly wxWindows), open source (relaxed LGPL), abstracts toolkits across several platforms for C++, Python and Perl.
★ YAAF, open source (YAAF Open Source License), designed to facilitate creating cross-platform applications.
★ Quinta, a lightweight application framework with GUI widgets (BSD license)
=Based on Pascal=
★ IP Pascal uses a graphics library built on top of standard language constructs. Also unusual for being a procedural toolkit that is cross platform (no callbacks or other tricks), and is completely upward compatible with standard serial input and output paradigms. Completely standard programs with serial output can be run and extended with graphical constructs.
★ Lazarus (for Pascal, Object Pascal and Delphi programming language via Free Pascal compiler), as a class library wrapping GTK+ 1.2, Gtk+ 2.x and the Windows API (Carbon, Windows CE and Qt4 support are all in development).
★ fpGUI is created with the Free Pascal Compiler. It doesn't rely on any large 3rdParty libraries and currently runs on Linux, Windows and Windows CE. A Carbon (Mac OS X) port in under way.
=Based on Curl=
★ Curl is an integrated language intended to replace both HTML and a programming language such as Java or JavaScript. It is designed to yield faster performance due to using compilation. Non-commercial use is free.
★ GNUstep.
★ WINGs WINGs Is Not GNUstep.
★ MetaCard.
1. This version provides the core API of the .NET Framework 2.0, but its implementation of this API is still incomplete.
★ Configuration System
★ Graphical user interface builder
★ Toolkits for User Innovation
★ Widget engine
★ The GUI Toolkit, Framework Page, comparing some of the modern GUIs out there.
★ Survey of Widget sets (for the X Window System) (Edward Falk)
★ GUI Toolkits for The X Window System (Leslie Polzer, freshmeat.net, 27 July, 2003)
See the article on widgets for a list of widgets.
General characteristics
''(This section deals mostly with High-level widget toolkit characteristics)''
A high-level widget toolkit is an API that manages the creation and behavior of a graphical user interface:
★ The graphical user interface is often created as a tree of widgets, some of them supporting interaction with the user (labels, buttons, check box, ...), others being containers that group the other widgets (windows, panels, ...).
★ The content of the widgets tree, and the properties of the widgets, can often be modified at runtime (widgets can be added or removed from the tree).
★ The toolkit handles the user events, as for example when clicking on a button. The action following the detection of the event is not the responsibility of the toolkit, but of the application. ''For example, if the user selects a file in a file dialog, the file dialog widget behavior and the detection of the user event are managed by the widget toolkit, but the actual action to perform on the file after selection must be performed by the application''.
Widget toolkits must have a means to position the widgets in their containers. The simplest way to define their positions is by defining their absolute (on the screen) or relative (to the parent) position in pixels or common distance units, but it is also often possible to lay out the widgets by setting their relative positions without using distance units (see layout manager).
Also, the look and feel of the widgets can be hardcoded in the toolkit, but some widget toolkit APIs decouple the look and feel from the definition of the widgets, allowing the developer to define them at the initialisation of the application or even at runtime (see pluggable look and feel).
Popular widget toolkits
Low-level widget toolkits
Integrated in the operating system
★
★ The Mac OS toolbox, or Macintosh APIs, formerly located in ROM, but in "new world" Macs, on disk. A cleaned up version for Mac OS X is called Carbon.
★
★ The Windows API used in Microsoft Windows.
As a separate layer on top of the operating system
★
★ The X Window System contains primitive building blocks, called Xt or "Intrinsics", but they are used only by Motif, most other toolkits such as GTK+ or Qt bypass them and use xlib.
★
★ The Amiga OS Intuition was formerly present in the Amiga Kickstart ROM and integrated itself with a medium-high level widget library which invoked the Workbench Amiga native GUI. Since Amiga OS 2.0, Intuition.library became disk based and object oriented. Also Workbench.library and Icon.library became disk based, and could be replaced with similar third-party solutions.
High-level widget toolkits
On Amiga OS
★
★ BOOPSI (Basic Object Oriented Programming System for Intuition) was introduced with OS 2.0 and enhanced Intuition with a system of classes in which every class represents a single widget or describes an interface event. This led to an evolution in which third-party developers each realised their own personal systems of classes.
★
★ Magic User Interface (MUI): system of Amiga Widget Classes.
★
★ Zune (GUI toolkit) is an object-oriented GUI toolkit which is part of the AROS project and nearly a Open Source clone, at both an API and look and feel level, of Magic User Interface.
★
★ ClassAct: another system of Amiga Widget Classes which evolved in AmigaOS 3.9 and 4.0 into Reaction based GUIs.
★
★ ReAction: Evolution of the ClassACT system.
★
★ Triton
★
★ BGUI
★
★ StormWIZARD: IFF-based, developed by Thomas Mittelsdorf
★
★ Feelin: XML-based, developed by Olivier Laviale
On Macintosh
★
★ Cocoa - used in Mac OS X ''(see also Aqua)''.
★
★ MacApp Macintosh framework.
★
★ MacZoop Macintosh C++ framework.
★
★ PowerPlant Macintosh framework.
On Microsoft Windows
★
★ The Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC), used by most developers on the Microsoft Windows platform.
★
★ The Windows Template Library (WTL), a template-based extension to ATL and a replacement of MFC
★
★ SmartWin++, an MFC/WTL replacement using templates based on STL and Boost
★
★ The Object Windows Library, Borland's alternative to MFC.
★
★ The Visual Component Library (VCL) is Borland's toolkit used in its C++ Builder and Delphi products.
★
★ Windows Forms is .NET's set of classes that handle GUI controls. In the cross-platform Mono implementation, it is an independent toolkit, implemented entirely in managed code (not wrapping the Windows API, which doesn't exist on other platforms) [1].
★
★ The Windows Presentation Foundation is the graphical subsystem of the .NET Framework 3.0. User interfaces can be created in WPF using any of the CLR languages (e.g. C#) or with the XML based language XAML. Microsoft Expression Blend is a visual GUI builder for WPF.
On Unix, under the X Window System
Note that the X Window system was originally primarily for Unix-like operating systems, but it now runs on Microsoft Windows as well using, for example, Cygwin, so some or all of these toolkits can also be used under Windows.
★
★ Xaw, the Project Athena widget set for the X Window System.
★
★ Motif used in the Common Desktop Environment.
★
★ Lesstif, an open source (LGPL) version of Motif.
★
★ InterViews, a toolkit written in C++.
★
★ IRIS ViewKit by Silicon Graphics (and its free implementation Hungry ViewKit) is a C++ class library for developing Motif applications.
Cross-platform
=Based on Flash=
★ Adobe Flash allows creating widgets running in most web browsers and in several mobile phones.
★ Adobe Flex provides high level widgets for building web user interfaces. Flash widgets can be used in Flex.
★ Flash and Flex widgets will run without a browser in the forthcoming Apollo runtime environment.
★ The Free Software reimplementation of Flash, GNU Gnash, which is under development, can also run Flash widgets outside of a browser.
=Based on XML=
★ XUL
★ XAML with Silverlight
★ Trixul A lightweight XML/JavaScript/C++ toolkit, inspired by XUL, for use in desktop applications, and providing cross-platform, native support for Cocoa, .NET Forms, and Gtk+.
★ XUI (software) A Java and XML toolkit for building Rich Internet Applications.
=Based on AJAX=
Main articles: JavaScript library
★ Backbase AJAX
★ TIBCO General Interface has many rich AJAX GUI components including vector charts and is now also available through an open source BSD license.
★ Qooxdoo Could be understood as Qt for the Web
★ jQuery
★ Dojo Toolkit
★ Google Web Toolkit
★ WAML
★ Yahoo! UI Library, or simply YUI
★ Ext JS
★ Cooee
=Based on SVG=
★ airWRX is an application framework that runs from a USB flash drive, and turns its PC host and other nearby PCs into a multi-screen, web-like digital workspace.
★ SPARK (software) is an application framework built upon SVG.
=Based on Java=
★ The Abstract Windowing Toolkit is used in Java applications. It typically uses another toolkit on the selected platform in turn.
★ Swing is Sun Microsystems's replacement for AWT in newer Java versions.
★ The Standard Widget Toolkit is a native widget toolkit for Java that was invented as part of the Eclipse project. SWT will use a standard toolkit for the running platform (such as the Windows API or GTK+) underneath.
=Based on C or C++ (including bindings to other languages)=
★ Agar is a set of cross-platform graphics libraries which includes a comprehensive GUI toolkit. Agar supports OpenGL rendering as well as simple frame buffer displays with SDL.
★ CEGUI, open source (MIT License), configurable GUI designed for game development.
★ CLX (Component Library for Cross-platform), used with Borland's Delphi, C++ Builder, and Kylix, for producing cross-platform applications. It is based on Qt, wrapped in such a way that its programming interface is similar to that of the VCL toolkit.
★ FLTK, open source (LGPL), cross-platform toolkit designed to be small and fast.
★ FOX toolkit, open source (LGPL), cross-platform toolkit.
★ GLUI, a very small toolkit written the GLUT library.
★ GTK+, open source (LGPL), primarily for the X Window System, ported to and emulated under other platforms; used in the GNOME and XFCE desktop environments.
★ Juce provides GUI and widget set with the same look and feel in Microsoft Windows, X Window Systems, and MacOSX
★ Lgi (software) (LGPL), Ports for Windows, Cygwin, Linux (Xlib), BeOS and MacOSX (in progress). Compiles with VC++ 6 and 7, gcc 3 & 4 and XCode 1.5. Cross platform and native widgets (including stand alone HTML engine), graphical dialog designer, translatable Unicode applications, IDE, and small binaries.
★ NovaTK, a GUI Toolkit for X11. It is written in C++ and depends only on Xlib.
★ Qt, open source (QPL, GPL) available under Unix and Linux (with X Window), MS Windows, Mac OS X and embedded Linux systems; also available in commercial versions under these platforms; used in KDE.
★ Tk, a widget set accessed from Tcl and other high-level script languages (interfaced in Python as Tkinter).
★ The Visual Component Framework (VCF) is an open source (BSD license) C++ framework project.
★ wxWidgets (formerly wxWindows), open source (relaxed LGPL), abstracts toolkits across several platforms for C++, Python and Perl.
★ YAAF, open source (YAAF Open Source License), designed to facilitate creating cross-platform applications.
★ Quinta, a lightweight application framework with GUI widgets (BSD license)
=Based on Pascal=
★ IP Pascal uses a graphics library built on top of standard language constructs. Also unusual for being a procedural toolkit that is cross platform (no callbacks or other tricks), and is completely upward compatible with standard serial input and output paradigms. Completely standard programs with serial output can be run and extended with graphical constructs.
★ Lazarus (for Pascal, Object Pascal and Delphi programming language via Free Pascal compiler), as a class library wrapping GTK+ 1.2, Gtk+ 2.x and the Windows API (Carbon, Windows CE and Qt4 support are all in development).
★ fpGUI is created with the Free Pascal Compiler. It doesn't rely on any large 3rdParty libraries and currently runs on Linux, Windows and Windows CE. A Carbon (Mac OS X) port in under way.
=Based on Curl=
★ Curl is an integrated language intended to replace both HTML and a programming language such as Java or JavaScript. It is designed to yield faster performance due to using compilation. Non-commercial use is free.
Not yet categorised
★ GNUstep.
★ WINGs WINGs Is Not GNUstep.
★ MetaCard.
References
1. This version provides the core API of the .NET Framework 2.0, but its implementation of this API is still incomplete.
See also
★ Configuration System
★ Graphical user interface builder
★ Toolkits for User Innovation
★ Widget engine
External links
★ The GUI Toolkit, Framework Page, comparing some of the modern GUIs out there.
★ Survey of Widget sets (for the X Window System) (Edward Falk)
★ GUI Toolkits for The X Window System (Leslie Polzer, freshmeat.net, 27 July, 2003)
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psst.. try this: add to faves
