Widget toolkit

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A widget toolkit, widget library, GUI toolkit, or UX library is a library or a collection of libraries containing a set of graphical control elements (called widgets) used to construct the graphical user interface (GUI) of programs.

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Most widget toolkits additionally include their own rendering engine. This engine can be specific to a certain operating system or windowing system or contain back-ends to interface with multiple ones and also with rendering APIs such as OpenGL, OpenVG, or EGL. The look and feel of the graphical control elements can be hard-coded or decoupled, allowing the graphical control elements to be themed/skinned.

Overview

A window using the Standard Widget Toolkit SWT-on-mac.png
A window using the Standard Widget Toolkit

Some toolkits may be used from other languages by employing language bindings. Graphical user interface builders such as e.g. Glade Interface Designer facilitate the authoring of GUIs in a WYSIWYG manner employing a user interface markup language such as in this case GtkBuilder.

The GUI of a program is commonly constructed in a cascading manner, with graphical control elements being added directly to on top of one another.

Most widget toolkits use event-driven programming as a model for interaction. [1] The toolkit handles user events, for example when the user clicks on a button. When an event is detected, it is passed on to the application where it is dealt with. The design of those toolkits has been criticized for promoting an oversimplified model of event-action, leading programmers to create error-prone, difficult to extend and excessively complex application code. [2] Finite state machines and hierarchical state machines have been proposed as high-level models to represent the interactive state changes for reactive programs.

Windowing systems

A window is considered to be a graphical control element. In some windowing systems, windows are added directly to the scene graph (canvas) by the window manager, and can be stacked and layered on top of each other through various means. Each window is associated with a particular application which controls the widgets added to its canvas, which can be watched and modified by their associated applications.

See also

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Swing (Java)</span> Java-based GUI toolkit

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Standard Widget Toolkit</span>

The Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT) is a graphical widget toolkit for use with the Java platform. It was originally developed by Stephen Northover at IBM and is now maintained by the Eclipse Foundation in tandem with the Eclipse IDE. It is an alternative to the Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT) and Swing Java graphical user interface (GUI) toolkits provided by Sun Microsystems as part of the Java Platform, Standard Edition (J2SE).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Graphical widget</span> Element of interaction in a graphical user interface

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fox toolkit</span>

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Graphical user interface builder</span> Software development tool

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">X Toolkit Intrinsics</span>

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Magic User Interface</span> Widget toolkit for AmigaOS

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A user interface markup language is a markup language that renders and describes graphical user interfaces and controls. Many of these markup languages are dialects of XML and are dependent upon a pre-existing scripting language engine, usually a JavaScript engine, for rendering of controls and extra scriptability.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">CEGUI</span>

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tk (software)</span> GUI toolkit or framework

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A software widget is a relatively simple and easy-to-use software application or component made for one or more different software platforms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GTK</span> Free and open-source cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abstract Window Toolkit</span> Java-based GUI toolkit

The Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT) is Java's original platform-dependent windowing, graphics, and user-interface widget toolkit, preceding Swing. The AWT is part of the Java Foundation Classes (JFC) — the standard API for providing a graphical user interface (GUI) for Java program. AWT is also the GUI toolkit for a number of Java ME profiles. For example, Connected Device Configuration profiles require Java runtimes on mobile telephones to support the Abstract Window Toolkit.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Immediate mode GUI</span>

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fyne (software)</span> Graphical toolkit for building cross platform GUIs

Fyne is a free and open-source cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs) across desktop and mobile platforms. Fyne uses OpenGL to provide cross-platform graphics. It is inspired by the principles of Material Design to create applications that look and behave consistently across all platforms. It is licensed under the terms of the 3-clause BSD License, supporting the creation of free and proprietary applications. In December 2019 Fyne became the most popular GUI toolkit for Go, by GitHub star count and in early February 2020 it was trending as #1 project in GitHub trending ranks.

References

  1. ↑ Past, Present and Future of User Interface Software Tools. Brad Myers, Scott E. Hudson, Randy Pausch, Y Pausch. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 2000.
  2. ↑ Samek, Miro (April 2003). "Who Moved My State?". C/C++ Users Journal, The Embedded Angle column.
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