GUI Frameworks Comparison

Criteria for comparing GUI frameworks

• are there user controls / subforms
  • is there a good community that provides modern user controls/widgets
  • eg. is there a good XP Panel, Task pane? how would you do that with the framework?
• Event model, number and order of events
  • Multicast events or Singlecast events
• Threading modell for GUI (eg can you access the GUI from a background thread?)
• handling of modal windows
• internationalisation: how easy is it to translate the screens? How do the screens adjust to longer texts? (see also Comparison I18N)
• portability (does it only run on Windows, or also Linux/Mac?)
  • can you change the look&feel (skin, theme) to something the user is used to?
• how good is the integration with .net?
• support 120 dpi and normal 96 dpi

Desktop Application GUI frameworks

Winforms

TODO

• http://www.codeproject.com/KB/miscctrl/TgXPPanel.aspx

GTK

• see also HowTo: Develop with GTKSharp

• http://pubcrawler.org/2002/12/12/my-first-cgtkglade-application/
• http://mono-project.com/GtkSharpBeginnersGuide
  • gtk# does also run on MS .net
  • install http://ftp.novell.com/pub/mono/gtk-sharp/gtk-sharp-2.12.8-1.win32.msi, get the lib/gtk-sharp-2.0/*.dll files, and bin/iconv.dll
• http://gladewin32.sourceforge.net/ Glade for Windows
• Creating layouts in GTK+ applications
• GTK+ layout management
• http://www.micahcarrick.com/12-24-2007/gtk-glade-tutorial-part-1.html
• http://library.gnome.org/devel/hig-book/stable/ GNOME Human Interface Guidelines 2.2
• GTK default widgets: http://library.gnome.org/devel/gtk/unstable/ch02.html
• Custom Controls/Widgets: http://code.google.com/p/holly-gtk-widgets/
  • see also http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2008/Jun-01.html
• http://medsphere.org/projects/widgets/
• search google: gtk widgets collection
• see available widgets: http://www.go-mono.com/docs/index.aspx?tlink=root:/classlib-gnome, go to gnome libraries, gtk
• make your own custom controls: see Custom controls with MonoDevelop and GTK#

QT

• QT and .net: http://imaginary-project.net/wiki/qyoto
  • http://techbase.kde.org/Development/Languages/Qyoto
  • http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2009/Mar-16.html
• Widgets for QT with screenshots: http://www.digitalfanatics.org/e8johan/projects/widgets/
  • class reference for widgets, eg http://doc.trolltech.com/4.3/qgroupbox.html
  • collapsible groupbox: see rejected feature request and suggestions
  • http://doc.libqxt.org/0.5.0/classQxtGroupBox.html
  • http://libqxt.org/ an extension library for Qt
• Gallery with different looks (Mac, win, GTK look, etc): http://doc.trolltech.com/4.5/gallery.html
• QT Task pane widget http://www.qt-apps.org/content/show.php/iisTaskPanel?content=79286
  • I have made an attempt to port it from C++ to C#, but it is not working yet; Compiles though
• http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/1678 Qyoto "hello world" working
• http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/KDE/kdebindings/csharp/qyoto/examples/tutorial/ Tutorial for Qyoto
• Download qyoto for Windows: http://imaginary-project.net/download
  • error for QApplication constructor: forgot to copy the dlls from ThirdParty to bin/Debug

wx

• http://wxnet.sourceforge.net/
• http://docs.wxwidgets.org/2.8.9/wx_wxcollapsiblepane.html#wxcollapsiblepane

Web GUI frameworks

please see Web GUI Frameworks Comparison