Contents

Low-level widget toolkits

Integrated in the operating system

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 and Xaw, 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 an 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
  • Cygnix [[AmigaOS versions | AmigaOS version] of the X11 reduced engine Cygwin
  • ScalOS replacement for AmigaOS Workbench, has its own system of Widgets
  • GTK MUI wrapper which wraps GTK system of widgets with existing AmigaOS MUI toolkit for AROS and MorphOS
  • Cairo for AmigaOS 4.0

On Macintosh

On Microsoft Windows

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.

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 Adobe AIR runtime environment.
  • The Free Software reimplementation of Flash, GNU Gnash, which is under development, can also run Flash widgets outside of a browser.
  • Independant softwares vendors propose to embed the flash application into an executable: MDM Zinc, mProjector,... Those solutions are cross-platform (depending on the vendors solution).

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 article: JavaScript library

General

  • Acid.JS
  • AJAX Calendar.NET developer control
  • Backbase AJAX
  • Dojo Toolkit
  • jQuery
  • TIBCO General Interface, is a rich AJAX GUI components that include vector charts and is now also available through an open source BSD license.

RIAs

Framework

Dynamic

  • Dhtmlx Toolkit

Resource-based

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 Window Toolkit (AWT) is Sun Microsystems' original widget toolkit for Java applications. It typically uses another toolkit on each platform on which it runs.
  • Swing is a richer widget toolkit Sun provides in newer versions of J2SE as a replacement for AWT widgets. Swing is a lightweight toolkit, meaning it does not rely on native widgets.
  • The Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT) is a native widget toolkit for Java that was developed as part of the Eclipse project. SWT uses a standard toolkit for the running platform (such as the Windows API or GTK+) underneath.
  • Qt Jambi, the official Java binding to Qt from Trolltech.

Based on C or C++ (including bindings to other languages)

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 LCL (for Pascal, Object Pascal and Delphi programming language via Free Pascal compiler), 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 is 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.

Based on Objective C

Not yet categorised

Comparison

 This section does not cite any references or sources.
Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. (August 2008)
Toolkit Main language Bindings Tools License Pros Cons
Tk Tcl Ruby (RubyTk), Python (Tkinter), Perl (Perl/Tk), Ada (TASH), CommonLisp (LTk), ... | very portable, many language bindings dated, no property grid widget
Qt C++ Ruby (QtRuby), Python (PyQt) Qt Designer GPL 2/3 (for open source projects), Q Public License Portable, rich widget set, GUI builder non-free commercial license, GPL
GTK+ C C++ (gtkmm), Perl (Gtk2-perl), Ruby (ruby-gtk2), Python (PyGTK), Java (java-gnome) (not available for Microsoft Windows), C# (Gtk#), PHP (PHP-GTK), others via GTK-server Glade LGPL Portable, stable API, free licence bloated
Ultimate++ C++
wxWidgets C++ Ruby (wxRuby), Python (wxPython), Perl (wxPerl), Java (wx4j), Lua (wxLua), JavaScript (wxJavaScript), Smalltalk (wxSqueak), Erlang (wxErlang), Haskell (wxHaskell), ... VisualWx, Boa Constructor, PythonCard, Spe, XRCed, wxGlade, wxFormBuilder, DialogBlocks ($), wxDesigner ($) bloated
Agar C BSD portable, unique across platforms, fast, low-level no property grid
Swing Java Eclipse, NetBeans portable (java), advanced widgets, GUI builders
SWT Java D (DWT) NetBeans portable
AWT Java portable
FOX C++ Ruby (FXRuby)
FLTK C++ FLUID (Fast Light UI Designer)
Windows Forms CLI languages CLI languages Expression, VisualStudio portability issues, no MVC
WPF / XAML / Silverlight CLI languages CLI languages portability issues
MFC / WinAPI C++ VisualStudio not portable
ATL / WTL C++ VisualStudio not portable
xul ECMAScript (?) portable
YAAF C++
Motif / Lesstif C
EWL (Enlightenment Widget Library) C/C++
SmartWin++ C++
Juce C++ Jucer
XVT C++
GLUI C++
CLX C++
InterViews C++
VCL Delphi
Xaw / Athena C++
tekUI C / Lua

References

  1. ^ This version provides the core API of the .NET Framework 2.0, but its implementation of this API is still incomplete.
  2. ^ libquinta.org, http://libquinta.org/, retrieved on 2007-11-12 

External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_widget_toolkits"

No comments have been added.



Your name:

City:

Country:

Your comments:

Security check *
(Please enter the number into adjoining box)