There are a lot of flexible, complete, cross-platform, et cetera, graphical user interface frameworks. Most of them provide many tools to turn software development easier. When building a desktop application in Qt environment, for example, one usually would have different file types, headers, implementation files, and user-interface files (.ui).
Normally, a developer design an application and, once compiled, no changes can be made to user interface.
I would like to know how to create an portable modularized application that could dynamically load personalized user-interfaces (from .ui or binary files, for example).
The system design would be such that the core controller would somehow load it's presentation from remote source.
My question is: Are there any library that could provide this kind of flexibility in GUI applications development? How to implement such a architecture?
Thank you in advance for responses.
You can use QUiLoader to load .ui files at runtime.
You can have a GUI based on html which can be modified at run time.
The new version of Qt has a gui/themes based on an html like design language - Qt quick or something?
Related
I want to create an application that "plays well as a tray icon". That is, it starts up quick and doesn't hog resources. The application will likely need some custom UI widgets as well, and although I mention "tray icon", cross-platform would be ideal as well.
Obviously, I can do this with C++ and some cross-platform UI library (I wouldn't know which one), but I was hoping for a language with garbage collection.
I can do this with Java, but I'm guessing even after compilation, it likely builds a relatively large and slow-starting .exe (maybe the SWT UI library would cut some bloat?). Another way to ask this question, is it possible in Java, and if so what is the best way to make quick/snappy app? I want it pop up similar as popping up Google Desktop search.
Is there something "between Java and C++?"
So,
* Higher-level than C++ (mainly GC)
* Quick starting and resource friendly/snappy (.exe or otherwise)
* Cross-platform desktop UI (even with custom UI widgets)
Try Python it is a high level cross-platform language with GC.
Use Qt and pick an arbitrary supported language
Here is the link to it : Qt - A cross-platform application and UI framework
You can use it freely if you don't develop commercial application.
The reference documentation is very good, and you can find a lot of help all over the net.
It uses a hierarchy of the objects, and if a parent object destroys, it frees up all the children. In a GUI app you don't have to bother with deallocations, if you use the proper syntax. I am developing a 2D presentation application for linux with it, and I am very satisfied with its performance.
Don't forget to use Qt Creator if you decide to use Qt, it simplifies project creation, contains "intellisense", very useful. Without it Qt is a pain..
Supported programming languages: (quoted from qt site)
Programming Language Support
The Qt API is implemented in C++, and
provides additional features for
easier cross-platform development. QML
– introduced with Qt 4.7 – QML is a
JavaScript-based declarative, language
designed to describe the user
interface of a program: both what it
looks like, and how it behaves.
Bindings to Qt exist for several other
languages, including Ada, Pascal,
Perl, PHP, Ruby, Python and Java™.
I was just thinking. C# has Winforms/WPF, Java has Swing and other frameworks, C++ has QT and so on; is it possible to create an application without using a Framework?
Putting aside the practicality of it, I'm just curious. How would one create an application that Just Works(tm) without needing external frameworks?
Two options come to mind:
Classical Win32 applications written in C. I don't know if standard Windows SDK API also counts as an "external framework" in your book, but that's as low as it gets.
DirectX/OpenGL games written from scratch with your own homebrew framework (not external, right?) There you get to do all the drawing yourself - although again, you use a pretty big library of primitive drawing functions.
If you want even less "framework", you'll have to code your own OS and drivers. :P
C# needs .NET Framework, not WinForms (which is an optional library used by some application). The same with Java.
Unmanaged (native) applications usually use some runtime library - the library of common functions. You can write a native application without any library - the compiler lets you do this, but you will need to (re)write lots of common functions, eg. for string manipulation etc..
Firstly, what is a framework?
Really a framework is just a bunch of code that is provided to you. You could, at least in theory, write the same code yourself. In that case you wouldn't be using a framework.
Your application can only do what the operating system allows it to do. Your program cannot directly manipulate the graphics card for example. So you have to use the APIs of your operating system in order to do anything.
So you are going to be calling into other code. (unless you write your own operating system). You will also being using another framework or api to get stuff done.
Yes. How: in the way that the frameworks you mentioned are implemented.
From a Windows point of view, you would register your window with Windows, then listen to window messages and react as required. Everything would be up to you - from drawing the window to building controls.
I don't see how Qt does the low level graphics work, in order to create its own custom GUI look/feel for each platform. Does it utilize each of the platforms APIs or something? I ask because I am really wondering how I could go about creating my own framework in order to make a custom GUI application with a unique graphical look.
"How does QT only use C++ to make custom GUIs for some many platforms?"
"Does it utilize each of the platforms APIs ... ?"
You answered your own question. It makes a common library for developers to write their applications with. The application developers write their application only once, not caring about platform specifics. Then, the library author puts out different versions of the library for each platform, which handles all the specific UI calls. This is called encapsulation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_hiding#Encapsulation
If you were to write your own such library, you would need to figure out what is common between all of the platforms you target, or figure out what high-level concepts your application would need, and create that abstraction. Then, implement that abstraction for each of the platforms you wanted to support.
Edit:
Also see Juliano's comment. This seems like it might be closer to what you want to do, rather than the question you asked. I'd not re-do the work that Trolltech or the WxWidgets team or the Gtk guys or the Mono people did, if I could possibly avoid it.
The good people at Trolltech (now Nokia) write all the platform specific code for you. Only the interfaces to their library remains the same across platforms. You do have to make sure that you only use their classes and don't make any OS-specific calls.
If you want, you can modify the graphics and the handlers to extend the Qt library and create your own look and feel.
Your Qt application doesn't have to have the plain standard platform graphical look, but there are ways to design unique apps with Qt.
For instance, you can style your application with style sheets: http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/stylesheet.html, or even with a custom QStyle (which is not very easy): http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qstyle.html
Qt Quick is a new technology we're introducing in the upcoming Qt 4.7 (check out the beta if you're interested). It allows you to easily define custom UI components from simple primitives, with custom animations, state transitions and other effects. See for example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8G4U7QWRajg.
I am working on a new small utility desktop application but I am not really able to choose the GUI framework to use. I have worked on both JAVA,C# and C++, so language is not really a constraint. My criteria are:-
A very well designed architecture, something like QT. It's better if it follows typical C++ design methodologies.
Layout management should be easy, intuitive and not really cumbersome. I hate adjusting pixels on screen.
Its license should be open.
It should look good :)
Mentioned QT seems to comply to all your requirements. QT has "deploy everywhere" attribute, whilst Java needs no deploying at all (it depends on what is use of your utility).
Ad. 2 QT has really convenient GUI designer.
Ad. 3 LGPL. Usually it is enough.
Ad. 4 It is always matter of taste. IMO QT4 looks awesome under linux, but it's windows look'n'feel is correct at best. It's strong point is, that without additional tweaks it almost everywhere looks native.
I've been using Swing, and it works fine. NetBeans (a decent IDE by itself) even supports graphical GUI building.
It's well designed (basically
everything is done with listeners,
functions that are registered for a
certain event). It has bindings, so
you don't have to write code to set
up a value in a text field or read
it out
Layout is not perfect, but
acceptable within NetBeans. It's
WYSIWYG (almost). Look-and-feel can
be changed on the fly.
License is free. Source-code is not
available, I think.
Looks fine on Windows and Linux,
less so on OSX.
You could always try SWT. The advantages of Java with the standard L&F of supported operating systems.
Well designed. Lots of
documentation, and very easy to
develop with. (If you know Swing,
you can pick up SWT in no time.)
I believe layout managers do exist
that support SWT. I'm not positive
about this though, as I typically
don't use layout managers too much.
Uses the Eclipse Public
License. Should meet most of
your requirements.
From Wikipedia on SWT:
SWT is written in Java. To display GUI elements, the SWT implementation accesses the native GUI libraries of the operating system using JNI (Java Native Interface) in a manner that is similar to those programs written using operating system-specific APIs. Programs that call SWT are portable, but the implementation of the toolkit, despite the fact that it is written in Java, is unique for each platform.
Hope that helps you.
I'd suggest wxWidgets if you want to program in C++ or wxPython (the python language binding of wxWidgets if you know or don't mind learning Python.
Architecture is similar to QT I think.
Layout using sizers. Quite easy once you get the hang of it.
Liberal open source license.
Widgets are native on all platforms (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux).
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I've been wanting to become proficient in a new language for a while. There are a few languages I want to learn but it's pretty important for me to be able to create a (Application) GUI. I work in C# so I have become very accustom to the GUI designer.
I would love to get better with C++ or Java (both of which I have a small amount of experience with). Other languages could be interesting too. I just really need to be able to make a GUI reasonably easily.
So what (non .net) language has a really good method of designing GUIs?
An extension to this question might be what are the most common GUI APIs/designers?
I would recommend you to look at Delphi. It's object pascal with a nice IDE and a nice community!
Take a look at www.codegear.com
CodeGear have also a C++ IDE, so you can have the bundle and put your hand dirty at Delphi and C++!
Hope his helps
vIceBerg
I agree with pmlarocque in that you should use NetBeans if using Java. It really makes GUI design easy.
As an aside, I also recommend pencil and paper. That really has helped me throughout the years, start making sketches of what you want it to be then replicate it in the IDE.
For GUI in C++ you should look C++ Builder, you can get Turbo C++ Explorer for free
I use both Visual Studio and Delphi, and the Delphi GUI editor is significantly better. It is worth a try. They make a free version.
May I recommend Flex? Flex Builder has a really nice GUI designer.
As for Java, both NetBeans and Eclipse IDEs are good choices.
To design GUIs in Java, you can use SWT, AWT or Swing widget toolkits.
I heard that some people experienced problems with SWT projects running on NetBeans. However, NetBeans comes with a built-in GUI Builder for Swing , a very powerful widget toolkit.
Of course, there's also a plug-in for Eclipse that allows you to build Swing GUIs, so it basically comes down to which IDE you prefer...
NetBeans has a great Swing GUI Builder (formerly Project Matisse). This is for Java, I think it was started by Sun but is an open source project. Very similar to Eclipse, but I found an advantage with NetBeans due to this GUI builder.
Check it out at: http://www.netbeans.org/features/java/swing.html
The cross-platform Qt GUI framework (which is mainly for C++) comes with Qt Designer.
Interface Builder and Qt Designer are by far the best GUI design tools I've ever used.
WPF/Silverlight: Expression Blend
Not as big as it used to be, but Powerbuilder.
Visual Dataflex has a decent GUI editor. It's a nice solution for building "database-agnostic" database applications.
Use Microsoft Expression Blend to layout your GUI.
WPF...
Before, I was using Qt Designer. First time I started using Expression Blend, I fell in love with it. So much easier to use than Qt Designer.
If your app requires high-performance, back-end it with some native-code language like C++.
If not, just stick with C# or Python.
Remember it's not just the tool that you use, but how it works as a whole
Too many combinations of different languages/vendors sometimes just makes you want to pull your hair our!
Well, I have two options: Objective-C on the Mac using Cocoa GUI framework, or Java for everything (Mac, Linux, MS-Windows) using the Swing API.
If you want to program in Objective-C targeting Mac OS X operating system for Apple Macintosh, iPhone, or iPod Touch - then the Interface Builder that comes bundled with the Xcode IDE (part of the Developer bundle) is really good.
You will need a Mac, of course, to be able to use it. If you have a Linux or Windows PC already, then you probably have a monitor, USB mouse, and USB keyboard. So you could get an Mac Mini for $599 and hook those up to it.
The Developer bundle is free. Just go to developer.apple.com and sign up for free Developer tools once you get your Mac.
If you are going to be a professional developer, then you might want to go there before you get your Macintosh and see if registering as a Pro and buying a Macintosh and stuff under that deal would net you more bang for your buck.
This Interface Builder of Apple's is pretty famous. It is what gave the NeXT computer is high reputation for being the way to create applications really fast. Wall Street financial firms, government agencies, and research types - plus a fair number of 3rd party commercial software developers - used it to create GUI applications very rapidly.
The name of Apple's Cocoa framework, by the way, used to be Next Step. When Apple bough NeXT from Steve Jobs, they renamed Next Step Cocoa. However, the classes still begin with NS as a little artifact of their heritage.
What people like about Interface Builder is that it has a very good layout manager and it lets you "wire" UI objects to other objects, making the latter "targets". Wiring them together this way creates a "connection".
So far this sounds very unexciting, I know. However, it gets exciting when you start doing it. You can design your actual runnable GUI in the designer and actually run it before you have written any code. Writing code lets you incrementally flesh out the user interface that have behavior more than UI stimulus-response behavior.
Anyway, the idea is that you can bang out a prototype extremely quickly, get feedback from someone based on this concrete GUI - and then fill in the details with Objective-C programming.
The most famous thing that was ever created with Next Step (Cocoa) is the World Wide Web (WWW). You may have heard of it. Well, the first web browser in the world was created by Tim Berniers-Lee at CERN in 1989 using Next Step, which had just come out the year before (1988).
He said he liked Next Step because it let him create his web browser very quickly. Even more impressively, his web browser not only allowed users to view web pages - his browsre also let users edit the web pages they viewed.
If you want to program in Java, NetBeans has a very nice Swing GUI designer.
It comes built into NetBeans. The GUI designer very easy to use and seems to have a full set of capabilities. My ownly dislike is that it puts commented sections in the code that you cannot edit. JBuilder did not put those annoying comments/restrictions in but JBuilder has pretty much faded from the scene these days.
Another downside of NetBeans is that it creates a .form file with the same name as the GUI class you are editing. Java code refactoring tools, other than NetBeans, are not going to know about this file. So, if you manually move the package the class is part of (or rename the class) - or use Eclipse or some other program to do it - you are going to have problems. You will need to be sure to use NetBeans to move/rename your class.
Eclipse had one in the form of an experimental plugin that was an okay start for a GUI designer called VE (Visual Editor) a number of years back. However, VE does not appear to have been updated in a couple of years.
I really like the true portability of Java programs. Java programs with GUIs are no exception.
I recommend adopting Java as your new language and using NetBeans as your first IDE, since you favor GUI program designs with a WYSIWYG editor.
Later, I suggest you also learn Eclipse. That way you will benefit from its more powerful code editing/refactoring capabilities.
You do not have to make an either-or choice between the two IDEs. With some caveats, like I have given - you can use both.
Netbeans IDE for Java as a sweet GUI designer.
Java Netbeans is good, and since java is fairly close to c# in syntax, it might make an easy learning experience
wxGlade is a GUI designer that can generate Python, C++, Perl, or Lisp and uses the wxWidgets library. And it's free.
IntelliJ IDEA for Java
http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/features/gui_builder.html
Here's a video:
http://www.javalobby.org/eps/intellij_ui_designer/
Vaadin
You can write business-oriented desktop-style web apps using only Java on the server side yet rendered automatically using Web standards client-side in the web browser.
The Vaadin Framework provides the magic of letting you define your desired fields, labels, buttons, and other widgets in a layout all using pure Java. By harnassing GWT technology, Vaadin transforms your Java code at runtime into the content for display in a user’s web browser. Your app is rendered using all the Web goodness of HTTP, HTTP/2, HTML, HTML5, CSS, DOM, JavaScript, WebSocket, Push, and so on… but does so transparently to the Java programmer. All that transformation is done under the covers. As a Vaadin programmer, all I deal with is Java coding.
I prefer using the well-documented API to programmatically layout the contents of my forms and widgets for the user-interface. You can do so free-of-cost using the open-source framework.
Alternatively, you can use their commercial product Vaadin Designer for a visual drag-and-drop layout editor tool.
Try the live Sampler and other demos such as Reindeer demo.
Since you mentioned you use C++, I'd recommend MatDeck(https://labdeck.com/comparison/). They offer a GUI Designer in their unique code. Their code is based on C++(It's called MatDeck C++ style code) and since it's specialized to their software it needs a lot less code to run. They offer much more and are a fully-fledged software. They also have a whole page that compares their code(https://labdeck.com/python/c-style-script/).