Book Image

Python GUI programming with Tkinter

By : Alan D. Moore
Book Image

Python GUI programming with Tkinter

By: Alan D. Moore

Overview of this book

Tkinter is a lightweight, portable, and easy-to-use graphical toolkit available in the Python Standard Library, widely used to build Python GUIs due to its simplicity and availability. This book teaches you to design and build graphical user interfaces that are functional, appealing, and user-friendly using the powerful combination of Python and Tkinter. After being introduced to Tkinter, you will be guided step-by-step through the application development process. Over the course of the book, your application will evolve from a simple data-entry form to a complex data management and visualization tool while maintaining a clean and robust design. In addition to building the GUI, you'll learn how to connect to external databases and network resources, test your code to avoid errors, and maximize performance using asynchronous programming. You'll make the most of Tkinter's cross-platform availability by learning how to maintain compatibility, mimic platform-native look and feel, and build executables for deployment across popular computing platforms. By the end of this book, you will have the skills and confidence to design and build powerful high-end GUI applications to solve real-world problems.
Table of Contents (23 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Dedication
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Index

Styling Ttk widgets


Ttk widgets represent a major improvement over standard Tkinter widgets in terms of the power and flexibility with which they can be styled. This flexibility is what gives Ttk widgets the ability to mimic native UI controls across platforms, but it comes at a cost: Ttk styling is confusing, poorly documented, and occasionally inconsistent.

To understand Ttk styling, let's start with some vocabulary, from the most basic elements to the most complex:

  • Ttk starts with elements. An element is one piece of a widget, such as a border, an arrow, or a field where text can be typed.
  • Elements are composed using layouts into a complete widget (a Combobox or Treeview, for example).
  • Styles are collections of properties that define color and font settings:
    • Each style has a name, usually T, plus the name of the widget, such as TButton or TEntry. There are some exceptions to this.
    • Each element in a layout references one or more style properties to define its appearance.
  • Widgets have a number...