Book Image

Hands-On GUI Application Development in Go

By : Andrew Williams
Book Image

Hands-On GUI Application Development in Go

By: Andrew Williams

Overview of this book

Go is often compared to C++ when it comes to low-level programming and implementations that require faster processing, such as Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs). In fact, many claim that Go is superior to C++ in terms of its concurrency and ease of use. Most graphical application toolkits, though, are still written using C or C++, and so they don't enjoy the benefits of using a modern programming language such as Go. This guide to programming GUIs with Go 1.11 explores the various toolkits available, including UI, Walk, Shiny, and Fyne. The book compares the vision behind each project to help you pick the right approach for your project. Each framework is described in detail, outlining how you can build performant applications that users will love. To aid you further in creating applications using these emerging technologies, you'll be able to easily refer to code samples and screenshots featured in the book. In addition to toolkit-specific discussions, you'll cover more complex topics, such as how to structure growing graphical applications, and how cross-platform applications can integrate with each desktop operating system to create a seamless user experience. By delving into techniques and best practices for organizing and scaling Go-based graphical applications, you'll also glimpse Go's impressive concurrency system. In the concluding chapters, you'll discover how to distribute to the main desktop marketplaces and distribution channels. By the end of this book, you'll be a confident GUI developer who can use the Go language to boost the performance of your applications.
Table of Contents (25 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
About Packt
Contributors
Preface
Comparison of GUI Toolkits
Index

Window types and keeping things clean


Managing multiple windows will become essential for any application, either through part of a layout design like the preceding, or for presenting important information to the user to gain their attention or receive their input. For each window that's displayed in your application, it's important to know whether its appearance should attract their immediate attention, support what's already onscreen, or simply be something that can be attended to later. Knowing the intention of each window shown will help to support, rather than impede, the user workflow and keep your application's user experience clean.

Standard dialogs

The most common reason to show an additional window during application flow is to ask the user for additional input or confirmation, or to alert them of (typically unexpected) events. These are standard interactions and so it's usually most effective to use, where possible, the provided dialog windows defined by the toolkit being used....