Book Image

Tkinter GUI Programming by Example

Book Image

Tkinter GUI Programming by Example

Overview of this book

Tkinter is a modular, cross-platform application development toolkit for Python. When developing GUI-rich applications, the most important choices are which programming language(s) and which GUI framework to use. Python and Tkinter prove to be a great combination. This book will get you familiar with Tkinter by having you create fun and interactive projects. These projects have varying degrees of complexity. We'll start with a simple project, where you'll learn the fundamentals of GUI programming and the basics of working with a Tkinter application. After getting the basics right, we'll move on to creating a project of slightly increased complexity, such as a highly customizable Python editor. In the next project, we'll crank up the complexity level to create an instant messaging app. Toward the end, we'll discuss various ways of packaging our applications so that they can be shared and installed on other machines without the user having to learn how to install and run Python programs.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Index

Creating our ChatWindow class


Before we begin coding our ChatWindow, let's have a brief overview of the design.

The window will contain the following elements:

  • A messages area, showing all messages sent by you to this friend, and sent by this friend to you
  • A scrollbar that allows you to scroll up to view older messages
  • A text area for you to type a message to send to this friend
  • A button that sends the contents of your message to your friend, then clears the text area
  • A button that lets the user pick a smiley to include in their message
  • Your avatar
  • This friend's avatar

From a layout point of view, the message area is the primary part of the application, so it will take up the most space within the window, and be central. 

The text area and buttons will be placed below the messages area so that they are nearby but do not draw the eye away from the messages area.

The avatars will be off to the right-hand side of the window, with your friend's image above yours. This keeps your avatar near your message...