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

Summary


With the first graphical user interfaces in the early 1970s, computers became more accessible, and ever since developers and designers have been finding ways to improve user experience. As technologies evolved, the focus moved from desktop applications to web-based software and mobile apps. Through each change in development, we see the need to make applications responsive, reliable, and engaging. In this chapter, we explored the history of the GUI and how native applications continue to provide the best user experience.

By creating quality graphical applications using native technologies, developers are able to provide better reliability and a more responsive user interface. Ensuring that applications integrate seamlessly with the operating system, as well as working well online and offline, will provide a consistent workflow that will keep your users happy. We also saw that the structure and format of a native application can benefit software developers and support processes that ensure a higher quality product.

In the next chapter, we'll discover how some of these benefits are created within graphical applications and the challenges they can pose. We'll compare various approaches to these complexities and outline some of the decisions that will need to be made when designing a modern, native graphical user interface.