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

Distributing to platform marketplaces


Most operating systems now have a central location for discovering and installing applications. Apple created the Mac App Store, Windows has the Microsoft Store, and each Linux distribution has its preferred package manager. Having an application listed in (and hosted by) a platform marketplace significantly increases the number of users you can expect and also reduces associated hosting costs. When paired with carefully prepared metadata (as described at the beginning of this chapter), a marketplace can easily become your largest distribution channel. How to get applications included in these directories is specific to each platform, so we will look at the process for each in turn.

Mac App Store

The Mac App Store is the desktop version of Apple's famous iOS App Store. It provides many thousands of applications available to buy and download, or gift to others. There is also curated content, which includes listings of the most popular apps in various categories...