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

GTK+ background


GTK+, or the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) Toolkit (a popular cross-platform image editor), is a cross-platform API for creating graphical applications. The project aims to provide a complete set of GUI widgets, supporting small graphical utilities up to large application suites:

GIMP, which uses GTK+, shown on Windows Vista; copyright the GTK+ team

Since its creation, the toolkit's adoption has rapidly expanded, supported by its open source license, which supports its use in commercial and freely available applications alike. While version 1.0 (released in 1998) was primarily to support the functions of the GIMP application, by 1.2 (released less than a year later) the toolkit was aiming at a broader audience. In 2002, version 2.0 was released, which saw GTK+ become the official tookit for the Gnome Linux desktop. This fully featured release greatly expanded adoption, to become one of the most popular widget sets available for cross-platform development—and minor...