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

Chapter 7. Go-Qt - Multiple Platforms with Qt

Similar to the Go-GTK library we explored in the previous chapter, qt by therecipe allows you to write cross-platform graphical applications with a single Go code base. It leverages Qt, a multi-platform application framework that's designed for rapid delivery of applications to desktop and embedded computing environments. Like GTK+, it's designed to draw widgets that are familiar to the end user but aren't reliant upon the operating system's provided toolkit. Additionally, Qt provides a different look for mobile and embedded devices where users expect a different style of presentation. All of this is controlled within the framework so the developer can concentrate on developing a single application.

In this chapter, we'll look at the details of therecipe/qt, the most widely adopted Qt binding for the Go language. We'll cover the following:

  • The history and aims of the Qt framework
  • How the API is designed and bridged into Go
  • Creating an application...