Widget toolkit

In computer programming, widget toolkits (or GUI toolkits) are sets of basic building elements for graphical user interfaces. They are often implemented as a library, or application framework.

See widget (computing) for a list of widgets.

Popular Widget Toolkits

• High-level widget toolkits
  • Xaw, the Project Athena widget set for the X Window System
  • The Abstract Windowing Toolkit is used in Java applications. It will typically use another toolkit on the selected platform in turn.
  • Cocoa - used in Mac OS X (see also Aqua)
  • GNUstep
  • GTK used in GNOME
  • MacApp Macintosh framework
  • MacZoop Macintosh C++ framework
  • MetaCard
  • The Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC) contain several useful widgets for the Microsoft Windows environment.
  • Motif used in the Common Desktop Environment
  • The Object Windows Library is sort of Borland's alternative to MFC
  • The Visual Component Library (VCL) is Borland's toolkit used in its C++ Builder and Delphi products.
  • Powerplant Macintosh framework
  • Qt used in KDE
  • Swing is Sun's replacement for AWT in newer Java versions
  • Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT) is Eclipse.org's toolkit used to build Eclipse, Websphere and other products
  • Tk a widget set accessed from Tcl and other high-level languages.
  • WINGs WINGs Is Not GNUstep
  • wxWidgets (formerly wxWindows) abstracts toolkits across several platforms for C++ ,Python and Perl.
• Low-level widget toolkits
  • The Windows API used in Microsoft Windows
  • The X Window System contains primitive building blocks, but they are almost always accessed using either Motif, GTK or Qt.
  • The Mac OS toolbox, or Macintosh APIs, formerly located in ROM, but in "new world" Macs, on disk.

External links

• A GUI Toolkit Framework Page
• Survey of Widget sets