I need a nice and possibly lightweight wrapper for winapi gui and gtk gui (what I mean is a GUI library which have its own abstract api, is available for windows and linux, and it uses winapi on windows to draw widgets and on linux it uses gtk). Pretty much how wxwidgets works, but since wxwidget macro C-style api is a mess, it's heavy weight and I can't get my app to compile with it, so I definetely don't want it. I also don't want QT (i don't want extra compiler and heavyweight dependencies). There is also fox toolkit and fltk, but they don't wrap winapi and gtk but have their own rendering, which I don't like.
I don't need many features, just few basic widgets and window managment, and that's it. There are many very nice libs that do this for python, but in C++ I can't find any (besides wx widgets which doesn't work and is too heavy).
Could anybody help me? Because I'm stuck with developing my game as I need to develop a crossplatform editor. If everything else fail I will just write it in python, but I really want to make it in C++.
Thanks
IUP is close, but it is not C++.
Your requirements are too close to wxWidgets: I doubt anyone has started/will start a project that basically duplicates it.
Another alternative is to use GTKmm, the C++ bindings for GTK, with a Windows theme. But it's true that GTK theming may be hard to get right on several Windows versions.
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I need to write an application that will be visually indistinguishable from something written natively for Windows XP/Vista/7 using whatever comes by default with the most modern Visual Studio. But I'm developing using MinGW and Vim (in C++).
In particular, I want the following controls to be native on the above three versions of Windows: form chrome, buttons, check boxes, menus, combo boxes, progress bars, scrollbars, rich text boxes. This will be enough for me.
I know that if you load GdiPlus and other things like riched32.dll as needed, and use Windows API to instantiate controls, then the OS will substitute its version of GdiPlus or other library, so it will look like XP style controls on XP, Vista on Vista, etc.
But I don't want to use plain Windows API, because even retrieving the default font takes half a page of code, and similar stories whatever I want to do. So I'd like to use a toolkit.
wxWidgets, Qt, GTK+, FLTK seem like the most widely used. But they are all cross-platform. I've used cross-platform applications, and many of them have foreign GUI controls (I call them widgets). So my question is: which of these toolkits can be made to produce true native-looking UI controls listed above, appearing correctly on the three versions of MSWin listed above?
I've typed each of them +" windows" into Google Images, but it's hard to tell, except that FLTK probably can't do it. Many of you must know the answer off the top of your head...
I won't talk about FLTK as I don't know it.
wxWidgets uses the native toolkit of the platform, (GTK on Linux, Win32 GUI API
on Windows, Cocoa on MacOS X).
GTK uses a theming API to fake the look and feel of the platform (custom theming engine on GTK2, CSS-based engine on GTK3).
Qt uses styles to fake the look and feel of the platform.
wxWidgets API is quite ugly from my own experience, because it had too many method just available on one or the other platform making stuff non-portable unless you'd workaround it. Unlike GTK+ and Qt, it also adds its own layer of bugs above the toolkit it uses as a backend. However, it tries hard to have the platform's native look as it uses the native toolkit.
GTK+ 3 still has some rough edges on Windows, which it officially supports since GTK+ 3.6. The GTK+ project delegates to the MSYS2 project the distribution of Windows binaries. As you're already using MinGW, that's pretty much the same kind of environment. They have good C++ bindings with GTKmm. However, you may have some work to get the theming right for your version of Windows.
Qt is a good choice for cross-platform C++ development with the main target being Windows, tries to mimic the native look and feel of the platform but has its own theming limitations too.
To sum up, there are only 2 approches:
toolkits that provide their own widgets and try to look like the native platform by providing theming (GTK+ and Qt)
toolkits that use the native widgets but hide their API behind a layer of abstraction (wxWidgets)
Both have their pros and cons.
Implementation details aside, wxWidgets philosophy is, and has always been, to look as natively as possible. We, wxWidgets developers, don't always achieve the goal of looking indistinguishably from the native applications but we always strive to do it and. AFAIK this is not such an important goal for Qt and definitely not for GTK+, so in my (obviously biased) opinion, wxWidgets is your best choice if you are serious about providing the best experience for your users, especially under OS X.
To answer your question more precisely, everything you list above is implemented using native controls in wxWidgets for Windows (rich text control is not available natively under the other platforms though).
IUP - Portable User Interface library uses native widgets, C API and Lua bindings.
i used java for native cross-platform without changing the code, used c/c++ wxwidgets for exclusively cross-platform if you want go to little up performance and standalone executable, used c/c++ winapi for windows and x11 for gnu linux native platform and terminal console, used python for scripting console and platform if you want your software up to date fast, and used assembly for a little simple purely console. And sometimes i combined them all with shared library .dll on windows and .so on gnu linux. And i liked doing for do comparative performance on programming studies with small hardware requirements.
I wondered why I couldn't find a question about that already. How can I create a cross-platform window in C++? By cross-platform I mean support for at least Windows, Mac and Linux.
If there is a library for only this task out there I am willing to use that. But I don't want to use a bloated library with window controls like wxWidgets.
I don't need GUI controls because I am going to use OpenGL. (And for some reason I don't want to use frameworks like GLUT or GLFW.)
Try C++ bindings library for Tk. It's a very lightweight and simple.
There are others, I recommend and use FLTK. But Qt is also my favorite. See what works best for you and your patterns of thinking.
FLTK is extremely light weight.
I've been searching extensively but all of the resources are somewhat confusing as I'm very novice in programming and trying to learn. When I copy their source code over, it often has errors.
I looked on the microsoft website and found http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.folderbrowserdialog.aspx
But it was even more confusing and I"m terribly lost now. I'm open to pretty much any method, thanks!
You probably want SHBrowseForFolder:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb762115(v=vs.85).aspx
First of all: walk before running.
Try to learn language appropriately step by step with some online tutorial like this:
http://www.learncpp.com
Graphical user interface is harder than basic programming. Once you know a language then select a GUI toolkit. Win32 and MFC are the classic c++ windows toolkits, but are not my favorites. As a novice perhaps you should try Java o C# before C++.
wxWidgets, GTKmm and Qt are better C++ GUI frameworks in my opinion. Each has its own hurdles. Try to learn the language and your IDE (Visual Studio, Codelite,Code::Blocks,e tc) configuration and usage to program effectively.
I suggest you look at Qt at http://www.qt.io/ and Qt Creator at http://www.qt.io/ide/. This toolkit is pretty powerful, you have a good IDE (Qt Creator), you can do zillions of things, there is a default file/folder selection dialog you can customize, and it's rather easy to port Qt applications to other operating systems like Linux or MacOS. If you want to design a GUI application, this is worth a close look. Besides, you can even integrate OpenGL graphics into your windows ...
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In your opinion, what is the best way to create gui in Windows ? with gtk or win32 api ?
Do you recommend GTK for windows ? Yes ? NO ? Why ?
If you are making the gui only for windows, I would strongly recommend WIN 32 Api. I have Made many applications in GTK+ , pyGtk , FLTK and have learned Qt, MFC and SmartWin++. Believe me , But I like Win32 Api the best. It may have a steep learning curve, but for creating native windows applications , it is the fastest and the BEST. And the more complex youre program gets, the easier Win32 Api is compared to other toolkits. And there are things you can do in Win32 Api, which you can not do in any other toolkit.
TESTED:
starting time (simple gui with menu and buttons):
GTK+ = 7 secs;
Qt = 4 secs;
WxWidgets = 3.32 seconds;
FLTK = 1 second;
Win32 Api = 0.34 seconds;
space taken:
Gtk+ = 132 kb;
Qt = 4.5 mb;
WxWidgets = 4.5 mb;
FLTK = 54 kb;
Win32 Api = 6.5 kb;
Let's see.
Win32 is very low-level, C based, and awkward to use.
MFC is considered obsolete.
C# (or C++) with .NET is probably your primary choice for Windows-specific development.
There are even semi-limited ways to port that code to other platforms (Mono).
Java is great for very platform-independent code that "just runs". Sorry, you said C++.
QT is relatively platform-independent.
GTK+, of course, although I personally don't have much experience with it.
Personally, if I do something Windows-specific, I use .NET - the tools in Visual Studio are very powerful, and it's a great all-encompassing suite.
For platform-independent stuff, I use Java, but that may not be your tool of choice. I've seen QT used a lot for that purpose.
You really have a lot of GUI toolkits/frameworks to choose from: Qt, wxWidgets, GTK+/gtkmm, WinAPI, MFC, .NET WinForms/WPF... and those are only the popular ones.
Since you limit yourself to C++, I'd strike out .NET because C++ on .NET is intended to serve as a connection between the unmanaged and managed world. That doesn't mean you can't use it for other types of development, but given the awkward syntax and countless pitfalls I'd not go with it. Moreover, the WinForms code generator of VS puts the forms' code into the header file.. brrrr
As others have stated, WinAPI is written in C, very fast and powerful, but very low level and not easy to program/learn. MFC would be an option since it's written in C++, easier to use than WinAPI and also very powerful. However, it's pretty much obsolete (due to the presence of .NET, mostly).
I wouldn't recommend GTK+/gtkmm (a C++ wrapper for GTK+) for Windows since you don't get the native windows look, it's rather annoying to set up on your developer machine and it also drags around tons of dependencies that you have to install on the user machine. That's actually a pity because especially gtkmm has a very beautiful class hierarchy and design. Probably one of the best designed GUI libraries :)
That said, what would I recommend? Either Qt or wxWidgets. Both are written in (fairly modern) C++, actively developed, have a good library design, run multi-platform and offer lots of functionality. In any case, play around with a few of the libraries listed in the answers here and see which one lets you do the things you want to do most easily :)
both are for c, but there is a good wrapper for gtk (gtkmm).
gtk has its own look, so theres no skinning of ui elements on the user side(with windows styles). but i like to programm with it more.
win32, mfc, .net are mostly limited to ms visual studio, while gtk is very hard to use with vs.
you should have a look on win32, .net, gtkmm and qt. just try to write and compile a simple hello world program with them
upsides of win32:
native windows code
fast
downsides:
no classes, only c with handles (very crappy)
in my opinion very bad documented
upsides of gtk(mm):
easy to learn/programm
good documented
downsides:
somehow difficult to install the development files
no native windows look
win32 api is too complicated, MFC is too annoying.
I have used MFC, win32api, and Qt in windows. In my opnion, Qt is the best one.
I havent tried GTK, so sorry knowing nothing about it.
Edit 2019: It looks all these options are outdated, how about the cross-platform solutions, react-native windows, electron
If Linux (or Mac) compatibility is your concern, then Qt. Else Win32.
I have used GTK+ in the past for a multi-platform application. I found it relatively simple to learn and use. To my mind the main advantage of GTK+ is that you will be able to port your application to other windowing systems. And the main disadvantage is that it will not look exactly like other windows applications. If you are doing cross platform work or are already very familiar with GTK+ (and don't have time to spend learning a new toolkit), I would recommend it.
Personally I prefer Qt, but it really depends on what kind of user interfaces you want to make.
Against Win32:
low-level, high complexity to accomplish trivial things. You have to do EVERYTHING
if you go this route I would recomment a book like the one from Petzold.
Pro Qt:
Good looking GUIs
Can change the look and feel very easily by creating stylesheets
Signal and slots mechanism notifies you of UI events such as "button clicked" etc.
Nice layout system
Integrated with Visual Studio IDE
Modern object oriented c++ code, easy to understand and use
Qt Assistant (Very good documentation)
Relatively liberal licensing (LGPL)
Qt Designer - WYSIWYG design tool you can use for form design
Comes with a wealth of other c++ functionality including XML, networking, eventloops,
threading, database access, etc
Against Qt:
Intermediary step of using MOC compiler
Pro WPF:
if you want the new WPF capabilities of the new Windows platforms, WPF is the way to go.
You may want to try Winforms or WPF. If you're limited to using C/C++, you can embed .NET code using the /clr option for the compiler to embed .NET code for Winforms or WPF.
Sources:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/k8d11d4s(VS.71).aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms754130.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.form.aspx
Personal experience
For platform independent development, I would recommend Qt instead of the current GTK. GTK2 drawing was very slow compared to Qt as well as Win32. If you love native look feel, wxWidgets is made for you.
I want to develop native c++ windows application using windows API.
but i find it being difficult because i am unable to render the window and drag and drop components, change the location etc..
How can i view, drag and drop components like i can do in C# ?
May be there is no way to do. if so, what is the fastest procedure to design the application ?
If you like so much the drag and drop of components (and of course for good reason) why would you need to develop it using C++? You can use PInvoke if you need to call some C++ functions from C# code that are not in the .net framework.
But if you really insist, maybe you could try QT.
Using a library framework such as Qt is really the way you want to go. It makes things very simple and still allows you to write code in std c++ to keep most things very fast.
If you EVER have intentions of porting the code to a different platform than windows (whether it be Mac, Linux or even Android ... yes its possible), qt is definately the way you're going to want to go.
I can get an app up and running... smoothly in a few minutes using Qt but much longer and with more confusion using MFC.
Dragging and dropping 'widgets' to form a gui is very easy and possible with Qt's built-in QtDesigner!!! Check it out!!!
http://qt.nokia.com/downloads
Assuming you are using Visual Studio, if your app can be implemented as a dialog box, then you can use the dialog editor to lay things out. Otherwise, you just have to write code to create the windows and place controls. Look at the MFC examples included with Visual Studio.
Jeff Prosise's PROGRAMMING WINDOWS WITH MFC was one of the better books for learning how to do this, but I think it is out of print, and so could be hard to find.
Charles Petzold's PROGRAMMING WINDOWS is the bible for the Win32 API. Again, may be hard to find these days.
If MFC isn't your cup of tea, you could also look at QT, GTK+, or wxWidgets. There are GUI builders for each of those, but they are all pretty primitive compared to what you can do with C#.
As far as I know there is no ide out there that will let you "drag and drop create" standard win api windows like you would with C#.
Personally for that kind of application I always recommend Borland C++ Builder (Which is now Codegear Rad studio)
Although it is not standard API, it allows you to drag an drop and static linking is very easy, so you dont have to worry about redistributables