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A widget toolkit, widget library, or GUI toolkit is a set of widgets for use in designing applications with graphical user interface
Graphical user interface

A graphical user interface is a type of user interface which allows people to human-computer interaction such as computers; hand-held devices such as MP3 Players, Portable Media Players or Gaming devices; household appliances and office equipment....
s (GUIs). The toolkit itself is a piece of software that is generally provided with an operating system
Operating system

An operating system is an interface between hardware and applications; it is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the limited resources of the computer....
, windowing system
Windowing system

A windowing system is a component of a graphical user interface , and more specifically of a desktop environment, which supports the implementation of window managers, and provides basic support for graphics hardware, pointing devices such as mice, and keyboards....
, or window manager
Window manager

A window manager is computer software that controls the placement and appearance of window within a windowing system in a graphical user interface....
 which provides programs with an application programming interface
Application programming interface

An application programming interface is a set of subroutine, data structures, class and/or Protocol provided by library and/or operating system Service s in order to support the building of applications....
 (API), allowing them to make use of widgets. Each widget facilitates a specific user-computer interaction, and appears as a visible part of the computer's GUI.

Widgets that are provided by a toolkit typically adhere to a unified design specification, including aesthetics, to lend a sense of overall cohesion among various parts of the application and between various applications within the GUI.

Widget toolkits also contain software to assist in the creation of window managers, as windows themselves are considered widgets.






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A widget toolkit, widget library, or GUI toolkit is a set of widgets for use in designing applications with graphical user interface
Graphical user interface

A graphical user interface is a type of user interface which allows people to human-computer interaction such as computers; hand-held devices such as MP3 Players, Portable Media Players or Gaming devices; household appliances and office equipment....
s (GUIs). The toolkit itself is a piece of software that is generally provided with an operating system
Operating system

An operating system is an interface between hardware and applications; it is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the limited resources of the computer....
, windowing system
Windowing system

A windowing system is a component of a graphical user interface , and more specifically of a desktop environment, which supports the implementation of window managers, and provides basic support for graphics hardware, pointing devices such as mice, and keyboards....
, or window manager
Window manager

A window manager is computer software that controls the placement and appearance of window within a windowing system in a graphical user interface....
 which provides programs with an application programming interface
Application programming interface

An application programming interface is a set of subroutine, data structures, class and/or Protocol provided by library and/or operating system Service s in order to support the building of applications....
 (API), allowing them to make use of widgets. Each widget facilitates a specific user-computer interaction, and appears as a visible part of the computer's GUI.

Widgets that are provided by a toolkit typically adhere to a unified design specification, including aesthetics, to lend a sense of overall cohesion among various parts of the application and between various applications within the GUI.

Widget toolkits also contain software to assist in the creation of window managers, as windows themselves are considered widgets. Some widgets support interaction with the user, for example labels, buttons
Button (computing)

In computing, a button is a user interface element that provides the user a simple way to trigger an event , like searching for a query at a search engine, or to interact with dialog boxes, like confirming an action....
, and check boxes. Others act as containers
Container (data structure)

In computer science, a container is a Class , a data structure, or an abstract data type whose instances are collections of other objects. They are used to store objects in an organized way following specific access rules....
 that group the widgets added to them, for example windows
Window (computing)

In computing, a window is a visual area, usually rectangular in shape, containing some kind of user interface, displaying the output of and allowing input for one of a number of simultaneously running computer processes....
, panels
Panel (computer software)

In graphical computer software a panel is :* A Widget commonly packaged as part of a Widget toolkit for a graphical user interface. See toolbar and dialog box...
, and tabs.

The graphical user interface
Graphical user interface

A graphical user interface is a type of user interface which allows people to human-computer interaction such as computers; hand-held devices such as MP3 Players, Portable Media Players or Gaming devices; household appliances and office equipment....
 of a program is commonly constructed in a cascading manner, with widgets being added directly to on top of existing widgets. In many implementations application windows are added directly to the desktop by the window manager, and can be stacked layered on top of each other through various means. Each window is associated with a particular application which controls the widgets added to its canvas, which can be watched and modified by their associated applications.

The toolkit handles user events
Event handler

In computer programming, an event handler is an asynchronous callback subroutine that handles inputs received in a program. Each event is a piece of application-level information from the underlying framework, typically the GUI toolkit....
, for example when the user clicks on a button
Button (computing)

In computing, a button is a user interface element that provides the user a simple way to trigger an event , like searching for a query at a search engine, or to interact with dialog boxes, like confirming an action....
. When an event is detected it is passed onto the application, where it is dealt with.

The look and feel
Look and feel

Look and feel is a term used in descriptions of products and fields such as product design, marketing, branding and trademarking, to describe the main features of its appearance....
 of the widgets can be hard-coded in the toolkit, but some widget toolkit APIs decouple the look and feel from the definition of the widgets, allowing the widgets to be themed. (see pluggable look and feel
Pluggable look and feel

Pluggable look and feel is a mechanism used in the Java Swing_ widget toolkit allowing to change the Look and feel#Look and Feel in Widget Toolkits of the graphical user interface at runtime....
).

See also

  • GTK+
    GTK+

    GTK+, or The GIMP Toolkit, is a cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces. It is one of the most popular toolkits for the X Window System, along with Qt ....
     - The GIMP toolkit, a widget toolkit used by GNOME
    Gnome

    A gnome is a mythical creature characterized by its extremely small size and wiktionary:subterranean lifestyle. The word gnome is derived from the New Latin gnomus....
     applications.
  • Standard Widget Toolkit
    Standard Widget Toolkit

    The Standard Widget Toolkit is a graphical widget toolkit for use with the Java platform. It was originally developed by IBM and is now maintained by the Eclipse Foundation in tandem with the Eclipse IDE....
     - SWT for Java
  • wxWidgets
    WxWidgets

    wxWidgets is a widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces for cross-platform applications. wxWidgets enables a program's GUI code to compile and run on several computer platforms with minimal or no code changes....
     - A free widget toolkit.
  • Swing
    Swing (Java)

    Swing is a widget toolkit for Java . It is part of Sun Microsystems' Java Foundation Classes — an Application programming interface for providing a graphical user interface for Java programs....
     - Java
    Java (programming language)

    Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java ....
     widget toolkit
  • Motif
    Motif (widget toolkit)

    In computing, Motif refers to both a graphical user interface specification and the widget toolkit for building applications that follow that specification under the X Window System on Unix and other POSIX-compliant systems....
  • XForms
    XForms (toolkit)

    XForms is a GUI toolkit based on Xlib for the X Window System. It features a rich set of objects, such as buttons, scrollbars, and menus etc. In addition, the library is extensible and new objects can easily be created and added to the library....
  • WIMP (computing)
    WIMP (computing)

    In human?computer interaction, WIMP stands for "Window , Icon , Menu , pointing device", denoting a style of interaction using these elements. It was coined by Merzouga Wilberts in 1980....
  • FLTK
    FLTK

    The "Fast, Light Toolkit" is a cross-platform graphical user interface library, developed by Bill Spitzak and others. Made with 3D computer graphics programming in mind, it has an interface to OpenGL, but it is still suitable for general GUI programming....
     - A light, cross platform, non-native widget toolkit
  • Qt
    Qt (toolkit)

    Qt is a cross-platform application development framework, widely used for the development of graphical user interface programs , and also used for developing non-GUI programs such as console tools and servers....
     - A widget toolkit used by KDE
    KDE

    KDE is a free software project based around its flagship product, a desktop environment for Unix-like systems. The goal of the project is to provide basic desktop functions and applications for daily needs as well as tools and documentation for developers to write stand-alone applications for the system....
    .
  • FOX toolkit
    FOX toolkit

    The FOX toolkit is an open source, cross-platform widget toolkit, that is, a library of basic elements for building a graphical user interface ....
     - A fast, open source, cross-platform widget toolkit
  • List of widget toolkits
    List of widget toolkits

    Low-level widget toolkits...
  • Graphical user interface builder


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