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.

Table of contents

1 Typical Widgets
2 Popular Widget Toolkits
3 External links

Typical Widgets

High-level widget toolkits
- 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
- SWT (Standard Widget Toolkit) 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
- 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.