Widget toolkit
wxWidgets (formerly wxWindows ) is a
widget toolkit and tools library for creating
graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for
cross-platform applications. wxWidgets enables a program's GUI code to compile and run on several computer platforms with no significant
code changes. A wide choice of
compilers and other tools to use with wxWidgets facilitates development of sophisticated applications.
[7] wxWidgets supports a comprehensive range of popular
operating systems and graphical libraries, both
proprietary and
free .
The project was started under the name wxWindows in 1992 by Julian Smart at the
University of Edinburgh .
[1] The project was renamed wxWidgets in 2004 in response to a trademark claim by
Microsoft
UK .
It is
free and
open source software , distributed under the terms of the
wxWidgets Licence , which satisfies those who wish to produce for
GPL and
proprietary software .
[8]
Portability and deployment
wxWidgets covers systems such as
Microsoft Windows ,
Mac OS (
Carbon and
Cocoa ),
iOS (
Cocoa Touch ),
Linux /
Unix (
X11 ,
Motif , and
GTK ),
OpenVMS ,
OS/2 and
AmigaOS . A version for
embedded systems is under development.
[9]
wxWidgets is used across various industry sectors, most notably by
Xerox ,
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD),
Lockheed Martin ,
NASA and the
Center for Naval Analyses . It is also used in the public sector and education by, for example,
Dartmouth Medical School ,
National Human Genome Research Institute ,
National Center for Biotechnology Information , and many others.
[7] wxWidgets is used in many open source projects,
[10] and by individual developers.
History
wxWidgets (initially wxWindows; "w" is for
Windows , and "x" is for
X Window System )
[11] was started in 1992 by Julian Smart at the
University of Edinburgh .
[1] He attained an honours degree in
Computational science from the
University of St Andrews in 1986, and is still a core developer.
[2]
On 20 February 2004, the developers of wxWindows announced that the project was changing its name to wxWidgets , as a result of
Microsoft requesting Julian Smart to respect Microsoft's
United Kingdom
trademark of the term Windows .
[12]
Major release versions were 2.4 on 6 January 2003, 2.6 on 21 April 2005 and 2.8.0 on 14 December 2006. Version 3.0 was released on 11 November 2013.
wxWidgets has participated in the
Google Summer of Code since 2006.
[13]
[14]
The following table contains the release history of wxWidgets, showing all of its major release versions.
Version number
Date
Notable changes
Project started by Julian Smart
1992
[15]
wxWindows 1
Alpha 1
5 April 1997
[16]
Beta 1
24 December 1998
[16]
wxWidgets 2
2.0.1
1 March 1999
[16]
2.2.0
9 July 2000
[17]
2.4.0
6 January 2003
[17]
2.6.0
21 April 2005
[17]
2.8.0
14 December 2006
[18]
wxAUI library.
Generic wxRichTextCtrl.
wxComboCtrl with custom, graphical comboboxes.
Further functionality including wxAnimationCtrl, wxSimpleHtmlListBox, wxHyperlinkCtrl, wxColourPickerCtrl, wxDirPickerCtrl, wxFilePickerCtrl, wxFontPickerCtrl, wxCollapsiblePane, wxSearchCtrl, wxAboutBox, wxTreebook, tar streams.
2.8.11
23 April 2010
2.8.12
28 March 2011
2.9.0
8 September 2009
2.9.1
19 July 2010
2.9.2
5 July 2011
2.9.3
14 December 2011
2.9.4
9 July 2012
2.9.5
16 July 2013
wxWidgets 3
3.0.0
11 November 2013
[16]
GTK+ 3 port
Transparent Unicode support
Unification of debug-release builds
Cocoa-based wxOSX port running in 64-bit mode
PersistentControls
Support for window-modal and application-modal dialogs
wxRibbon –
ribbon implementation
wxPropertyGrid
3.0.1
15 June 2014
3.0.2
6 October 2014
3.0.3
2 May 2017
3.0.4
8 March 2018
3.0.5
27 April 2020
3.1.0
29 February 2016
Better support for high DPI displays, especially under Windows.
Support for latest compilers including MSVS 2015, g++ 5.3 and clang 3.8, including in C++11 mode.
Revamped OpenGL support better suited to modern OpenGL (3.2+).
New wxActivityIndicator and wxNativeWindow classes.
Improvements to wxNotificationMessage.
Several new methods such as wxTextEntry::ForceUpper(), wxProcess::Activate(), wxDateTime::GetWeekBasedYear(), wxListBox::GetTopItem(), wxStandardPaths::GetUserDir(), wxUIActionSimulator::Select().
Updated versions of the bundled third party libraries and support for GStreamer 1.0 under Unix.
New experimental wxQt port.
Bug fixes.
3.1.1
19 February 2018
[19]
wxWidgets 3.1.1 is the second release in the 3.1 development branch. This release is a "development" one as it makes (very few)
incompatible API changes compared to 3.0 and does not guarantee the ABI stability, unlike the 3.0.x series.
[19]
3.1.2
10 December 2018
Initial support for macOS 10.14 and its dark mode.
Support for non-integer font sizes and arbitrary font weights.
New wxLZMA{Input,Output}Stream classes.
Add wxDataViewToggleRenderer::ShowAsRadio(), wxDisplay::GetPPI(), wxGrid::SetCornerLabelValue(), wxHtmlEasyPrinting::SetPromptMode(), wxJoystickEvent::GetButtonOrdinal(), wxToolbook::EnablePage().
3.1.3
28 October 2019
Support for per-monitor DPI and dynamic DPI changes under MSW.
More generally, many fixes for various controls appearance in high DPI.
Long requested support for freezing rows and/or columns in wxGrid.
New XRC handlers for wxDataViewCtrl, wxInfoBar.
It is now possible to use gradients when creating wxGraphicsPen.
Extended compiler (MSVS 2019) and platforms (macOS 10.14+) support.
Significant improvements to the (still experimental) wxQt port.
Important bug fixes for focus handling in wxOSX port.
3.1.4
22 July 2020
wxOSX port now supports the latest macOS 11 on ARM hardware.
wxMSW comes with a new Edge-based wxWebView implementation.
Better, although still not perfect, per-monitor DPI support in wxMSW.
wxGrid was has been significantly improved and is now much user friendlier.
AUI appearance enhancements for non-default GTK themes and macOS dark mode.
wxWidgets may now be built with C++20 compiler.
Improvements to CMake build system.
Allow optionally forbidding dangerous implicit wxString conversions.
3.1.5
14 April 2021
New wxWebRequest and related classes provide a simple way to use HTTPS and HTTP/2 from wxWidgets applications using native libraries or libcurl.
Support EGL in wxGLCanvas and Wayland in wxMediaCtrl under Linux.
Many appearance and other fixes for macOS 11.
More improvements to wxGrid UI, API and performance.
wxImage improvements: add alpha support in Paste() and clipboard support.
API additions: wxPersistentComboBox, wxFileName::ResolveLink(), wxFileHistory::SetMenuPathStyle(), wxString::utf8_string(), wxEVT_FULLSCREEN.
Improvements: wxConfig now supports 64-bit integers, wxLog uses millisecond resolution in timestamps, XRC files can be loaded from URLs.
Drop Borland C++ support.
3.1.6
4 April 2022
Many HiDPI improvements.
New wxBitmapBundle class allowing to provide art work for both normal and high DPI in a simple way.
New wxUILocale class replacing the old (but still available) wxLocale, but not suffering from its multiple problems and providing more functionality.
Support for using native spell-checking in wxTextCtrl.
Support for undo/redo in wxTextCtrl in wxOSX.
Better drag-and-drop implementation in wxOSX.
Fixes for important bugs in wxDataViewCtrl under all platforms.
Many improvements and bug fixes for Wayland support in wxGTK.
Support for the latest OS versions (Windows 11, macOS 12) and compilers (MSVS 2022, gcc 12, clang 13).
Project bug tracker has been moved to GitHub Issues.
3.1.7
6 June 2022
CMake build system improvements (better precompiled headers support).
New wxFileDialog customization API working with IFileDialog in wxMSW.
Many updated translations and new wxTRANSLATE_IN_CONTEXT().
Fixes for bad interactions with new macOS 12 features in wxOSX.
Several previously missing attributes added to multiple XRC handlers.
Row reordering by dragging and UI enhancements in wxGrid.
Ability to suppress selected (or all) GTK warning messages in wxGTK.
3.2.0
7 July 2022
Drop Win9x platform support.
Drop Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 support.
MacOS native dark mode support.
Support for ARM versions of MacOS.
HiDPI and per-monitor DPI API.
Wayland support.
wxWebRequest now supports HTTPS and HTTP/2.
3.2.1
9 September 2022
Add wxFileDialog::AddShortcut().
Add wxStyledTextCtrl support to XRC schema file.
Bug fixes.
3.2.2
9 February 2023
Allow 'T' separator in wxDateTime::ParseDateTime().
Add wxUILocale::GetSystemLocaleId() replacing GetSystemLocale().
Add support for Caps/Num/Scroll Lock to wxGetKeyState().
Bug fixes.
3.2.2.1
13 February 2023
Hot fix for a problem with icons in wxGenericTextCtrl.
3.2.3
10 October 2023
Disallow pasting of characters forbidden by wxTextValidator.
Bug fixes.
3.2.4
11 November 2023
Future versions
License
wxWidgets is distributed under a custom made wxWindows Licence , similar to the
GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL), with an exception stating that derived works in
binary form may be distributed on the user's own terms.
[8] This
license is a
free software license approved by the FSF,
[20] making wxWidgets
free software . It has been approved by the
Open Source Initiative (OSI).
[21]
Official support
Supported platforms
wxWidgets is supported on the following platforms:
[22]
[23]
Windows – wxMSW (32/64-bits Windows XP up to Windows 11)
Linux/Unix –
wxGTK , wxX11, wxMotif
Mac OS – wxMac (
Mac OS X 10.3 using Carbon,
Mac OS X 10.5 using Cocoa), wxOSX/Cocoa (32/64-bits
Mac OS X 10.7 or later)
OS/2 – wxOS2, wxPM, wxWidgets for GTK or Motif can be compiled on OS/2
Embedded platforms – wxEmbedded
[9]
External ports
Amiga – wxWidgets-AOS: AmigaOS port (Work In Progress)
[24]
Supported compilers
wxWidgets is officially confirmed to work properly with the following compilers:
[25]
[26]
Toolkit
Compiler
Version
wxMSW
Microsoft Visual Studio – Visual C++
5.0+
Borland C++ (dropped in 3.1.5)
5.5+
C++Builder
2006+
Watcom C++, OpenWatcom
10.6+
CodeWarrior
7+
Cygwin
1.5+
MinGW
2.0+
Digital Mars C/C++ compiler
8.40+
wxGTK
g++
2.95+
Clang++
3.3+
Intel C++ Compiler
9.1+
Sun Studio C/C++
5.9
HP aC++
3.8
IBM XL C/C++
8.0
Programming language bindings
wxPython logo
The wxWidgets
library is implemented in
C++ , with
bindings available for many commonly used
programming languages .
[27]
wxWidgets is best described as a
native mode toolkit as it provides a thin abstraction to a platform's native widgets, contrary to emulating the display of widgets using graphic primitives. Calling a native widget on the target platform results in a more native looking interface than toolkits such as
Swing (for Java), as well as offering performance and other benefits.
[28]
The toolkit is also not restricted to GUI development, having an
inter-process communication layer,
socket networking functionality, and more.
RAD tools and IDEs for wxWidgets
CodeLite under Windows XP
Code::Blocks running under
Ubuntu
There are many
Rapid Application Development (RAD) and
Integrated Development Environment (IDE) tools available. Notable tools include:
[29]
[30]
Applications built using wxWidgets
Amaya under Windows 7
Notable applications that use wxWidgets:
See also
FLTK – a light, cross platform, non-native widget toolkit
FOX toolkit – a fast, open source, cross-platform widget toolkit
GTK – the GIMP toolkit, a widget toolkit used by
GNOME applications
gtkmm – C++ version of GTK
Juce – an extensive cross-platform widget toolkit
IUP – a multi-platform toolkit for building native graphical user interfaces
Qt (toolkit) – an application framework used by
KDE applications
U++ – a C++ cross-platform development framework
Widget toolkit
List of widget toolkits
References
Further reading
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to
wxWidgets .