Chapter 1. Getting Started

What is wxGlade?

wxGlade is an open source graphical user interface builder written in Python using popular widget toolkit wxWidgets.

Figure 1.1. wxGlade windows

wxGlade windows

wxGlade allows to create graphical user interfaces using wxWidgets. The designer can arrange different widgets using a drag and drop WYSIWYG editor. This simplifies the creation of a graphical user interface in comparison with manual coded graphical user interfaces.

wxGlade is able to generate source code for Python, Perl, Lisp, C++ and XRC based on the designed GUI.

As you can guess by the name, its model is Glade, the famous GTK+/GNOME GUI builder, with which wxGlade shares the philosophy and the look & feel (but not a line of code).

What can you do with wxGlade?

With wxGlade you can:

  • Design the whole GUI of your application inclusive simple or complex dialogs as well as menu bars, different kinds of buttons and text widgets, bitmaps, ...

  • Use the graphical editor for editing, cutting and pasting widgets

  • Convert your design in source code of your favorite language

  • Run wxGlade on a wide variety of operation systems since it is written in Python

What is wxGlade NOT?

wxGlade is not a full featured IDE and will never be one. wxGlade is just a graphical user interface builder. The generated code does nothing apart from displaying the created widgets.

If you are looking for a complete IDE, maybe Eric Python IDE, PyCharm, Code::Blocks or one of the many other IDEs the right tool.

wxGlade isn't a tool to learn programming with wxWidgets. You can't use wxGlade if you do not have any basic understanding of programming. You need to know the basics of wxWidgets, as well as the basics of C++, Python, Perl or Lisp.