GUI Toolkits

The wxPython library comes with a pair of handy methods called Freeze() and Thaw(). The call to Freeze() prevents the window from updating while it is frozen. This can be useful when you are adding or removing widgets and you want to reduce your UI from appearing to flicker. After you finish updating the UI,

The wxPython GUI toolkit includes its own date / time capabilities. Most of the time, you can just use Python’s datetime and time modules and you’ll be fine. But occasionally you’ll find yourself needing to convert from wxPython’s wx.DateTime objects to Python’s datetime objects. You may encounter this when you use the wx.DatePickerCtrl widget. Fortunately,

I’ve been using wxPython for quite a while now and I see certain questions come up on a fairly frequent basis. One of the popular ones is how to ask the user for their credentials before loading up the rest of the application. There are several approaches to this, but I am going to focus

One of my friends on the wxPython Google Group asked how to catch any exception that happens in wxPython. The problem is complicated somewhat because wxPython is a wrapper on top of a C++ library (wxWidgets). You can read about the issue on the wxPython wiki. Several wxPython users mentioned using Python’s sys.excepthook to catch

The wxPython toolkit provides an alternative to using Sizers for layout that is known as “sized_controls”. These controls or widgets are basically top-level widgets (like frame, panel, dialog, etc) that have sizing logic built into them. This article will cover all four types of sized_controls. They are as follows: SizedPanel SizedScrolledPanel SizedFrame SizedDialog The SizedScrolledPanel

wxPython 2.9 introduced the world to a new type of sizer that can take widgets and automatically make them “wrap” around as you resize the frame. That sizer is known as wx.WrapSizer. For some reason, it is relatively unknown, so we’ll spend a few minutes going over how to use it in this article. To

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) has been with us for a long time and allows us to see new articles on our favorite website easily. Python doesn’t have an RSS reader module in the standard library, so we’ll be using the Universal Feed Parser 5.1.3 to do our parsing. If you do not have it already,

This week I saw a question on StackOverflow about putting two grids into a SplitterWindow which itself was in a Notebook page. Personally I think that’s a little convoluted, but I thought it was an interesting challenge and I came up with a solution. Then the fellow wanted to know how to sync the scrolling

The other day I was working on a project where I was using the fabulous ObjectListView widget (a wrapper around wx.ListCtrl) and I wanted to add the ability to double-click an item in the control to make it open a PDF. I knew I had read somewhere on the internet about how do this sort