An article about wxPython, one of the most popular desktop graphical user interface (GUI) toolkits for the Python programming language
I was recently working on a GUI application that had a wx.Notebook in it. When the user changed tabs in the notebook, I wanted the application to do an update based on the newly shown (i.e. selected) tab. I quickly discovered that while it is easy to catch the tab change event, getting the right …
Getting the Correct Notebook Tab Across Platforms in wxPython Read More »
There are many widgets that are included with the wxPython GUI toolkit. One of them is a fairly handy widget called wx.StaticBox. This widget accepts a string and then will draw a box with the string in the upper left-hand corned of the box. However this only works when you use it in conjunction with …
My latest book, Creating GUI Applications with wxPython is now available for purchase. Creating GUI Applications with wxPython is a book that will teach you how to use wxPython to create applications by actually creating several mini-programs. I have found that while learning how the various widgets work in wxPython is valuable, it is even better …
Creating GUI Applications with wxPython Now Available Read More »
Growing up, I have always found the universe and space in general to be exciting. It is fun to dream about what worlds remain unexplored. I also enjoy seeing photos from other worlds or thinking about the vastness of space. What does this have to do with Python though? Well, the National Aeronautics and Space …
Creating a GUI Application for NASA’s API with wxPython Read More »
The Publish-Subscribe pattern is pretty common in computer science and very useful too. The wxPython GUI toolkit has had an implementation of it for a very long time in wx.lib.pubsub. This implementation is based on the PyPubSub package. While you could always download PyPubSub and use it directly instead, it was nice to be able …
Let’s say you finished up a wonderful GUI application using wxPython. How do you share it with the world? This is always the dilemma when you finish an amazing program. Fortunately, there are several ways you can share your code. If you want to share your code with other developers, than Github or a similar …
A lot of beginner tutorials start with “Hello World” examples. There are plenty of websites that use a calculator application as a kind of “Hello World” for GUI beginners. Calculators are a good way to learn because they have a set of widgets that you need to lay out in an orderly fashion. They also …
We are coming into the last week of the Kickstarter and I thought I would give you all a quick update. I finished writing up the chapter on creating a calculator today and got started on chapter 7. I also wanted to let you know what the current table of contents looks like right now: …
Table of Contents for Creating GUI Applications Book Read More »
The wxPython GUI toolkit has a very rich and powerful Grid widget that I have written about previously on this blog. It allows you to create sheets of cells similar to those in Microsoft Excel. There is also a neat mixin that allows you to apply a custom renderer to the labels on the columns …
wxPython: Changing Custom Renderers for Columns / Rows Read More »
I see questions relating to the title of this article a lot. How do I open a second frame / window? How do I get all the frames to close when I close the main application? When you are first learning wxPython, these kinds of questions can be kind of hard to find answers for …
A common UI element that you used to see a lot of was the Splash Screen. A splash screen is just a dialog with a logo or art on it that sometimes includes a message about how far along the application has loaded. Some developers use splash screens as a way to tell the user …
The other day, I saw an interesting question in the wxPython IRC channel. They were asking if there was a way to set which display their application would appear on. Robin Dunn, the creator of wxPython, gave the questioner some pointers, but I decided to go ahead and write up a quick tutorial on the …
Every now and then, someone will ask about how they can run the demo code from wxPython’s demo outside of the demo. In other words, they wonder how you can extract the code from the demo and run it in your own. I think I wrote about this very topic quite some time ago on …
I recently had my self-published book, “wxPython Cookbook” picked up by Apress and republished as wxPython Recipes. Since they gave me a few complimentary paperback copies, I have decided to do a little contest. Rules Post a comment telling me why you would want a copy The most clever or heartfelt commenter will be chosen …
I was contacted earlier this year by Apress about republishing my book, wxPython Cookbook, under their branding. I thought it might be fun to see what I could learn from a publisher so I went with them as I have enjoyed several of their books in the past. The biggest change to the book is …