8. wxWidgets

Now that we have covered how a graphical user interface (GUI) fits into a cross-platform project, it is time to take a look at the first cross-platform GUI toolkit covered in this book, wxWidgets. wxWidgets (at one time, known as wxWindows but forced to change its name because of pressure from a rather large software company in the state of Washington) is one of two very popular desktop GUI toolkits, the other being Trolltech’s Qt.

wxWidgets first came to my attention while I was a developer at Netscape, and in fact played a role in the history of Netscape (and, one might argue, it helped to hastened the demise of the Netscape division that was responsible for Netscape versions 6.x and 7.x). Let me tell you a story.

Prior to the ...

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