Programming Python, Second Edition

Chapter 8. A Tkinter Tour, Part 2

“On Today’s Menu: Spam, Spam, and Spam”

This chapter is the second in a two-part tour of the Tkinter library. It picks up where Chapter 7 left off, and covers some of the more advanced widgets and tools in the Tkinter arsenal. Among the topics presented in this chapter:

• Menu, Menubutton, and OptionMenu widgets

• The Scrollbar widget: for scrolling text, lists, and canvases

• The Listbox widget: a list of multiple selections

• The Text widget: a general text display and editing tool

• The Canvas widget: a general graphical drawing tool

• The grid table-based geometry manager

• Time-based tools: after, update, wait, and threads

• Basic Tkinter animation techniques

• Clipboards, erasing widgets and windows, etc.

By the time you’ve finished this chapter, you will have seen the bulk of the Tkinter library, and have all the information you need to compose larger portable user interfaces of your own. You’ll also be ready to tackle the larger GUI examples presented in Chapter 9. As a segue to the next chapter, this one also closes with a look at the PyDemos and PyGadgets launcher toolbars -- GUIs used to start larger GUI examples.