Programming Python, Second Edition

Chapter 6. Graphical User Interfaces

“Here’s Looking at You, Kid”

For most software systems, a graphical user interface (GUI) has become an expected part of the package. Even if the GUI acronym is new to you, chances are that you are already familiar with such interfaces -- the windows, buttons, and menus that we use to interact with software programs. In fact, most of what we do on computers today is done with some sort of point-and-click graphical interface. From web browsers to system tools, programs are routinely dressed-up with a GUI component to make them more flexible and easy to use.

In this part of the book, we will learn how to make Python scripts sprout such graphical interfaces too, by studying examples of programming with the Tkinter module -- a portable GUI library that is a standard part of the Python system. As we’ll see, it’s easy to program user interfaces in Python scripts, thanks both to the simplicity of the language and the power of its GUI libraries. As an added bonus, GUIs programmed in Python with Tkinter are automatically portable to all major computer systems.

GUI Programming Topics

Because GUIs are a major area, I want to say a few more words about this part of the book. To make them easier to absorb, GUI programming topics are split over the next four chapters of this book:

• This chapter begins with a quick Tkinter tutorial to teach coding basics. Interfaces are kept simple here on purpose, so you can master the fundamentals before moving on to the following ...