wxWidgets is a C++ library that lets developers create applications for Windows, macOS, Linux and other platforms with a single code base. It has popular language bindings for Python, Ruby, Lua, Rust, Dart, Perl and several other languages, and unlike other cross-platform toolkits, wxWidgets gives applications a truly native look and feel because it uses the platform's native API rather than emulating the GUI. It's also extensive, free, open-source and mature.
Latest News
wxWidgets 3.2.12 and 3.3.4 Released
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This is another combined announcement for the latest stable and development releases that were both made available today. As before, 3.3.4 contains all the changes from 3.2.12 as well as improvements specific to the development branch, such as yet more fixes for wxMSW dark mode support and improved support for Wayland in wxGTK.
Both releases can be downloaded from GitHub, please follow these links to download archives with the library sources and documentation as well as binaries for the selected Windows compilers such as Microsoft Visual C++ and MinGW-w64: for 3.2.12 release and for 3.3.4 one. Online documentation has also been updated and can be accessed at 3.2.12 documentation home and 3.3.4 respectively.
If you are new to wxWidgets, you may find the installation guide a good starting point. If you are upgrading to 3.3.4 from a previous version, please make sure to check the change log and, especially, the INCOMPATIBLE CHANGES section there.
Call for testing
We hope that 3.3.4 will be the last development release before releasing 3.4.0, the beginning of the next stable releases series. Because of this, bug reports and especially regressions for 3.3.4 would be even more welcome than usual: please try using this wxWidgets version in your applications and let us know about any problems so that we could fix them before 3.4.0. Thanks in advance!
Changes since previous releases
3.3.4 contains about 900 commits from 52 unique contributors done during the last 3 months. The amount of changes is too big to list them all here, but most of them fall into the following categories:
- Numerous bug fixes and improvements for wxMSW dark mode.
- Better Wayland support in wxGTK, notably implementing wxAUI panes dragging
and restoring top level windows positions (when the required protocols are
available).
wxTaskBarIconalso works under Wayland now (with AppIndicator). - Improved accessibility support on all platforms, including wxOSX and wxGTK.
- Improved handling of IME under all platforms.
- Several major new features added to
wxRibbonControl. - Some long standing bugs in (TCP-based) wxIPC and
wxSockethave been fixed. - Accelerator key handling has been made more flexible and consistent.
As usual, more details can be found in the change log for 3.3.4 and for 3.2.12.
Feedback
Please let us know about your experience with this release via any of the following channels:
or by commenting under this post.
Thanks to all contributors to this release and we hope that you will enjoy working with it!
wxDart 0.9.2 released
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Version 0.9.2 of wxDart has been released.
Dart is a programming language developed by Google. It uses static typing and can be compiled to an executable binary or to JavaScript or WebAssembly to run in a web browser.
wxDart consists of two separate libraries which offer the same API and can be used independently.
- wxDart Flutter uses the Flutter library as its backend and is written in pure Dart.
- wxDart Native provides Dart bindings to the wxWidgets C++ GUI library.
wxDart Flutter has been written from the ground up and does not depend on any C++ or C code. It uses the wxWidgets API, adding many desktop features to Flutter. Apps compiled with wxDart Flutter run almost anywhere (including Android and iOS), but it mainly targets the web.
Like wxWidgets itself, wxDart Native mainly targets the classical desktop environments and offers native look and feel.
Check out the Fireworks demo written with wxDart Flutter, compiled to WebAssembly, and see how it uses wxWidgets API in its source code.
wxDart and its documentation are hosted on pub.dev here.
wxWidgets Book Examples Now Available on GitHub
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A comprehensive collection of wxWidgets example applications is now available to the community. These applications were originally developed as supplementary material for the Polish book Cross-Platform Programming with C++ and wxWidgets 3 and are now publicly accessible on GitHub in the dedicated repository All example applications are released under the wxWidgets License.
Repository Contents
The repository contains more than 25 example applications, showcasing various wxWidgets functionalities. These include, among others:
- User interface components and custom controls
- File handling, logging, and system operations
- Networking (HTTP, FTP, and Socket communication)
- Multithreading
- OpenGL and 3D graphics
- Developing a custom code editor with wxScintilla
Additionally, some projects demonstrate more advanced features, making them useful for both beginners and experienced developers looking to integrate wxWidgets into their applications.
All the examples were tested on:
- Windows 11 (Visual Studio 2022, wxWidgets 3.3.x)
- Linux Mint 22 (wxWidgets 3.2.6)
Each project includes configuration files for Visual Studio, Code::Blocks, and Makefile, ensuring compatibility across different development environments.
All examples have been fully translated into English to support a global audience of developers.
All projects have been re-tested, updated, and adapted to the latest versions of wxWidgets and C++20, ensuring modern compatibility and performance.
The repository also includes the upgrade_wxwidgets.py script, which facilitates both upgrading and adapting projects to any version of the wxWidgets library.
This resource provides an excellent starting point for developers interested in exploring wxWidgets through working examples. Users are encouraged to review the code and adapt it to their own projects.
wxRuby3 1.0.0 released
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It’s time! wxRuby3 has reached its 1.0.0 stable release.
This release targets the wxWidgets 3.2.5 release by default, which contains (among many others) quite some fixes which came from the development of wxRuby3, and can be installed from RubyGems or downloaded from Github.
This release is the result of about 1.5 years of development, starting at the abandoned remains of wxRuby2, taking a page out of the wxPython Phoenix book and ending with this release.
wxRuby3 is a cross-platform GUI library for Ruby, based on the mature wxWidgets GUI toolkit for C++. It uses native widgets wherever possible, providing the correct look, feel and behavior to GUI applications on Windows, macOS and Linux/GTK. wxRuby aims to provide a comprehensive solution to developing professional-standard desktop applications in Ruby. wxRuby3 also provides extensive usage documentation at its Wiki as well as a complete API reference.
What has changed in this release?
- improved documentation
- support building against wxWidgets GIT master version
- improved stability
- add Wx::Overlay and Wx::DCOverlay
- add 2D affine transformation support
- add Wx::GraphicsRenderer
- various DC support improvements
- add large 2D drawing sample
Full Changelog: https://github.com/mcorino/wxRuby3/compare/v0.9.8…v1.0.0
How to install?
gem install wxruby3
See the INSTALL documentation for more details. Binary packages for major platforms are available as release assets on Github.
Where can I learn more?
Usage Documentation: see the Wiki
API Documentation: see here
Source code: Github
Rubygems: wxRuby3
Where can I provide feedback?
Report problems, bugs, instructions using Github Issues.
Start discussions, submit ideas, feature requests etc. using Github Discussion.
Credits
Thanks go to the dedicated wxWidgets team for providing such a fantastic GUI library to build wxRuby3 on as well as to the wxPython Phoenix team for providing the idea of code generation from the wxWidgets interface docs.
For more credits see here.
Modern Icon Sets wxArtProvider Released
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perazz has released wxMaterialDesignArtProvider, a custom wxArtProvider class providing SVG-based icons from the Material Design, SimpleIcons, FontAwesome and FluentUI system datasets. All these datasets come with permissive licenses (MIT, CC BY 4.0, CC0 1.0, Apache 2.0) that should make it easy to embed it in new and existing projects.
All SVG icons are hardcoded into headers such that no external files are needed to build the art provider class. Each dataset belongs to a custom client (so that filled/outline versions can be used for hovering effects) and color customization is provided via a simple regex-based extension.
Hopefully this can be useful to people who want to make their existing wxWidgets applications access modern icon sets with limited effort.
