User Interface in Gtk#

A User Interface represents the conduit between the user of the system and the functionality exposed by the application. Users interact with any application only through the User interface. It gives the look and feel to the users. It is one of the important elements of any application that includes interface elements into its design.

You have many ways to create a UI within the Mono environment.

Gtk#: Gtk#is a toolkit provided by Mono for creating the GUI. It is an open-source, free software GNOME-based set of GUI components. It provide applications that are integerated with the GNOME desktop. You can use Gtk# toolkit in linux also. Its interface is similar to Gtk+ developers. It adapts to font size without breaking application. It is a cross platform i.e it supports Unix, windows, linux, OSX etc. You can create fully native graphical Gnome application using the Mono and .NET development frameworks. In general, GTK# applications are written using MonoDevelop which provides a visual designer for creating GTK# GUIs.

Gtk+: You can create the Gtk# API using the Gtk+ features that supports  designing and developing your user interfaces using Gtk+ such as Glade. It is a  GIMP toolkit (GNU image Manipulation Program ) started by the Peter Mattis. Its popularity has been encouraged through its language independence, which is achieved through language bindings (also called wrappers). These wrappers provide the Application programming interface  for accessing the Gtk+ toolkit from multiple languages such as C#, C, C++, Java, Perl and python etc. It consists of a number of libraries, includes Cairo library, glib library, Accessibility Toolkit (ATK) library, Pango library , GdkPixbuf library etc.

To use Gtk+ within the Mono environment, you'll need to ensure that you have the necessary  files installed in your pc and install them. Installation is very simple and is platform specific.

You can install it by simply executing the Win32 installer program. just follow the steps for the installation.

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Once you've installed it, you can begin developing your Gtk+ applications using the Gtk# API provided and the Mono C# compiler. You can use Glade, which provides a free user interface designer that integrates with the Gtk+ toolkit.

GLADE: Glade is an open-source RAD tool that allows you to visually design your user interface using the Gtk+ toolkit and  enable quick & easy development of user interfaces for the GTK+ toolkit and the GNOME desktop environment then save this visual representation as an XML file that can be dynamically loaded and utilized by an application that is using the appropriate library.


Figure: Glade user interface

There are a number of factors for using the Glade tool are:-  It is not mandatory to use but it is good practice to use the glade tool for creating the UI because it's difficult to visualize how a user interface will look without actually seeing the end results, and to some extent you are able to place controls on a canvas and move them and provide the user  look and feel of your application is compelling.

Coding, Runing and compiling are required to perform the same tasks in code are significant, so it is highly recommended that you design all user interface elements using an appropriate tool, such as Glade or MonoDevelop.

Description of Glade's Layout:Glade layout consist of Main window ,Glade Menus ,Palette Window , Properties Window, Glade's clipboard window and glade's widget tree window etc

Glade's Main Window: When you first start Glade, you'll be presented with the main window. You use this window to
implement a project, which acts as the container for all items within in it.

Palette Window : This window display a list of the controls, or widgets, by selecting the button associated

With the category of controls you want to view. The categories exposed via the buttons include the following:

• Gtk+ Basic: This holds the basic controls that form the foundation of most GUIs (for example, the Window control and the Button control).
  

• Gtk+ Additional: This holds controls that are useful but used less often (for example, the Font Selection Dialog control and the Calendar control).
  

• Deprecated: This holds controls that are no longer being developed and have since been replaced but are shown for backward compatibility.
  

Properties Window

The Properties window allows you to view and modify a variety of properties associated with the control that currently has the focus

You can access a tab by simply selecting it; the properties associated with that category then display for you to view or edit. These categories are as follows:

Widget: It contains the core properties associated with the selected control and are typically focused on visual attributes such as DefaultWidth, DefaultHeight, and so on.

Packing: These properties are associated with those controls that have an array of elements and prescribed order.

Common: As its name suggests, this set contains the common properties associated with a given control, both visual and programmatic. These properties are common to all controls and as such are contained on their own tab.

Signals: These properties allow you to associate event handlers with events  that the control may encounter.

Accessibility: These controls allow you to modify attributes to make your applications more accessible. For example, the ZoomText control provides a "zoom" window for the visually impaired that displays text in a large font; to use it, you associate a label with the control that the application looks for and then displays.