Why Use wxWidgets?

One area where wxWidgets differs from many other frameworks, such as MFC or OWL, is its multi-platform nature. wxWidgets has an Application Programming Interface (API) that is the same, or very nearly the same, on all supported platforms. This means that you can write an application on Windows, for example, and with very few changes (if any) recompile it on Linux or Mac OS X. This has a huge cost benefit compared with completely rewriting an application for each platform, and it also means that you do not need to learn a different API for each platform. Furthermore, it helps to future-proof your applications. As the computing landscape changes, wxWidgets changes with it, allowing your application to be ported to the latest and greatest systems supporting the newest features.

Another distinguishing feature is that wxWidgets provides a native look and feel. Some frameworks use the same widget code running on all platforms, perhaps with a theme makeover to simulate each platform's native appearance. By contrast, wxWidgets uses the native widgets wherever possible (and its own widget set in other cases) so that not only does the application look native on the major platforms, but it actually is native. This is incredibly important for user acceptance because even small, almost imperceptible differences in the way an application behaves, compared with the platform standard, can create an alienating experience for the user. To illustrate, Figure 1-1 shows a wxWidgets application called StoryLines, a tool to help fiction writers plot their stories, running on Windows XP.

Figure 1-1. StoryLines on Windows

It's recognizably a Windows application, with GUI elements such as tabs, scrollbars, and drop-down lists conforming to the current Windows theme. Similarly, Figure 1-2 shows StoryLines as a Mac OS X application, with the expected Aqua look and feel. There is no menu bar attached to the StoryLines window because it follows the Mac OS convention of showing the current window's menu bar at the top of the screen.

Figure 1-2. StoryLines on Mac OS X

Finally, Figure 1-3 shows StoryLines as a GTK+ application running on Red Hat Linux.

Figure 1-3. StoryLines on Linux

Why not just use Java? While Java is great for web-based applications, it's not always the best choice for the desktop. In general, C++-based applications using wxWidgets are faster, have a more native look and feel, and are easier to install because they don't rely on the presence of the Java virtual machine. C++ also allows greater access to low-level functionality and is easier to integrate with existing C and C++ code. For all these reasons, very few of the popular desktop applications that you use today are built with Java. wxWidgets allows you to deliver the high-performance, native applications that your users expect.

wxWidgets is an open source project. Naturally, this means that it costs nothing to use wxWidgets (unless you feel like generously donating to the project!), but it also has important philosophical and strategic significance. Open source software has a habit of outlasting its proprietary equivalents. As a developer using wxWidgets, you know that the code you rely on will never disappear. You can always fix any problems yourself by changing the source code. It can also be a lot more fun to take part in an open source community than trying to get hold of corporate support staff. Participants in open source projects tend to be there because they love what they're doing and can't wait to share their knowledge, whereas corporate support staff members are not always so idealistically motivated. When you use wxWidgets, you tap into an astonishing talent pool, with contributors from a wide range of backgrounds. Many aspects of application development that you might otherwise have to laboriously code yourself have been encapsulated by these developers in easy-to-use classes that you can plug into your code. An active user community will assist you on the mailing lists, and you'll enjoy discussions not only about wxWidgets but often other matters close to the hearts of both experienced and inexperienced developers as well. Perhaps one day you'll join in the success of wxWidgets and become a contributor yourself!

wxWidgets has wide industry support, or to use a popular buzzword, mindshare. The list of users includes AOL, AMD, CALTECH, Lockheed Martin, NASA, the Open Source Applications Foundation, Xerox, and many others. wxWidgets encompasses the whole spectrum of users, from single developer software outfits to large corporations, from computer science departments to medical research groups, and from ecological research to the telecommunications industry. It's also used by a myriad of open source projects, such as the Audacity audio editor and the pgAdmin III database design and management system.

People use wxWidgets for many different reasons, whether simply as an elegant MFC replacement on a single platform, or to allow them to move easily from (say) Microsoft Windows to Unix and Mac OS X. wxWidgets is addressing the challenges of mobile platforms, too, with ports for embedded Linux, Microsoft Pocket PC, and (soon) Palm OS.