asked on

Custom GUI (Platform Independent)

Hi all,
What I'm looking for is a clear and consise description of a strategy for developing a custom designed user interface that will be easy to port across to different platforms. I have a some experience in developing Windows apps and that will be my initial choice of platform, but I want to make sure that if it becomes necessary, I can easily port my application across to Unix and other platforms (of which I have very little experience of, hence this question). I'm guessing that developing anything in MFC is a bad move right?!!

So what do people recommend? I'm just asking for an outline of the strategy, and maybe links to any resources that people would think I would find particularly useful.

Regards

Andy

SOLUTION

Tyrsis

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

SOLUTION

Jaime Olivares

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

str_ek

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

fxnut

ASKER

Thanks for the quick responses guys. I've checked out the links you posted, and FLTK seems to be a good option. Version 1.2 of FLTK currently in development is going to allow for application "skins", which I would hope will allow me to create a custom look to the interface.

My initial phrasing of my question was a little unclear on what I want to do exactly. Basically, I'm thinking of writing a 3D modelling application and I was wondering how packages like Maya implement their cross platform interfaces. Writing an app like this is would require various custom UI controls and the design and implementation of the architecture is obviously extremely important.

So any 3rd party library would ideally have to support customisable control appearance, custom controls and possibly custom events.

Do the libraries mentioned so far provide this functionality?

Jaime Olivares

for cross-platform 3d application I recommend you to use any OpenGL wrapper. Take a look at www.sourceforge.com (write "opengl" on the search form)

str_ek

peep at efltk (one of branches) as well ;)

and bout fltk and customwidgets take a look at http://www.fltk.org/documentation.php/doc-1.1/subclassing.html#subclassing
with custom events it's a little more complicated problems, but it all can be should be possible to achieve threw widget subclassing

str_ek

fltk provides with a corss-platform opengl wrapper :)

fxnut

ASKER

Thanks guys for your help :-)