wxWidgets 2.9.5 was officially released with many new amazing features. Lets look on some of them in detail.
wxGTK/Win32 port
wxGTK is a wxWidgets port that is based on GTK+ toolkit with X11 backend. In this release was added support for Win32 backend in addition to X11. wxMSW port is the best port under Windows, it uses system provided widgets not just emulates they behavior using themes. But sometimes it is needed to have GTK+ look and feel, integration with GTK+ widgets or just test and debug wxGTK based code under Windows. All this can be done in wxGTK/Win32 port. This port is designed as same as wxMSW port but it uses GTK+ widgets instead of native ones, so it will require minimal changes in application build process and developers can use Windows resource files in it. See screenshots and find the difference.
Minimal sample: GTK+2/Win32 vs Windows Controls
Calendar sample: GTK+2/Win32 vs Windows Controls
About dialog sample: GTK+2/Win32 vs Windows Controls
XRC sample: GTK+2/Win32 vs Windows Controls
wxGTK3/Broadway port
In wxWidgets 2.9.4 release was added support for GTK+ 3 toolkit. In this release developers can build applications with Broadway and Wayland GDK backends. Broadway backend can show wxWidgets applications in a web browser using HTML5 canvas and web sockets. Also there is some progress in porting wxPython to Broadway but this work isn’t finished yet.
Broadway under Linux with web browser under Windows
More advanced wxGTK3/Broadway sample
wxGTK3/Wayland port
Wayland is a replacement for X and wxGTK3/Wayland port will be very useful when most of desktop environments migrate to it in the next few years.
Minimal wxWidgets sample in Weston Compositor
Miscellaneous
- wxSimplebook is a new book widget that doesn’t allow the user to change the page being displayed. It can be useful when wxNotebook, wxChoicebook, wxListbook, wxToolbook and wxTreeBook isn’t enough and application should implement an other page changing user interface.
- Simpler way to create fonts
- Calling methods asynchronously later or in the main thread from a working one with CallAfter()
- Hexadecimal numbers in wxSpinCtrl
- Better notifications in wxGTK using libnotify
- Application preferences editor dialog with multiple pages support
Here is other significant changes and bug fixes and online documentation
Kolya Kosenko 