Desktop Application Development with PHP-GTK

By Akash Mehta
2008-03-13


So how powerful is this PHP-GTK?

We just finished writing hello world in six lines of code, and haven't got anything terribly interesting yet. So what is PHP-GTK capable of? If you installed Gnope, you'll have a new folder in your start menu, "PHP-Gtk2". Find it and load up "Applications". You should see the Gnope application launcher:

Scroll down and double-click on PHP-Gtk2 Demos. The Gnope folks have compiled some demonstrations of PHP GTK, including use of the controls and some interesting tricks. Each demo has a brief summary, a functioning inline demo and the source code that powers it. For example, here's the combo box example:

You aren't limited to plain old interfaces, either. Drawing is also an option:

Leaving the demos for a moment, building entire applications in PHP-GTK is not out of the question:

Of course, when you reach this level of complexity there are other considerations to take into account, such as performance when working with highly complex interfaces. This Notepad was very snappy, but only on my recent Centrino Duo laptop; running on an old PIII box with Windows 2000 was a somewhat delayed-response affair, and even slight lag in simple operations such as copying and pasting can frustrate users.

Tutorial Pages:
» What is PHP-GTK?
» Getting started with PHP-GTK
» Your first PHP-GTK application
» So how powerful is this PHP-GTK?
» Building a real application in PHP-GTK
» Further reading

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