What s the best easiest GUI Library for Ruby

Question

Whats the best easiest GUI library out there for Ruby   I would prefer a cross-platform GUI library  but currently I m only concerned about Windows  Win32   I am having difficulting finding any that seem to be easy to use  Are there any

User · Answer

There are Ruby bindings for QT and GTK so you can't go wrong with those ones (they're portable too).

The Pragmatic Programmers published a mini book on Ruby with QT and a full book on FXRuby, so I think the latter's another good choice.

Shoes, although easy to learn and cute, is pretty situational and doesn't provide as many options for controls as any of the other ones do, so if you want to build anything beyond a simple UI (not to hate Shoes but it's not mature enough yet), I'd recommend you to use one of the more mature and tested toolkits.

User · Answer

If you re looking for a cross-platform GUI  then I d highly recommend going with JRuby and Swing   Also  take a look at the monkeybars library  which is a Ruby library for building MVC applications using JRuby and Swing  where you can also use the excellent Netbeans IDE to visually build your GUI

User · Answer

I ve had some very good experience with Qt  so I would definitely recommend it    You should be ware of the licensing model though  If you re developing an open source application  you can use the open-source licensed version free of charge  If you re developing a commercial application  you ll have to pay license fees  And you can t develop in the open source one and then switch the license to commercial before you start selling   P S  I just had a quick look at shoes  I really like the declarative definitions of the UI elements  so that s definitely worth investigating

User · Answer

Glimmer is an interesting option for JRuby users which provides a very Ruby-ish interface to the SWT toolkit   SWT is the user interface framework behind Eclipse  which delivers fast performance and familiar UI metaphors by making use of native widgets on the various platforms it supports  Windows  OS X  Linux  etc   SWT always appealed to me as a Java developer  but coding it was painful in the extreme  Glimmer makes the process a lot more straightforward by emphasizing convention over configuration  and by valuing DRYness and all the other normal Ruby goodness   Another neat option is SproutCore  a Javascript-based GUI toolkit with Ruby bindings developed by Apple  At least  the demos for it look great  and otherinbox built a pretty slick looking application on top of it  Personally  I ve spent quite a few hours trying to get it running on two systems -- one Windows and one Linux -- and haven t succeeded on either one -- I keep running into dependency issues with Merb or other pieces of the SproutCore stack  But it s intriguing enough that I ll go back after a few weeks and try again  hoping that the issues get resolved in that time

User · Answer

I ve had some very good experience with Qt  so I would definitely recommend it    You should be ware of the licensing model though  If you re developing an open source application  you can use the open-source licensed version free of charge  If you re developing a commercial application  you ll have to pay license fees  And you can t develop in the open source one and then switch the license to commercial before you start selling   P S  I just had a quick look at shoes  I really like the declarative definitions of the UI elements  so that s definitely worth investigating

User · Answer

If you re looking for a cross-platform GUI  then I d highly recommend going with JRuby and Swing   Also  take a look at the monkeybars library  which is a Ruby library for building MVC applications using JRuby and Swing  where you can also use the excellent Netbeans IDE to visually build your GUI

User · Answer

wxWidgets is worth checking out  It is well supported on Ruby via wxRuby  For an example app  have a look at wxRIDE  See it compared to other toolkits  You might also want to check out Anvil  which is a sort of Rails-ish framework for working with wx  It looks moribund now  though

User · Answer

There are Ruby bindings for QT and GTK so you can't go wrong with those ones (they're portable too).

The Pragmatic Programmers published a mini book on Ruby with QT and a full book on FXRuby, so I think the latter's another good choice.

Shoes, although easy to learn and cute, is pretty situational and doesn't provide as many options for controls as any of the other ones do, so if you want to build anything beyond a simple UI (not to hate Shoes but it's not mature enough yet), I'd recommend you to use one of the more mature and tested toolkits.

User · Answer

Tk is available for Ruby  Some nice examples  in Ruby  Perl and Tcl  can be found at http   www tkdocs com

User · Answer

I recently started using Qt as a GUI framework for a Ruby application  There is a binding called QtRuby  For a quickstart tutorial  covers only windows  see this post

User · Answer

Wxruby is a great framework  simple and clean  Try it or use glade with ruby  the simpliest option

User · Answer

There s a discussion here that might be useful   From my own  limited  exposure  I d say that shoes was the most fun and probably the  easiest  to get into  Be warned  however  that figuring out what was wrong when something breaks can be tricky  at least  it was for me    For a real-world application that I was planning to deploy to real-world users  I think I d go with wxruby

User · Answer

Try shoes   Unfortunately  I have not had a chance to work with it yet  but I have an upcoming project where I plan to use it   It is cross-platform   Also the API looks very Rubyish so I would give it a try

User · Answer

Try shoes   Unfortunately  I have not had a chance to work with it yet  but I have an upcoming project where I plan to use it   It is cross-platform   Also the API looks very Rubyish so I would give it a try

User · Answer

If you re developing for Mac  MacRuby has the best library  hands down  Aside from being blazing fast  it has a very nice GUI interface named hotcocoa  Additionally  the library is developed by Apple  uses the Core Foundation classes as its base  and runs on top of the Objective-C runtime using LLVM  In two words  it s blazing fast

User · Answer

Glimmer is an interesting option for JRuby users which provides a very Ruby-ish interface to the SWT toolkit   SWT is the user interface framework behind Eclipse  which delivers fast performance and familiar UI metaphors by making use of native widgets on the various platforms it supports  Windows  OS X  Linux  etc   SWT always appealed to me as a Java developer  but coding it was painful in the extreme  Glimmer makes the process a lot more straightforward by emphasizing convention over configuration  and by valuing DRYness and all the other normal Ruby goodness   Another neat option is SproutCore  a Javascript-based GUI toolkit with Ruby bindings developed by Apple  At least  the demos for it look great  and otherinbox built a pretty slick looking application on top of it  Personally  I ve spent quite a few hours trying to get it running on two systems -- one Windows and one Linux -- and haven t succeeded on either one -- I keep running into dependency issues with Merb or other pieces of the SproutCore stack  But it s intriguing enough that I ll go back after a few weeks and try again  hoping that the issues get resolved in that time

User · Answer

Limelight I really enjoy the theatre metaphor

User · Answer

Using the ironRuby interperter you have the full  net platform  meaning you can code Winforms and WPF I have only tried Winforms   It is potentially cross platform since the mono platform exist

User · Answer

I started with FXRuby because it had a book

User · Answer

Limelight I really enjoy the theatre metaphor

User · Answer

Limelight I really enjoy the theatre metaphor

User · Answer

Wxruby is a great framework  simple and clean  Try it or use glade with ruby  the simpliest option

User · Answer

Try shoes   Unfortunately  I have not had a chance to work with it yet  but I have an upcoming project where I plan to use it   It is cross-platform   Also the API looks very Rubyish so I would give it a try

User · Answer

Ruby Shoes  by why  is intended to be a really simple GUI framework  I don t know how fully featured it is  though   Some good code samples can be found in the tutorials   Also  I think shoes powers hackety hack  a compelling programming learning environment for youngsters

User · Answer

There are Ruby bindings for QT and GTK so you can't go wrong with those ones (they're portable too).

The Pragmatic Programmers published a mini book on Ruby with QT and a full book on FXRuby, so I think the latter's another good choice.

Shoes, although easy to learn and cute, is pretty situational and doesn't provide as many options for controls as any of the other ones do, so if you want to build anything beyond a simple UI (not to hate Shoes but it's not mature enough yet), I'd recommend you to use one of the more mature and tested toolkits.

User · Answer

There s a discussion here that might be useful   From my own  limited  exposure  I d say that shoes was the most fun and probably the  easiest  to get into  Be warned  however  that figuring out what was wrong when something breaks can be tricky  at least  it was for me    For a real-world application that I was planning to deploy to real-world users  I think I d go with wxruby

User · Answer

Tk is available for Ruby  Some nice examples  in Ruby  Perl and Tcl  can be found at http   www tkdocs com

User · Answer

Tk is available for Ruby  Some nice examples  in Ruby  Perl and Tcl  can be found at http   www tkdocs com

User · Answer

Try visualruby you can easily build your forms using the glade interface designer  then write pure ruby code to animate them   Its much easier than the options mentioned above because you don t have to hand-code everything     You can see example videos on the visualruby website

User · Answer

I started with FXRuby because it had a book

User · Answer

I recently started using Qt as a GUI framework for a Ruby application  There is a binding called QtRuby  For a quickstart tutorial  covers only windows  see this post

User · Answer

Here is a good resource for you   http   en wikibooks org wiki Ruby Programming GUI Toolkit Modules  has links comparing basically all of them

User · Answer

Using the ironRuby interperter you have the full  net platform  meaning you can code Winforms and WPF I have only tried Winforms   It is potentially cross platform since the mono platform exist

User · Answer

If you are interested  RubyLearning offers a course on FXRuby and Shoes  Actually  the Shoes course is being conducted currently   Probably the easiest is Shoes  As an assistant teacher at RubyLearning  I hope that we will have better courses for learners   Some people got stuck in installing FXRuby  But Shoes has an installer for any platforms  Windows  Mac and Linux

User · Answer

I ve had some very good experience with Qt  so I would definitely recommend it    You should be ware of the licensing model though  If you re developing an open source application  you can use the open-source licensed version free of charge  If you re developing a commercial application  you ll have to pay license fees  And you can t develop in the open source one and then switch the license to commercial before you start selling   P S  I just had a quick look at shoes  I really like the declarative definitions of the UI elements  so that s definitely worth investigating

User · Answer

Limelight I really enjoy the theatre metaphor

User · Answer

If you are interested  RubyLearning offers a course on FXRuby and Shoes  Actually  the Shoes course is being conducted currently   Probably the easiest is Shoes  As an assistant teacher at RubyLearning  I hope that we will have better courses for learners   Some people got stuck in installing FXRuby  But Shoes has an installer for any platforms  Windows  Mac and Linux

User · Answer

If you re looking for a cross-platform GUI  then I d highly recommend going with JRuby and Swing   Also  take a look at the monkeybars library  which is a Ruby library for building MVC applications using JRuby and Swing  where you can also use the excellent Netbeans IDE to visually build your GUI

User · Answer

Wxruby is a great framework  simple and clean  Try it or use glade with ruby  the simpliest option

User · Answer

There s a discussion here that might be useful   From my own  limited  exposure  I d say that shoes was the most fun and probably the  easiest  to get into  Be warned  however  that figuring out what was wrong when something breaks can be tricky  at least  it was for me    For a real-world application that I was planning to deploy to real-world users  I think I d go with wxruby

User · Answer

I ve had some very good experience with Qt  so I would definitely recommend it    You should be ware of the licensing model though  If you re developing an open source application  you can use the open-source licensed version free of charge  If you re developing a commercial application  you ll have to pay license fees  And you can t develop in the open source one and then switch the license to commercial before you start selling   P S  I just had a quick look at shoes  I really like the declarative definitions of the UI elements  so that s definitely worth investigating

User · Answer

Ruby Shoes  by why  is intended to be a really simple GUI framework  I don t know how fully featured it is  though   Some good code samples can be found in the tutorials   Also  I think shoes powers hackety hack  a compelling programming learning environment for youngsters

User · Answer

Ruby Shoes  by why  is intended to be a really simple GUI framework  I don t know how fully featured it is  though   Some good code samples can be found in the tutorials   Also  I think shoes powers hackety hack  a compelling programming learning environment for youngsters

User · Answer

Using the ironRuby interperter you have the full  net platform  meaning you can code Winforms and WPF I have only tried Winforms   It is potentially cross platform since the mono platform exist

User · Answer

wxWidgets is worth checking out  It is well supported on Ruby via wxRuby  For an example app  have a look at wxRIDE  See it compared to other toolkits  You might also want to check out Anvil  which is a sort of Rails-ish framework for working with wx  It looks moribund now  though

User · Answer

wxWidgets is worth checking out  It is well supported on Ruby via wxRuby  For an example app  have a look at wxRIDE  See it compared to other toolkits  You might also want to check out Anvil  which is a sort of Rails-ish framework for working with wx  It looks moribund now  though

User · Answer

There are Ruby bindings for QT and GTK so you can't go wrong with those ones (they're portable too).

The Pragmatic Programmers published a mini book on Ruby with QT and a full book on FXRuby, so I think the latter's another good choice.

Shoes, although easy to learn and cute, is pretty situational and doesn't provide as many options for controls as any of the other ones do, so if you want to build anything beyond a simple UI (not to hate Shoes but it's not mature enough yet), I'd recommend you to use one of the more mature and tested toolkits.

User · Answer

Try shoes   Unfortunately  I have not had a chance to work with it yet  but I have an upcoming project where I plan to use it   It is cross-platform   Also the API looks very Rubyish so I would give it a try

User · Answer

Ruby Shoes  by why  is intended to be a really simple GUI framework  I don t know how fully featured it is  though   Some good code samples can be found in the tutorials   Also  I think shoes powers hackety hack  a compelling programming learning environment for youngsters

User · Answer

I started with FXRuby because it had a book

User · Answer

There s a discussion here that might be useful   From my own  limited  exposure  I d say that shoes was the most fun and probably the  easiest  to get into  Be warned  however  that figuring out what was wrong when something breaks can be tricky  at least  it was for me    For a real-world application that I was planning to deploy to real-world users  I think I d go with wxruby

User · Answer

Using the ironRuby interperter you have the full  net platform  meaning you can code Winforms and WPF I have only tried Winforms   It is potentially cross platform since the mono platform exist

User · Answer

I recently started using Qt as a GUI framework for a Ruby application  There is a binding called QtRuby  For a quickstart tutorial  covers only windows  see this post

User · Answer

If you are interested  RubyLearning offers a course on FXRuby and Shoes  Actually  the Shoes course is being conducted currently   Probably the easiest is Shoes  As an assistant teacher at RubyLearning  I hope that we will have better courses for learners   Some people got stuck in installing FXRuby  But Shoes has an installer for any platforms  Windows  Mac and Linux

User · Answer

Glimmer is an interesting option for JRuby users which provides a very Ruby-ish interface to the SWT toolkit   SWT is the user interface framework behind Eclipse  which delivers fast performance and familiar UI metaphors by making use of native widgets on the various platforms it supports  Windows  OS X  Linux  etc   SWT always appealed to me as a Java developer  but coding it was painful in the extreme  Glimmer makes the process a lot more straightforward by emphasizing convention over configuration  and by valuing DRYness and all the other normal Ruby goodness   Another neat option is SproutCore  a Javascript-based GUI toolkit with Ruby bindings developed by Apple  At least  the demos for it look great  and otherinbox built a pretty slick looking application on top of it  Personally  I ve spent quite a few hours trying to get it running on two systems -- one Windows and one Linux -- and haven t succeeded on either one -- I keep running into dependency issues with Merb or other pieces of the SproutCore stack  But it s intriguing enough that I ll go back after a few weeks and try again  hoping that the issues get resolved in that time

User · Answer

Here is a good resource for you   http   en wikibooks org wiki Ruby Programming GUI Toolkit Modules  has links comparing basically all of them

User · Answer

Wxruby is a great framework  simple and clean  Try it or use glade with ruby  the simpliest option

User · Answer

I recently started using Qt as a GUI framework for a Ruby application  There is a binding called QtRuby  For a quickstart tutorial  covers only windows  see this post

User · Answer

I started with FXRuby because it had a book

User · Answer

If you re developing for Mac  MacRuby has the best library  hands down  Aside from being blazing fast  it has a very nice GUI interface named hotcocoa  Additionally  the library is developed by Apple  uses the Core Foundation classes as its base  and runs on top of the Objective-C runtime using LLVM  In two words  it s blazing fast

User · Answer

If you are interested  RubyLearning offers a course on FXRuby and Shoes  Actually  the Shoes course is being conducted currently   Probably the easiest is Shoes  As an assistant teacher at RubyLearning  I hope that we will have better courses for learners   Some people got stuck in installing FXRuby  But Shoes has an installer for any platforms  Windows  Mac and Linux

User · Answer

Use the browser as GUI using Watir like in this question and answer   use browser as GUI in Ruby

User · Answer

Try visualruby you can easily build your forms using the glade interface designer  then write pure ruby code to animate them   Its much easier than the options mentioned above because you don t have to hand-code everything     You can see example videos on the visualruby website

User · Answer

Tk is available for Ruby  Some nice examples  in Ruby  Perl and Tcl  can be found at http   www tkdocs com

User · Answer

Glimmer is an interesting option for JRuby users which provides a very Ruby-ish interface to the SWT toolkit   SWT is the user interface framework behind Eclipse  which delivers fast performance and familiar UI metaphors by making use of native widgets on the various platforms it supports  Windows  OS X  Linux  etc   SWT always appealed to me as a Java developer  but coding it was painful in the extreme  Glimmer makes the process a lot more straightforward by emphasizing convention over configuration  and by valuing DRYness and all the other normal Ruby goodness   Another neat option is SproutCore  a Javascript-based GUI toolkit with Ruby bindings developed by Apple  At least  the demos for it look great  and otherinbox built a pretty slick looking application on top of it  Personally  I ve spent quite a few hours trying to get it running on two systems -- one Windows and one Linux -- and haven t succeeded on either one -- I keep running into dependency issues with Merb or other pieces of the SproutCore stack  But it s intriguing enough that I ll go back after a few weeks and try again  hoping that the issues get resolved in that time

User · Answer

wxWidgets is worth checking out  It is well supported on Ruby via wxRuby  For an example app  have a look at wxRIDE  See it compared to other toolkits  You might also want to check out Anvil  which is a sort of Rails-ish framework for working with wx  It looks moribund now  though

User · Answer

If you re looking for a cross-platform GUI  then I d highly recommend going with JRuby and Swing   Also  take a look at the monkeybars library  which is a Ruby library for building MVC applications using JRuby and Swing  where you can also use the excellent Netbeans IDE to visually build your GUI

User · Answer

Use the browser as GUI using Watir like in this question and answer   use browser as GUI in Ruby

[ruby] What's the best/easiest GUI Library for Ruby?

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