What is the best way to make a simple cross platform GUI in C++? [closed]

Answer 1

I would recommend wxWidgets. It's crossplatform and works with Visual C++.

There's also Qt (see Colins post) which is what KDE (Linux desktop manager) uses. It has a more restrictive license though.

Answer 2

Since the user interface is so simple, I would advise you to start in Windows with Visual Studio, and keep all the user interface stuff in separate files, decoupling it completely from the rest of your application.

Then, on OS X, you'll get the best visual results by creating a Cocoa application and writing the user interface in Objective C in combination with Interface Builder. You can then easily hook up the interface with your internal C++ code. (The Objective C compiler understands C++ code in the same file as the Objective C code.)

This will let you produce a cross-platform application that looks just right on both Windows and OS X, something that QT or other cross-platform kits will likely never completely achieve.

Answer 3

Gtkmm is C++ and is proved to work in linux and windows with Visual Studio.

Answer 4

Use Qt4. http://qt-project.org/

This is a self containing framework which contains developers tools, GUI builders, String/IO/XML/Thread classes, Audio/Video controls, HTML widgets and many, many more features. It's built to be completely multi-platform, one code for all systems.

In contrary to wxWidgets, it feels more object-oriented, and has by far better documentation and its better maintained.

See it online: http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-4.8/

EDIT- 6 years since the original Answer. I should point to Qt5 - http://www.qt.io/

Answer 5

I'd suggest you look at the Qt toolkit. It contains cross-platform UI elements. It is possible to use this with VS2008.

Answer 6

1. GTK+
2. QT
3. wxWidgets

If you're asking about .NET then (assuming that's what Visual C++ 2008 is) then both Linux and Mac OS X users can run .NET applications with Mono.