1 Announcing wxWindows 2.3.3: a cross-platform GUI toolkit
2 ----------------------------------------------------------------
4 September 16th, 2002 -- the wxWindows team is pleased to
5 announce the release of a development snapshot of the mature
6 cross-platform C++ application framework.
8 The following platforms are supported:
10 - Windows 95/98/ME, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP
11 - Unix with GTK+ 1.x and 2.0
13 - Unix with Motif/Lesstif
15 - MacOS 8.6, 9.x and 10.x
18 To get wxWindows, go to the Download page at:
20 http://www.wxwindows.org
22 This is likely to be the last development snapshot in the
23 2.3.x series, before the release of the stable 2.4.x series.
27 wxWindows is a comprehensive open-source, multi-platform C++
28 GUI framework, that can be used to build commercial and free
29 software. It's used by many organisations all over the world,
30 including the company that invented the GUI.
32 For most ports, wxWindows adopts the native look and feel of
33 each platform since it uses the native widget sets. There is also
34 a generic widget set, used for the wxX11 port - no other widget set
35 is required, giving the potential for embedded use.
37 An extraordinary range of classes is provided - but don't be put
38 off by this because most people find wxWindows easier to learn
39 and use than MFC and other frameworks.
41 As well as comprehensive support for the usual widgets, advanced
42 features include: HTML viewing/printing, wxImage class providing
43 handlers for eading and writing many image types, resizeable panels
44 and dialogs on all platforms, document/view, OpenGL support,
45 HTML-based and context-sensitive help, wizards, drag and drop,
46 a grid class, ODBC support, threads, sockets, container classes,
47 and much more. An 1800-page reference manual is provided in HTML,
48 MS HTML Help, WinHelp, wxWindows Help and PDF, and there are over
51 If you're an MFC user, you'll find many wxWindows concepts
52 reassuringly familiar, while often clearer and more consistent.
53 If you're not, you should still find it intuitive from the start.
55 wxWindows bindings for several other languages are available,
56 including Python, Perl, Basic, Lua, JavaScript and Eiffel.
58 If you're considering wxWindows, do check out some of these links:
60 http://www.wxwindows.org/feedback.htm ; Comments from users
61 http://www.wxwindows.org/screensh.htm ; Screenshots
62 http://www.wxwindows.org/users.htm ; A list of some of our
67 Julian Smart and the wxWindows team
71 A small selection of the comments from the Feedback page:
73 "wxWindows 2.xx has been an absolute dream; putting together a
74 nice interface has been quite easy, and I'm especially pleased
75 that I can do most of our development on *nix with confidence
76 that only minor issues will have to get cleaned up when we build
79 "I use wxWindows as a GUI Toolkit for Python. Its stability,
80 flexibility and speed are the base of industrial strength
81 cross-platform GUI application design with interpreted languages
82 like Python. Porting is child's play. Thanks for this great
85 "Excellent, stable and intuitive API. Very straightforward to
86 learn and easy to port Java, X11 and Win32 code to."
88 "Thanks heaps for the best piece of software I've ever come
91 "I chose wxWindows for a very much Windows-only application
92 because of the simplicity of the API compared to MFC and Win32
93 GDI programming. Aside from some minor mistakes in the manual
94 which confused me for a while, wxWin has been really easy to use
95 and increased my productivity immensely compared to using
98 "wxWindows is a great product. One of its best features, IMHO,
99 are all the language bindings. It's very easy to prototype your
100 app in wxPython, then convert to a C/C++ app later."
102 "Porting to wxWindows is easy - I recently ported an MFC project
103 at work to wxGTK on Solaris, and changing all the MFC calls to
104 wxWindows calls only took a couple of hours for a 2 man-month
105 project... I've never had an easier porting experience.
106 wxWindows was intentially built to work like MFC to make it easy
107 to port, and they most certainly succeeded, with the notable
108 exception of OLE support. I ported a several man month project
109 in a day or two, and none of it was hard or confusing, it just
110 amounted to looking up the equivalent functions in the help. I
111 could do the conversion much faster now because I wouldn't have
112 to keep glancing at the web page."
114 "I'd like to take the opportunity and say a big thank you to all
115 the wxWin developers and contributors. wxWindows is the best
116 piece of software I have been using so far, and I can't believe
117 that I haven't discovered it earlier. I never thought that
118 cross-platform development could be so easy and simply cool.
121 "Just wanted to commend you on wxWindows. As I'm reading the
122 code samples (the checklistbox right now), I'm realizing that
123 this is so intuitive and so Java-like in some parts of it,
124 especially with the way the layout works... Very good work and
127 "I have used wxWindows in the past very successfully on multiple
128 projects, and think it's the bee's knees. Thanks for everything!"
130 "Well, I'm using wxWindows since 2 days and I'm already in love
131 with it :) The sizers saved me from writing a complete layout
132 solution myself. Great work! You guys rock!"
134 "wxWindows is jaw dropping amazing. Community support from the
135 mailing list is extraordinary. Are you sure this is free?"
137 "I love wxWindows. I can program 10 times faster than with MFC,
138 and almost everything works the first time. And unlike MFC,
139 there are (useful) examples and documentation. Thanks to you
140 guys who did all the work to develop this framework. Big kudos."
142 "ImageLinks now uses the Open Source version of wxWindows for
143 all its current GUI development. Doing this ensures that
144 everything interfaces cleanly and also makes it easier in the
145 long run to add other GUIs along the way because ImageLinks has
146 access to all the source code."