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Best way to build a cross-platform and custom-skinned application with Python

Features needed:
A framework, allowing me to build tab-based application with custom design (like in Hotot twitter client), keeping the native os window frame.
Compatible with Python.
My application will be running under Win/OsX/Linux/.
No Flash/Flex/AIR.
I also would like to ask if PySide does meet my requirements and is it worse or better than wxPython and Tkinter mentioned already?

Use Tkinter. It works on every platform that Python supports, is relatively easy to program in, looks pretty good on most platforms, and has the features you want. It's also built-in for most versions of Python, so your users (in many cases) will not have to install any external dependencies.
I find that Tkinter looks best on Mac OSX and Windows, and slightly outdated on some Gnome desktops. The most important feature, however, is that the API is extremely clean and easy to use and it is very lightweight. PyQt has a similar feature set, but, in my experience, its performance is significantly degraded when compared to Tkinter.
PySide is Nokia's Qt binding for Python. I'm not aware of what the differences are between it and PyQt. Ultimately, most GUI toolkits for Python are going to be cross platform and support the functionality you need. I suggest Tkinter because I feel it is the easiest and most pleasurable way to program GUI applications in Python.

I am the author of Hotot.
according to your requirements, the key for you to choose a framework is the UI framework should be able to access webview conveniently.
Hotot has several wrappers for different platforms. On Linux, we have both Qt and GTK version, on Windows, we provide a Qt version, on Mac, we have a Cocoa version, and of course we have a Chrome version. In a word, all they can easily access webkit.
PS: XULRunner is another good choice for native appearance.

Additionally to the advices given by other people, I suggest you to use PyQt which is a Python binding to Qt framework. It's widely used, cross-platform and feature-full.

Take a look at wxPython (based on wxWidgets). If you want to make it web-based, look into using Django.

Well, you mentioned PyHotOt, and it says (on its web site) that it uses pywebkitgtk, and PyGTK. PyGTK/PyWebKitGTK exists for windows. Did you check it out? I think OS X would be the weak link on GTK, but maybe it's pretty good too.

Python - Best GUI library for the job?

I've been using WxPython and I've tried Tk, but it seems that, while both are good and I'll likely use them for other projects, neither of those appear to be capable of accomplishing the things that I want for my current project (which is fine, they're good at what they do).
Basically what I'm looking for is something that will allow me to make rich graphical GUIs. My specific goal is a window that will draw bitmap buttons, resize the parent window automatically to fit them, and possibly animate the resize with a slide effect and have the buttons fade in. Also being able to have my own window border style instead of the inbuilt one is important to me.
This particular project will be Windows only, so non-portable libraries are fine in this case, though portable ones would be great too.
If I missed how this can be done in either WxPython or Tk, I'm all ears.

PySide: http://www.pyside.org/
The PySide project provides
LGPL-licensed Python bindings for the
Qt cross-platform application and UI
framework. PySide Qt bindings allow
both free open source and proprietary
software development and ultimately
aim to support all of the platforms as
Qt itself.
The Windows version of PySide is quite new and may be considered as a beta version. PySide is API compatible with PyQt.

How about PyQt?
http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/software/pyqt/intro

Just sharing my opinion: Kivy.
Innovative open-source library. Supports both 2.x and 3.x versions of Python.
Kivy - Open source Python library for rapid development of applications
that make use of innovative user interfaces, such as multi-touch apps.
Kivy is based on OpenGL ES 2 and includes native multi-touch for each platform and Android/iOS. It’s an event-driven framework based around a main loop, and is thus also suitable for game development.

Try Pyglet. Its a library for python that makes using OpenGL very easy. You can draw pretty good 2d interfaces using Quads.

I can't tell you what is best because that is subjective but I can give you another option: PyGTK
PyGTK lets you to easily create programs with a graphical user interface using the Python programming language. The underlying GTK+ library provides all kind of visual elements and utilities for it and, if needed, you can develop full featured applications for the GNOME Desktop.
PyGTK applications are truly multiplatform and they're able to run, unmodified, on Linux, Windows, MacOS X and other platforms.

Does Python have a cross-platform GUI toolkit that uses native widgets?

Python has many GUI toolkits. If I understand correctly, these toolkits typically take on the responsibility of rendering their own widgets (rather than relying on the operating system). This achieves cross-platform support at the cost of having widgets that don't necessarily look, feel and behave exactly like their native counterparts. Does Python have a GUI toolkit that is cross-platform and takes advantage of each system's native widgets?
According to GUI Programming in Python, there are at least two candidates:
Lucid
Unfortunately, this library seems to have disappeared. It's link now redirects to Icy Labs, a company that "designs and distributes components and devices for electronics and robotics development" (???).
PySWT
This is a port of the SWT library for Java (which I am already familiar with). This library doesn't feel like Python (for example, it retains the set* and get* methods that are common in Java). Therefore, I am curious to know if there is a more authoritative library that meets my needs.

Is wxWidgets an option? As far as I know, it integrates with whatever the OS has to offer - win32 on windows, gtk on Linux and, I think, Aqua on OSX.

What about Qt?
And it's attendant wrapper, PyQt?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PyQt
Qt for the most part looks native. I don't think you'll ever find a cross-platform toolkit that is uses native widgets exclusively and still be cross-platform. Those goals are to some extent mutually exclusive.

pyside LGPL bindings for qt. Note there is also PyQt which is GPL or paid for closed source use.

I found Toga recently. Think it's new, still missing a lot of native widgets but is pretty easy to pick up.

CPython vs. Jython vs. IronPython for cross-platform GUI development [closed]

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I'm thinking of making some kind of experimental IDE for digital hardware design. So I can't decide witch platform to choose.
I'm going to have text-editor with syntax highlighting, some vector graphics and lots of tabbed windows.
My goals:
1. to make GUI using as less custom components as possible.
2. to make it as cross-platform as possible
(I know already that CPython and Jython are cross-platform-friendly, but what about IronPython+Mono?)
So - the question is about GUI - what should I choose?

IronPython with Mono is cross platform - to whatever platforms supported by Mono, and for the feature set supported by Mono (which pretty much means Windows Forms is supported fairly well). Other options for GUI toolkits are available, however, which may provide better "cross platform" capabilities, or at least a better feel on non-Windows platforms.
CPython will depend on the GUI suite you choose. Personally, I've found CPython with PyQt to be the most usable, cross platform GUI option from Python. It's very powerful, feature-rich, and works quite well.
Jython will work, but I personally don't like the GUI options as much (this is a 100% personal preference, however).

I'd say that if cross-platform is a goal, forget IronPython. A lot of people hate the dependency hell it causes so it'll be too much work to get it up in running in some OSes/distributions. Jython will suffer this also, albeit to a lesser degree.

Well, Mono does not come with the base of most Linux distributions. It's not a terribly lightweight dependency either, and I think Java is considerably more likely for people to already have. Would you plan on using "Winforms" with Mono? If so, and you don't have experience with Winforms, read about what others have to say :-) The other .NET GUI toolkit is WPF, which unfortunately Mono has no plans to implement.
Jython would be better too, because you can use SWT, which renders native widgets and provides lots of layout possibilities easily. Or you can use Jython with Swing, or whatever else -- even AWT if you love ugliness.
I really like wxPython (which you can use with CPython, which is on most distros by default), because it renders good-looking native widgets in OSX, Windows and Linux (I've only seen the Gnome widgets in person). wxPython is by far the easiest to use GUI toolkit I've used -- even programatically (i.e. layout without Glade or similar). I've also used SWT, which I found quite nice, and Swing, which I personally don't really like the looks of, and Winforms, which was a nightmare to try to do even simple layouts with.
Here's a quick comparison of the existence of the interpreter/language runtime by OS
CPython
Windows - Probably not installed, and you'd have to make a non-python installer install it with your software :-P
Linux - Probably installed (Ubuntu, Gentoo and RedHat all have system tools that are written in Python and run on CPython)
Mac - Preinstalled on OSX
Jython
Windows - Probably installed at some point in my experience, though it doesn't come with
Linux - Probably installed, but more importantly nobody would hate you for depending on it like Mono
Mac - Preinstalled on OSX ("Mac OS X Leopard comes with J2SE 5.0 preinstalled, based on JDK 1.5.0_13_b05" -- Apple's site)
IronPython
Windows - Will probably run fine because I bet most people have at the very least .NET 2.0 if they have a recent version of Windows
Linux - Probably not installed -- the only application with which I've used Mono on Linux was Rasterbator, which worked well but I felt weird putting .NET on Linux
Mac - See above
I would choose a GUI toolkit first, since that will very much impact the user experience and overall difficulty (I would choose wxPython but SWT would be a close second) then consider the above as well maybe as a tiebreaker.

I faced this same question roughly a year ago. After looking at all the alternatives, I ended up with CPython and PyQt. IMO, Qt/PyQt is by far the best choice amongst all of the Python GUI toolkits. After hitting many bugs in wxPython I switched to PyQt and never looked back. Qt/PyQt are much more solid than the wx toolkits in my experience.
I use the exact same code base and build stand alone executables with PyInstaller for Windows and Py2App for the Mac (PyInstaller can be used for Linux as well). Because these builders embed the Python interpreter and all of the dependencies, it takes a lot of the hassle away. The only rub is that you'll need both a Windows and Mac to do the builds. Getting all of the configurations correct can be a pain too, but it's possible and time worth investing.

Take a look at comparable GUI's written in python/jython/ironpython. Look for programs that you like and find out what they use. I guess most if not all will be written in cpython + gtk or cpython + qt. I think all gui toolkits in python are cross platform.

Java is the most portable platform. Jython is written in 100% pure Java. 'Nuff said.
BTW I just switched a CPython/GTK project to Jython (trying to remove as much unmanaged code as possible), the only problem is that Jython is at 2.5 still, which kind of sucks when you're used to 2.6/2.7/3 :)

There are plenty of answers already, but I'd like to add one important thing - regardless of which library you learn, most of the principles will be the same when you move to another library.
I don't know about Qt, but for most graphics programs (in PyGTK or Tkinter) the best thing to do, as far as editing goes, is to use a PIL image (or something similar) to draw on and then draw that image on your canvas widget, otherwise you can lose pixel data if your window gets covered.

You may use Python 2.7 or 3.1 (CPython) with ttk (in Standart Library in 2.7, 3.1), ttk support themes (looks nice and very simple coding)
(1-st screen is text-editor with tabs and syntax highlighting) ttk screenshots

GUI options with python 3.x

I was wondering what options are available for Python 3.x? I know Tkinter is available as well as qt, but what about the other libraries? Any word on when some of them may be ported over to 3.x?

Several recent versions of PyQt support Python 3 (I'm pointing to the PyPi entry, which is for PyQt 4.6, but there's also a more recent PyQt 4.7). I haven't personally tried out PyQt with Python 3, but PyQt's long been an excellent GUI toolkit so I have no reason to doubt the claim.

I have heard really good things about WxWidgets or wxpython but cant find any word when its going to be compatible. I always liked QT.

As you can read in the newsgroups of wxPython, people ary trying to port it to Python 3.x but it will take a while.
There are also plans to port PyGTK (see the bug report).
In any case, these ports will take (at least) months, I guess, so you should stick with PyQT or tkinter for the time being. Or with Python 2.6.

I use exclusively Tkinter, and though it's somewhat limited in terms of images, it's remarkably easy to work with and follows the standard easy-to-read Python syntax very nicely. I'm not familiar with other GUI options, but Tkinter is great from my experience.