What is GUI programming?

By the late eighties and early nineties, computers began to go mainstream. Instead of being used only by big corporations and laboratories, they began to be used by small offices, home offices, students, libraries and independent workers.

Apple introduced the idea of “computers for the rest of us”, with a GUI, or graphical user interface. Even when some computers came with a graphical interface, most people, especially those using IBM-compatible PCs, worked in the DOS operating system.

DOS had a command prompt. You had to type every command. For example, to launch a word processor like WordStar (which was hugely popular in the eighties), you typed its program name at the prompt and pressed Enter.

This is completely alien to anyone used to clicking or tapping icons. What does a graphical user interface really mean? You don’t give it a second thought these days, because everything comes with a GUI.

A GUI lets you interact with software or a device using icons, a cursor and touch, without typing commands. Before the GUI, you needed to learn dozens of commands to use a computer properly. Every task had its own command.

With visual interfaces, users became familiar with the WYSIWYG concept: “what you see is what you get”. To print a document, you simply clicked the print icon.

To launch MS Word, you clicked the Word icon. Interestingly, the first GUI was developed by neither Apple nor Microsoft. It was Xerox, the photocopier company.

In the seventies, Xerox PARC was working on a graphical user interface for office computing. Steve Jobs visited Xerox PARC and saw an interface on a monitor controlled by a small device on the desk with 3 buttons (a mouse).

He came back and applied the idea to one of the first GUI computers, the Lisa. It was very expensive and few people bought it, but it triggered a revolution. In 1984, Apple introduced the Macintosh, and the rest is history.

Microsoft followed in its footsteps and developed the Windows operating system.

The importance of a GUI for desktop applications

What is the purpose of a GUI? Designing and developing the graphical user interface is an integral part of software development in every organization. The GUI is constantly tested to see whether it helps or hinders interaction with the software.

The size and color of buttons, the width of borders and even the font can affect whether the user base grows or shrinks. The purpose of a GUI is to make software easier to use.

When you install software, you are less interested in its nitty-gritty and more interested in solving the problem at hand. Your goal isn’t to learn Adobe Photoshop; it’s to create great visuals and graphics.

You don’t learn PowerPoint for its own sake; you want slides that help you sell more or make your point convincingly. Every application exists to provide a solution.

A graphical user interface, as the name tells you, is the interface that lets the user make the most of your digital product. The days when a GUI was a novelty are long gone.

Every application today is driven by a graphical interface. What matters now is how rewarding and engaging the interaction is. Most Windows applications use the operating system’s default look and feel.

For example, MS Word has its own icons, but it works much like other Windows applications.

The basic functions are the same. In the top-left corner there is a File menu, which lets you create a new file, open an existing one and do everything else you’d expect from a File menu.

Almost every application has a context menu on right-click. Every Windows application lets you print by pressing Ctrl+P or clicking the small printer icon.

Still, every software developer aims to create a unique experience through a unique GUI. In a desktop application, the GUI isn’t just a collection of fancy icons and window borders.

It is the user’s doorway to everything your software can do. Every icon must serve a purpose. A GUI can make it easy or difficult for people to use your product.

The importance of a GUI for mobile apps

Screen real estate on a phone is limited. Even so, there must be enough space around icons and buttons for them to be easily tappable and noticeable among the other elements on screen.

Mobile apps, like desktop apps, run under their operating systems (iOS and Android, for example), but their GUIs tend to be more distinctive than their desktop counterparts.

Many people use an app simply because its interface is appealing and it feels good to use. Another big difference is that most mobile apps are for entertainment and social networking, and many work-related apps are companions to desktop software.

So GUI programming is an integral part of mobile app development. Many mobile developers are moving towards minimalist designs, and the same trend shows up in desktop and web applications.

This is both necessary and user-friendly. Phones come in different screen sizes, and your app needs to work and scale across nearly all of them.

So your GUI must look good on every screen size and present all the necessary elements within the phone’s window. People now use their phones less for calls and more for apps such as the camera, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, WhatsApp and Facebook.

In theory, making calls is still a main reason people carry phones, but unless they have work obligations, most of their phone time is spent in apps.

Mobile apps are downloaded hundreds of billions of times a year. Big numbers hide important insights: even small oversights in your GUI can have a big impact on user acquisition.

A mobile GUI has 2 aspects: user interface and user experience. The interface makes interaction with the app seamless, while the experience makes sure people enjoy using it.

The 3D feel of buttons, small vibrations when you tap them and subtle animations can have a big impact on the user experience. Fortunately, today’s phone processors are powerful enough to handle complex, fast animations.

A good mobile GUI serves several purposes. It engages and captivates users. It encourages them to use your app. It saves them time. It strengthens your brand. Most importantly, it retains your users.

Programming languages used for GUI programming

GUI programming is also called “event-driven programming” because events triggered by the user run parts of the program. What happens when you click a button?

What happens when you type in MS Word? What happens when you right-click a drive in Windows Explorer and choose “Eject”? These are all events meant to trigger something.

Every major language today has GUI libraries. Even Java, which isn’t known for its GUI capabilities, has its own graphics toolkits, and you can usually tell when you are using a Java desktop app.

Java GUI programming is mostly done with Swing or the newer JavaFX. On the desktop, .NET languages such as C# and VB.NET are very common for GUI work.

C++, with libraries such as MFC and Qt, has comprehensive capabilities for GUI development. Each option has its own pros and cons. Let’s go through the languages you can use to build graphical user interfaces.

Java GUI

Java was not originally known as GUI-friendly, but it became a solid choice for the job. One of its biggest advantages is that it is cross-platform, so a Java GUI looks and feels the same on every operating system.

As mentioned above, Swing is Java’s best-known GUI toolkit. IDEs like Eclipse and NetBeans include tools for building GUIs. Java also has libraries for rendering 2D and 3D graphics.

The main drawback of Java is speed. It can be slow with complex graphics.

C & C++ GUI

Many programmers prefer C and C++ for the best graphics performance. A big reason is that the programs are compiled and optimized for the native architecture.

C++ is a powerful language with hundreds of libraries for creating graphics, so you can build a complete graphical environment. Well-known GUI libraries include MFC and Qt.

How efficiently you can do GUI programming in C and C++ also depends on your development environment.

GUI programming in Python

Python is also well known for its GUI capabilities. The most widely used toolkit is Tkinter, which is traditionally bundled with Python, according to the official Python wiki.

Another option is PyGObject for GTK 3, which gives you all the GTK objects, such as windows, buttons and widgets, and rendering options.

If you prefer wxPython, you can use the wxWidgets cross-platform GUI library, which is written in C++ but available in Python.

VB.NET and C# GUI programming

If you use Visual Studio to build Windows applications, you’ll find GUI programming in VB.NET and C# appealing, and among the easiest options. Visual Studio lets you design screens as “forms” visually.

You can build entire applications with a drag-and-drop interface. The main limitation is that these applications are traditionally not cross-platform. What about mobile apps? There are many visual tools for building mobile apps quickly.

You can combine GUI design and back-end logic in a drag-and-drop interface. There are many low-code and no-code platforms; Salesforce Lightning, for example, lets you build mobile apps visually.

Most icons and visual elements are included, and you can add custom ones through the Salesforce Mobile SDK. Microsoft also has its own app builder for creating GUI solutions.

Microsoft Power Apps, for example, lets you build cross-platform apps that run on iOS, Android, Windows and the web. Looking for an Apple environment?

You can try Appery.io, an editor for building iOS apps. You can combine jQuery Mobile, Ionic, AngularJS, HTML5 and Bootstrap components to build responsive web apps, hybrid apps, iOS apps and even Android apps.

The objectives of GUI programming

One of the top objectives of GUI programming is to make a desktop application or mobile app easy and rewarding to use. Everything the user needs must be visible and quick to reach.

It must also look appealing enough to stand out. A GUI should offer an attractive visual representation of all the commands and functions in your software.

These representations take the form of menus, pointers, windows and screens, tabs and icons, also called the structural elements of a GUI. Artificial intelligence is bringing interesting developments to GUI programming.

In many applications, and even some mobile apps, buttons and icons you don’t use start to recede, while the ones you use more become prominent, even if they were hidden before.

Through GUI programming, you can make your interface adapt to each user’s usage patterns. GUI features must be easy for beginners and accessible to advanced users.

As GUI programming becomes more important across desktop apps, mobile apps and IoT devices, mastering the skills to create intuitive interfaces can be a challenge.

Whether you’re building a C++ desktop application or a Python interface, it’s essential to understand the nuances of GUI programming.

For students working on these assignments, extra resources and guidance can help a lot. If you’re stuck on a complex project, you can get a reference solution with a written explanation when you do my programming homework with us, and focus on improving your skills.

After a few days of use, the most frequently used features should become prominent, and the rarely used ones should move further back in the hierarchy.

For your software or app to succeed, your GUI must hook new users, encourage them to keep using it, and stop existing users from moving to competitors.

GUI programming best practices

Before you start GUI programming, make sure you understand the whole user experience. What do your users expect? Your interface should evolve based on the data users enter and the data other users generate.

Does your GUI take advantage of the device’s native hardware, and does it compensate for features your app needs that the hardware lacks? And GUIs aren’t limited to desktops, laptops and phones.

With the Internet of Things evolving fast, many devices come with their own GUI. A smartwatch’s GUI must behave according to the size of the watch.

Similarly, a washing machine’s control screen will have a very different GUI from a tablet. When building an application, the GUI team must work closely with the other developers.

Teams can’t work in silos. Designers must know what data the back-end developers plan to show through the interface, and back-end developers must know how their data will be displayed.

That synergy is what produces a great GUI. The design must also be consistent. Once someone has used your app for a couple of weeks, its look and feel matters less than the value it delivers.

If you keep changing the look and feel of your app from screen to screen, users get distracted. Instead of focusing on the value your app delivers, they focus on the elements, and eventually lose interest in your mobile app (or desktop application).

However beautiful you want your interface to be, remember that it is simply the gateway to what your product delivers, and that value is the ultimate goal. Avoid presenting too much information on a single screen.

This matters even more on mobile, where people are often distracted. Make good use of the space around elements, often called “white space”. Use color and texture strategically.

Use typography to create a hierarchy in your messaging.

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