Foundations_of_GTK_Development

One of the most important aspects of an application is the interface that is provided to<br>interact with the user. With the unprecedented popularity of computers in society today,<br>people have come to expect those user interfaces to be graphical, and the question of which<br>graphical toolkit to use quickly arises for any developer. For many, the cross-platform, featurerich<br>GTK+ library is the obvious choice.<br>Learning GTK+ can be a daunting task, because many features lack documentation, and<br>even more are difficult to understand from only the API documentation. Foundations of GTK+<br>Development aims to decrease the learning curve and set you on your way to creating crossplatform<br>graphical user interfaces for your applications.<br>Each chapter in this book contains multiple examples that will help you further your<br>understanding. In addition to these examples, the final chapter of this book provides five<br>complete applications that incorporate topics from the previous chapters. These applications<br>will show you how to bring together what you have learned to accomplish various projects.<br>The beginning of each chapter provides an overview of what that chapter will cover, so that<br>you are able to skip around if you want. Most chapters also contain exercises to test your understanding<br>of the material. I recommend that you complete all of the exercises before continuing,<br>because the best way to learn GTK+ is to use it.<br>At the end of this book, you will find multiple appendixes that can serve as references for<br>various aspects of GTK+. These appendixes include tables listing signals, styles, and properties<br>for every widget in GTK+ and a complete list of stock items and GError types. These appendixes<br>will remain a useful reference even after you have finished reading the book and begin creating<br>your own applications. In addition, Appendix F contains explanations of the solutions to all of<br>the exercises throughout the book.