browsergui 0.4

A GUI toolkit targeting browsers

What is this?
-------------
It's a GUI framework prioritizing portability, simplicity, and a Pythonic feel.

If you want to build a simple GUI for a simple task, I recommend this package whole-heartedly. I don't think this is just pride in my own work -- I'm pretty sure that this package *actually is* very easy to learn, and very good for simple things.

If you want to build a video game, or a nice, fluid 3D visualization, this is easily the worst GUI framework I have ever seen.

- [Why is it good?](#why-is-it-good)
- [Why is it bad?](#why-is-it-bad)
- [What are the alternatives?](#what-are-the-alternatives)
- [How do I install it?](#how-do-i-install-it)
- [How do I learn to use it?](#how-do-i-learn-to-use-it)


Why is it good?
---------------

This package prioritizes ease of use, portability, and good documentation above all else. The following statements will remain true as long as I have breath left in my body:

- **It feels like Python.** It uses HTML/CSS/JS under the hood, but that fact is carefully hidden under nice object-oriented abstractions. Contrast with [Tkinter][tkinter], which feels like Tk, because it is.
- **It has a shallow learning curve.** "Hello World" is `GUI(Text("Hello world!")).run()`. Minesweeper, including the game logic, is [less than 100 lines of code][minesweeper-code] and [looks like this][minesweeper-screenshot].
- **It's super-portable.** `pip install browsergui && python -m browsergui.examples` has worked, with no snags, on every system I've tried (OS X, Debian, and Ubuntu, with both Python 2.7 and a few Python 3.Xs). Seriously, you could run that right now and it would work, without a single abstruse error messages about your Qt/wx/PyObjC installation. At the risk of tooting my own horn, I've never seen another GUI library so easy to install.
- **It's well-documented.** There's a [wiki][wiki] to teach you how to use it. There are [examples](#how-do-I-learn-to-use-it). There's a [reference manual][docs]. There's a [runnable demo for every predefined kind of element][tour-screenshot]. I've spent more time documenting than I've spent writing actual code.

Why is it bad?
--------------

- **It's slow.** It does not even try to be high-performance. There's an HTTP request every time the user interacts with the GUI, and again every time the view is updated. Performance is off the table. (It's not *frustratingly* slow -- you can drag a slider and see the value update with no perceptible delay -- but it's not good for fancy stuff.)
- **It's not super-easy to make super-pretty things.** I just haven't prioritized styling: any styling you want to do, you have to do through CSS. I'm not sure `element.css['color'] = 'red'` is so much worse than `widget.config(foreground="#f00")`, but it *does* feel like a thin wrapper over CSS (because it is), which is gross.

How do I install it?
--------------------

If you use pip, `pip install browsergui`.

If you use easy_install, `easy_install browsergui`.

If you don't like package managers, just unzip [this][download-zip] and put the `browsergui` folder anywhere on your Python path.

Once it's installed, I recommend running `python -m browsergui.examples` to see a catalog of all the kinds of building blocks available to you, or checking out [the wiki][wiki] for tutorial-type stuff.


How do I learn to use it?
-------------------------

[The wiki][wiki] has several tutorial-type pages. Or you could just extrapolate from these examples:

- Hello world:

from browsergui import GUI, Text
GUI(Text("Hello world!")).run()

- A number that increments every time you press a button:

from browsergui import GUI, Text, Button

button = Button('0')
@button.def_callback
def increment():
button.text = str(int(button.text)+1)

GUI(button).run()

- A clock:

import time
import threading
from browsergui import Text, GUI

now = Text("")

def update_now_forever():
while True:
now.text = time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")
time.sleep(1)

t = threading.Thread(target=update_now_forever)
t.daemon = True
t.start()

GUI(Text("The time is: "), now).run()

(You can close/reopen the browser window at any time; Ctrl-C will stop the server.)

Each kind of element (`Text`, `Button`, `ColorField`, `Grid`...) also has a simple example showing you how to use it: `python -m browsergui.examples` will display all those examples to you.

What are the alternatives?
--------------------------

I am aware of some GUI toolkits for Python that fill a similar niche. You should consider using these instead:

- [tkinter][tkinter] (standard library)

Advantages: it's in the standard library. It has always worked out of the box for me. If you want maximal portability, this is probably your best bet.

Disadvantages: it feels like a wrapper around Tk, because it is. This gives good performance and detailed control, but writing it feels unintuitive (to me).

- [pyJS][pyjs], another Python package for making GUIs targeting browsers. It works by compiling your Python code into a slug of JavaScript which runs in the browser.

Advantages: pyJS applications are much faster and much easier to deploy (since it doesn't require the user to run Python).

Disadvantages: I had trouble installing it. And like `tkinter`, it's a wrapper, with the same dis/advantages.

There are, of course, many other GUI toolkits. [Here][official-alternatives] is a list of those popular enough to earn the notice of Official Python People. [Here][unofficial-alternatives] is a paralytically long listing of less-notable ones.

[minesweeper-code]: https://github.com/speezepearson/browsergui/blob/master/browsergui/examples/minesweeper.py
[minesweeper-screenshot]: http://i.imgur.com/8Ax04sZ.png
[tour-screenshot]: http://i.imgur.com/AvVVVFd.png
[download-zip]: https://github.com/speezepearson/browsergui/archive/master.zip
[wiki]: https://github.com/speezepearson/browsergui/wiki
[docs]: http://pythonhosted.org/browsergui
[download-zip]: https://github.com/speezepearson/browsergui/archive/master.zip
[tkinter]: https://docs.python.org/3/library/tkinter.html#module-tkinter
[pyjs]: http://pyjs.org
[official-alternatives]: http://docs.python.org/2/library/othergui.html
[unofficial-alternatives]: http://wiki.python.org/moin/GuiProgramming