Guides & Tutorials

Getting Started

Main article: Getting Started with wxWidgets

People who are completely new to wxWidgets would normally follow the steps illustrated below. See the main article for more details.

Installing wxWidgets and Setting up Your IDE

For an overview of IDEs that have been reported to work with wxWidgets, see the list of IDEs.

Your main guide for compiling wxWidgets should be the installation instructions : Look in <code-base-dir>/docs/.

This section needs a lot of cleanup and reorganization. If there's anyone that can merge same IDE/Compiler version guides (there's duplicates of a few) if you work on that platform/version, any help would be appreciated.

Windows Pre-built binaries from wxPack Building wxWidgets with MinGW and using it in CodeLite the official readme from the wx source tree Compiling wxWidgets with MinGW Digital Mars C Eclipse CDT Microsoft Visual C++ MSYS & MinGW Watcom supporting x64 and Win32 within one solution - for VS2005 Integrate MSDN Library And WxWidgets Help Files Compiling WxWidgets on Windows Compiling using Netbeans Outdated/legacy : Code::Blocks (wxWidgets 2.6) Dev-C++ (wxWidgets 2.5) Compiling using MS VC++ (wxWidgets 2.4-2.6, VisualC++ 6) Compiling Applications in Visual C++ (wxWidgets 2.3+, VC++ 5/6) Borland C++ Builder (also BuilderX and Turbo C++)		Mac OS Installing wxMac : Compiling wxWidgets using the command-line (Terminal) Compiling wxWidgets with Xcode Using wxMac : Creating Xcode projects for wxWidgets applications Creating CDT projects for wxWidgets applications How to build Win32 wxWidgets application under Leopard WxMac-specific topics Legacy or Outdated Mac Articles
Linux Installing wxWidgets : Compiling and getting started Screencast showing how to build wxWidgets in Ubuntu Linux Installing and configuring under Ubuntu Installing and configuring under Gentoo Using wx from your favorite IDE : Anjuta Code::Blocks KDevelop (and Kdevelop Settings) Netbeans A binary package for all distributions : Linking With Gtk And Running On Any Linux Cross-compilation : Cross-Compiling Under Linux Install The Mingw Cross-Compiler		Other Emacs

The following guides involve multiple platforms or compilers, they need to be split up and merged into one of the above guides.

• Compiler Issues

wxWidget Design Patterns

• Sharing info between dialogs - more a C++ issue than a wx one, but comes up very often on the forum so at least we have a place to point people to...
• Events - Notes on using events in wxWidgets
• KeyCodes - wxWidgets keyboard mapping
• Subclassing WxControl - A simple example on how to subclass existing controls
• wxSizer - Lots of helpful tips on sizers here
• RTTI - The black art of wxWidgets RTTI (Runtime Type Information)
• Multiple Inheritance - The black art of using multiple inheritance in wxWidgets
• Wilcox:Subclassing Top Level Windows - Best Practices when subclassing wxFrame and the like
• Using XML With WxWidgets - XML processing with wxWidgets

Miscellaneous Guides

wxWiki Guides

DCs (Drawing, rendering, printing)

• Drawing on a panel with a DC
• An image panel
• Scrolling
• Making a render loop
• Printing
• Painting your custom control
• Mixing wxWidgets with Cairo (under construction)

Text, languages, strings

• Converting everything to and from wxString
• Unicode - Unicode support in wxWidgets
• Internationalization - support for internationalization
• Reading text from a file and also writing

Libraries

• Creating A DLL Of An Application
• Using DLL Version Of WxWidgets Compiled With Open Watcom
• Programs That Support Plugins - Using DLLs

Resources and images

• Resource Files - Using wxWidgets resource files (also known as XRC).
• Embedding PNG Images - Including PNG image files into executables.
• Using wxImage to load textures for OpenGL

Executables, binaries, installers and distribution

• Installers - Distributing your application on all platforms.
• Distributing WxWidgets Applications
• Reducing Executable Size - some tips

Internet and networking

• Launching The Default Browser - kinda tricky prior to wx 2.6
• Calling The Default Browser In WxHtmlWindow - How to call the external browser on Internet URLs
• Getting IP Address Of Host
• Download a file from internet

Documentation

• WxWidgets Source Oddities - About wxT(), __GNUG__, WXUNUSED(), etc..
• Undocumented Parts Of WxWidgets
• Updating to the Latest Version of wxWidgets - Additional user notes about upgrading wxWidgets between new major and minor versions (ie: 2.6 to 2.8) not found in docs/changes.txt.

Events, threads, flow

• WxBase Eventloop - implementing an event loop and timers in wxBase
• Inter-Thread and Inter-Process communication
• Catching key events globally
• Dragging a wxWindow around

Uncategorized

• Command-Line Arguments
• Debugging A WxWindow Application - Using __WXDEBUG__, for example.
• Avoiding Memory Leaks - Partly general C++ programming tips, but also some information on wxWidgets' automatic memory management that's interesting for experienced C++-programmers.
• Namespaces - How to derive from wxWidgets classes and use a namespace
• Using Text Templates - example for combining wxHashMap, wxVariant to make text templates, especially embedding wxImage in a wxHTML page.
• ODBC - howto work with it under wxWidgets
• Wx In Non-Wx Applications
• Wx Patching - How to submit a patch in 3 steps
• WxMac_BadgeLabels - wxMac specific: How to display a badge label at the dock icon

External Guides

• wxBasic utilities - Describes how to build your complete IDE for writing Windows/Linux applications using the freeware ConTEXT text editor and the wxBasic binding. Contains English and Italian tutorials.
• Obtaining the path of the application - Not the current working directory, scroll down to 'Tips for finding the application path'.
• Doc & View in wxWidgets - contains a tutorial on document / view architecture.
• Sizers in wxWidgets - contains a guide to sizers.
• Program Phase 1-16 - implements Program Phase Task 1 using C++ and wxWidgets on the Linux and Windows platforms.

Tutorials

• Understanding Sizers

• Writing Your First Application
  • wxTutorial by Franky Braem
    • Hello World
    • Using WxFrame
      • Creating A Frame
      • The Frame Constructor
      • Adding A Control
      • Adding A Menubar
      • Adding A Statusbar
      • Processing Menu Events
  • MadMonky1's Tutorial
    • Writing Your First Application-Introduction
    • Writing Your First Application-Adding A Button
    • Writing Your First Application-Using The WxTextCtrl
    • Writing Your First Application-Common Dialogs
    • Writing Your First Application-Closing Remarks
  • Programming with wxWindows (by David Beech)
    • Beech:First steps
    • Beech:Using controls
    • Beech:Using events
    • Beech:Using common dialogs
    • Beech:Using custom dialogs
    • Beech:Using custom dialogs with sizers
    • Beech:Creating other frames
• Building wxMGL Port
• Compiling A WxWidgets Application
• Compiling Using MSVC On The Commandline
• wxBasic Tutorial
  • WxBasic Implementation
  • WxBasic Tutorial
  • WxColourDialog-WxBasic
  • WxFontDialog-WxBasic
  • WxPrintDialog-WxBasic
  • WxTextEntryDialog-WxBasic
• wxMS_developers Tutorials and Demos
• Minimal wxFrame App using wx-DevC++
• Extended wxFrame App using wx-DevC++
• OpenGL application using wx-DevC++
• Screencast for creating simple Dialog using wxForms
• Screencast for creating Hello World using wxForms for Delphi