After three years of development, the cross-platform toolkit wxWidgets 3.3.0 has been released, allowing the creation of graphical interfaces for Linux, Windows, macOS, UNIX-like systems, and mobile platforms. The toolkit is written in C++ and is distributed under the wxWindows Library License, which is approved by the Free Software Foundation and the OSI. The license is based on LGPL and allows setting custom terms for the distribution of derivative works in binary form.
In addition to C++ support, wxWidgets provides bindings for most popular programming languages, including PHP, Python, Perl, Haskell, and Ruby. Interfaces in applications using wxWidgets have a native look and feel for the target system, thanks to the use of system APIs rather than GUI emulation.
wxWidgets 3.3.0 is positioned as a branch for developers, where new features are being developed for the next stable release 3.4.0. However, the wxWidgets 3.3.0 branch is marked as suitable for use in production projects — the difference from stable branches is that in intermediate releases of developer branches, changes to ABI and API that break compatibility may be made. Any breaking changes are singular and overall, branch 3.3 is almost entirely compatible with wxWidgets 3.2 at the API level.
Key innovations:
- A new wxWebView backend based on the Chromium engine has been implemented, allowing the embedding of functions for handling and displaying web content in applications.
- Support for WebP image format has been added to the wxImage class.
- The wxMSW port, which provides Windows-specific features and controls, now includes experimental support for dark mode, working starting from Windows 10. Support for Windows XP and Vista has been discontinued. By default, double buffering output mode is enabled, as in wxGTK ports with Wayland and wxOSX.
- The wxAUI library now includes the ability to pin tab positions and create multi-row tabs.
- An option for the wxWebRequest class has been added to handle requests in synchronous (blocking) mode.
- An API for low-level processing of events from touch screens and touchpads has been added.
- The wxGrid class has implemented features for people with disabilities.
- For UNIX-like systems, wxEVT_POWER_XXX events have been implemented to monitor power consumption status.
- The wxGTK port now utilizes native file dialog operations whenever possible.
- The wxTextCtrl class, which creates elements for displaying and editing text, now supports formatted text (RTF).
- Animation and cursor support have been added for high DPI screens.
- Support for building with new compilers gcc 15, clang 19, and Xcode 16 has been added.
- On UNIX-like systems, the configuration files for applications are now placed in the directory ~/.config/appname.conf instead of ~/.appname, retaining the loading of existing configuration files.
- The wxMotif and wxGTK1 ports have been removed.
- The ability to build without Unicode support (wxUSE_UNICODE=0) has been removed.
Source: opennet.ru
