Improving the Tk Toolkit on OS X
The Tk toolkit, accessed from scripting languages such as Tcl and Python, is the foundation of the programs that Code by Kevin develops. As part of our work, we have developed extensive knowledge about how to develop Tk programs to provide the best possible user experience on the Mac; cross-platform toolkits, by their nature, tend to take a "common-denominator" approach to the user experience, trying to fit in reasonably well on each platform but not optimizing for a specific platform's interface guidelines. If you are doing single-platform commercial development, as we do, it is especially imporant to optimize as much as possible for that platform, because users have many choices in making software purchases.
Because we have gained so much from the resources provided by the open-source Tk toolkit and its developer community, we want to give back to that community and share both our knowledge and key components of our code. Both the documentation and code are freely available; see the appropriate pages for applicable licensing information. Here are the links:
To demonstrate the value of the knowldge contained documentation and code libraries offered here, we offer "before" and "after" screenshots of one of our best-selling Mac applications, PortAuthority:
PortAuthority before...
...and after.
Text ©2009 WordTech Communications, LLC. See Credits for other acknowledgments.
