A GUI toolkit is a set of widgets for use in designing applications with graphical user interfaces (GUIs). Each widget facilitates a specific user-computer interaction, and appears as a visible part of the computer's GUI. We readily make uses of GUI toolkits to make development simpler and support our applications on multiple platforms.

In addition to widgets there are entire platforms built on top of GUI toolkits that further cut down on the amount of effort which must be expended in developing an application. Eclipse RCP is an example of such a platform.

Toolkits

We support the following toolkits in the development of desktop applications:

• GTK+ — GTK+ is a highly usable, feature rich toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces which boasts cross platform compatibility and an easy to use API.
• QT -- QT is older than GTK+, until recently it was very expensive to develop commercial applications with QT, however this has recently changed. QT has bindings for almost any language out there and is used by companies like Google in developing applications.
• Swing Toolkit (Java only) — Swing is a widget toolkit for Java. Swing is an API for providing a graphical user interface (GUI) for Java programs.
• SWT (Standard Widget Toolkit) — SWT is a graphical widget toolkit for use with the Java platform. It was originally developed by IBM and is now maintained by the Eclipse Foundation in tandem with the Eclipse IDE. It is an alternative to the AWT and Swing Java GUI toolkits provided by Sun Microsystems as part of the Java Platform, Standard Edition.

Platforms

• Eclipse RCP — The Eclipse platform is designed to serve as an open tools platform, it is architected so that its components could be used to build just about any client application.