Summary

In this chapter, we have learned why using a second thread within a GUI application can be beneficial. We have seen that large tasks can make the GUI look as if it has stopped responding, which can confuse users. After introducing a separate thread, we then eliminated this problem and made the application behave as a user would likely expect.

Using our new knowledge of threads, we then improved our chat application by allowing it to pull in new messages in the background, without disabling the GUI itself while doing so.

Afterwards, we increased the quality of our application by allowing the user to choose their own avatars. We learned how we can use the PIL module to resize and save images, removing any restrictions on the user in terms of choosing the correct avatar size, or the application developer in terms of accommodating any huge images the user may wish to use.

Finally, to improve the social aspect of our application, we added the ability for the user to choose which friends...