Chapter 1: A Brief History of GUI Toolkits and Cross-Platform Development
This book is aimed at exploring how to easily build robust and beautiful graphical applications that will work well across all operating systems and devices. Before we start looking at the details of how this is accomplished, it is important to consider the history of these devices and the landscape of graphical toolkits throughout the last 50 years. We start with a reminder of where GUI-based applications started and how far they have come.
In this chapter, you will be reintroduced to the Graphical User Interface (GUI), along with learning about toolkits that support app development and how they offer different approaches to cross-platform development. We will explore the benefits of coding a native GUI for responsive user experience and platform integration. Upon completion of this chapter, you should be familiar with the origins and challenges of graphical toolkits and the different approaches that have been taken during this journey.
In this chapter, we'll cover the following topics to provide a short history of GUI toolkits and cross-platform development:
- Where GUI toolkits came from
- How they have adapted (or stayed the same) over time
- Historical approaches to cross-platform development
