Using the ttk (tk 8.5) Notebook widget effectively (scrolling of tabs)

Question

I'm working on a project using Tkinter and Python. In order to have native theming and to take advantage of the new widgets I'm using ttk in Python 2.6. My problem is how to allow the user to scroll through the tabs in the notebook widget (a la firefox). Plus, I need a part in the right edge of the tabs for a close button. The frame for the active tab would need to fill the available horizontal space (including under the scroll arrows).

I thought I could do this using the Place geometry manager, but I was wondering if there was a better way? The ttk python docs don't have any methods to deal with this that I could see.

Edit: looks like there are difficulties for even trying to implement this using place. For one, I'd still need the tabs to scroll and the active panel to stay in the one place.

Answer 1

I've never used these widgets so I have no idea how possible this is, but what I would try is something akin to the grid_remove() method. If you can move the tabs to an invisible widget, or just make them invisible without losing content, that's what I'd look for/try.

Answer 2

The notebook widget doesn't do scrolling of tabs (or multiple layers of them either) because the developer doesn't believe that they make for a good GUI. I can see his point; such GUIs tend to suck. The best workaround I've seen is to have a panel on the side that allows the selection of which pane to display. You can then apply tricks to that panel to manage the amount of information there (e.g., by making it a treeview widget and holding the info hierarchically, much like most email clients handle mail folders; treeview widgets are scrollable).