What tools to choose for developing a simple GUI application?

Question

I'd like to implement a very simple application, which would:

• Get a number from bar code reader
• Fetch some data from MySQL based on the number
• Based on the data, draw max 10 selection boxes on the screen of a touchscreen display
• User points at the boxes she wants to select
• Application updates database according to user's selection

The selection screen should be aesthetically pleasing and "fill" the whole display.

Application can implemented for either Windows or Linux, but the development environment and other tools should be either free or low cost.

The software will not be made available for download, but it will only be installed in a couple of computers.

My experience is mostly from server side applications, so I welcome suggestions for the technology which would enable fast development of such an application.

Answer 1

Visual C# Express is free and really easy with WinForms and its databinding. You can add this MySQL ADO.NET driver.

Answer 2

GTK+ is nice, cross-platform, easy to use etc. There is Glade for designing the UI... and it is free.

Answer 3

You can create such an application very quickly in either .net or Java environments. Because of the Windows or Linux point that you made I would favour Java, but if you are more experienced with .net then you may be able to use mono on linux.

If you choose Java then either Eclipse or Netbeans are very good IDEs with Visual Editors to assist with creating GUI apps.

Answer 4

You have wxWidgets, QT and GTK+, which have bindings to a lot of languages, including:

• Python: wxPython, PyQT and PySide, PyGTK
• C
• Perl: wxPerl, PerlQT, GTK2-Perl
• Lua: wxLua, LQT, LuaGnome
• Countless others languages

All of them are simple to use, some of them more than others, but for simple CRUD applications all of them will be similar.

I personally like wxPython for its great built in widgets, but you might want to try out the QT bindings, as they are considered to be cleaner.

Answer 5

Your question cannot easily be answered because it lacks a lot of important information. E.g. what programming language? Of what use is a framework only available for a set of programming languages that you all don't know and don't want to learn just for this project? What platform(s)? Of what use is a framework available for certain platforms, but none of them is your target platform? Or of what use is a framework available for some of your target platforms but not for others?

You should at least give a selection of programming languages you are willing to use and one or multiple platforms on that your final application is supposed to run .