One of the most important aspects of an application is the interface that is provided to interact with the user. With the unprecedented popularity of computers in society today, people have come to expect those user interfaces to be graphical, and the question of which graphical toolkit to use quickly arises for any developer. For many, the cross-platform, feature-rich GTK+ library is the obvious choice.

Learning GTK+ can be a daunting task, because many features lack documentation and others are difficult to understand even with the API documentation. Foundations of PyGTK Development aims to decrease the learning curve and set you on your way to creating cross-platform graphical user interfaces for your applications.

Each chapter in this book contains multiple examples that help you further your understanding. In addition to these examples, the final chapter of this book provides five complete applications that incorporate topics from the previous chapters. These applications show you how to bring together what you have learned to accomplish in various projects.

Each chapter starts with an overview, so that you are able to skip around if you want. Most chapters also contain exercises to test your understanding of the material. I recommend that you complete all the exercises before continuing, because the best way to learn GTK+ is to use it.

At the end of this book, there are multiple appendixes that serve as references for various aspects of GTK+. These appendixes include tables listing signals, styles, and properties for every widget in GTK+. These appendixes will remain a useful reference after you have finished reading the book and begin creating your own applications. In addition, Appendix D explains the solutions to all the exercises in the book.