I second GTK+ and QT.
One thing I love about GTK+ is how easy it is to make the user interface using XML.
An example:
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//
// main.cpp
//
static void setup_ui()
{
GtkBuilder* builder = gtk_builder_new();
// Load everything about the window from a file named `builder.ui'
gtk_builder_add_from_file(builder, "builder.ui", NULL);
window = GTK_WIDGET(gtk_builder_get_object(builder, "window"));
/* Add buttons, text areas, scrollbars, etc. here... */
// Quit program when window is closed, or "destroy"ed
g_signal_connect(window, "destroy", G_CALLBACK(gtk_main_quit), NULL);
}
int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
// Required to use GTK+ functions...
gtk_init(&argc, &argv);
// Our function below sets up the entire user interface
setup_ui();
// Everything is hidden by default, so let's show it
gtk_widget_show_all(window);
// This is the main loop that keeps the user interactions going until the application is quit
gtk_main();
return 0;
}
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and the user interface file (named `builder.ui' here...)
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<interface>
<object id="window" class="GtkWindow">
<property name="visible">True</property>
<property name="title">Hello, World!</property>
<property name="default-width">800</property>
<property name="default-height">600</property>
</object>
</interface>
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While the XML may seem odd, you can look up how to use it fairly easily. Also, if you prefer not to write the XML by hand, you can use a program called Glade to edit the .ui file graphically. It writes the XML for you, and you just use it in your project.
GTK+ website:
http://www.gtk.org
GTK+ reference:
https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/
Glade UI designer:
https://glade.gnome.org
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BTW, the example I gave used was for the C syntax instead of the C++ bindings (you can use either one for C++). If you are
that interested, though, you could look at the C++ bindings:
http://www.gtkmm.org/en/
----------------------
I haven't used Qt all that much, but take a look:
http://qt-project.org
GTK+ and Qt both also offer more than just getting a window on the screen. They both offer a lot of convenience functions. For example, the GLib library includes a parser so you can read XML files and settings files really easily.
Lastly, don't let the screenshots of a particular library be the thing to convince you to use that library. For whatever reason, some really good interface libraries use really bad/out of date screenshots.