GUIs with PHP and Winbinder

By Harry Fuecks | November 15, 2005 | PHP

In case you missed it, Aaron Wormus has some excellent slides up about building Windows GUIs with PHP: Winbinding your PHP (PDF).

In brief, Winbinder is a GUI toolkit for PHP and Windows. The main site seems to be down right now but the code is available @http://sourceforge.net/projects/winbinder/. Compared to PHP-GTK it’s Windows only but at the same time fast and gives you the Windows look and feel. Winbinder also seems more suited to PHP hackers (procedural rather than OO)

Was otherwise surprised to see that things are happening (in CVS) at wxphp.sourceforge.net while phpc is actually useful. More interesting links at the end of Aarons slides.

All that said, would still say that Python plus wxPython is the sane option if you want a dynamic language to build GUIs in – mature, cross platform, native look and feel etc. The easiest way to express that is simply to link to applications like taskcoach or ActiveGrid’s Application Builder (which is in fact pretty amazing).

Written By:

Harry Fuecks

Harry has been working in corporate IT since 1994, with everything from start-ups to Fortune 100 companies. Outside of office hours he runs phpPatterns: a site dedicated to software design with PHP that aims to raise standards of PHP development. He also maintains Dynamically Typed: SitePoint's PHP blog.

{ 11 comments }

Ming December 10, 2005 at 11:57 am: Have you tried Klorofil?
It is a new solution for building GUI application with PHP. In Klorofil website, we can download a calculator that made 100% with PHP. Interesting.
alsanan November 23, 2005 at 6:42 pm: Bindows anyone? http://www.bindows.net
bobsorenson November 18, 2005 at 1:03 pm: Harry, I have downloaded and installed ActiveGrid. It is a pretty amazing IDE. I am prototyping several apps that until ActiveGrid I only mused about.
HarryF November 18, 2005 at 5:38 am: I’m sorry, but I see no reason why this should exist.
Sometimes that the developer has an itch to scratch is reason enough. You might argue 5K Wolfenstein fits into the same category. And the justification here has valid points IMO.
PHP is for the web, not for GUIs. PHP’s strength is that it fits into a niche market (the web.) You should use the right tool for the right job.
That I agree with (hence references to Python as a sensible choice).
That said think Winbinder is an interesting project in it’s own right – you have to read around the site to grasp that – that PHP is currently the the language to write Winbinder apps in is really a secondary issue. There’s even a suggestion that it could be replaced at the bottom of this page.
jimbo November 17, 2005 at 5:39 pm: I’m sorry, but I see no reason why this should exist. PHP is for the web, not for GUIs. PHP’s strength is that it fits into a niche market (the web.) You should use the right tool for the right job. They say that when you have a hammer everything looks like a nail…
Rubem Pechansky November 17, 2005 at 9:48 am: Just to tell the WinBinder website is up and running again. It went down because we were switching to a new host. Sorry for the inconvenience.
asmictech November 16, 2005 at 5:03 pm: While reinvent the wheel. Yeah got it that the look is better in Winbinder compared with PHP-GTK. But it’s windows based unlike php-gtk that’s cross plat.
Anyway worths trying.
akrabat November 16, 2005 at 4:52 am: Winbinder looks ok, except for being Windows only which makes it a non starter for me. You may as well just use MS’s new C# express product if you are creating a Windows only product.
From a cross-platfrom point of view, I can only see wxWidgets, Java and XUL as options. Clearly wxWidgets and Java are a lot more mature and for a very complicated application are better bets.
I wish I could like GTK, but it suffers the same as Java when it’s on Windows and just doesn’t feel right. Maybe when php-gtk 2 comes out, I’ll have another look.
Seinfeld November 16, 2005 at 12:16 am: I played a lot with XUL too and I must say it’s over evaluated at the moment. It lacks basic controls like editable trees and other things.
If you want to create other controls you have to on XBL which is very weird and the DOM access for XUL elements is simply confusing.
Winbinder looks cooler.
webslave November 15, 2005 at 10:41 pm: I was curious about the ActiveGrid’s Application Builder. Anybody currently use it? Is it just an easy way to build apps dynamically?
-BTW: tried the PDF file, it seems to still be down as of 6:41 pm PDST on the 11/15/05.
Keep plugging…
akrabat November 15, 2005 at 9:50 am: I’m currently playing with xulrunner which seems quite good, if alpha atm.
(http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/XULRunner is a good place to start investigation)