Ttk Widgets in Tkinter

Ttk Widgets in Tkinter

Summary

In this tutorial, you’ll learn about Tk themed widgets by using the tkinter.ttk module.

Introduction to Tk Themed Widgets

Tkinter has two generations of widgets:

  • The old classic Tk widgets, introduced in 1991.
  • The newer themed ttk widgets, added in 2007 with Tk 8.5.

Note that ttk stands for Tk themed, meaning Tk themed widgets are the same as ttk widgets. The tkinter.ttk module contains all the new ttk widgets, and it’s a good practice to use themed widgets whenever available.

Importing Tk and Ttk Widgets

The following statements import the classic and the new Tk themed widgets:

import tkinter as tk
from tkinter import ttk
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Creating Classic and Themed Labels

The following program illustrates how to create classic and themed labels:

import tkinter as tk
from tkinter import ttk

root = tk.Tk()

tk.Label(root, text='Classic Label').pack()
ttk.Label(root, text='Themed Label').pack()

root.mainloop()
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Advantages of Using Tk Themed Widgets

By using Tk themed widgets, you gain several advantages:

  • Separation of Behavior and Appearance: The ttk widgets separate the code that implements the widget's behaviors from their appearance through a styling system.
  • Native Look & Feel: The ttk widgets maintain the native look and feel of the platform on which the program runs.
  • Simplified State-specific Behaviors: The ttk widgets simplify and generalize the state-specific widget behavior.

Available Ttk Widgets

The following ttk widgets replace the Tkinter widgets with the same names:

  • Button
  • Checkbutton
  • Entry
  • Frame
  • Label
  • LabelFrame
  • Menubutton
  • PanedWindow
  • Radiobutton
  • Scale
  • Scrollbar
  • Spinbox

Additionally, the following widgets are new and specific to ttk:

  • Combobox
  • Notebook
  • Progressbar
  • Separator
  • Sizegrip
  • Treeview

Conclusion

In this tutorial, you learned that:

  • Tkinter has both classic and themed widgets, with ttk widgets being the modern option.
  • The tkinter.ttk module contains all the ttk widgets.
  • It is advisable to use ttk widgets whenever they are available.

These features enhance the user interface and experience of your Tkinter applications.