A Comprehensive Introduction to Python Programming and ... - MSDL

3.1 What is a Widget
3
Overview of Tkinter Widgets
According to the Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing, the definition of a widget is:
widget: [possibly evoking ”window gadget”] In graphical user interfaces,
a combination of a graphic symbol and some program code to perform a
specific function. E.g. a scroll-bar or button. Windowing systems usually
provide widget libraries containing commonly used widgets drawn in a
certain style and with consistent behaviour.
A widget is therefore a graphical object that is available from the Tkinter library. It
is a kind of graphical building block. Intuitively, widgets are implemented as classes in
Tkinter. Each widget therefore has a constructor, a destructor, its own set of properties
and methods, and so on. While most other GUI toolkits have a very complex widget
hierarchy, Tkinter’s hierarchy is extremely simple. All widgets (like Button, Checkbutton,
etc.) are dereived from the Widget class. All widget subclasses occupy the same
level in the hierachy tree.
3.2 The Different Widgets
3.2.1 Toplevel
The Toplevel is technically not a widget, although this is more or less transparent to the
user.