Make desktop application with C++

[nishad_forums]

Hi,
I know C, C++, and Java (all basic knowledge, no GUI idea in C++ or C) and now I want to make a desktop application with GUI in C++ but no idea about how to make it, google didn't help me a lot! Can someone please give me the guidelines to start writing desktop apps with C++?

I am also interested in C#, never learned it but sounds interesting to me. If C# is better than C++ for desktop application then please tell me so.

Thanks.

[Tinnin]

Check out SFML and/or SDL.

[mike_2000_17]

Writing a GUI application in C++ must involve one of many GUI libraries out there. As Tinnin mentioned, some possibilities are SFML or SDL, and in that same vein there is the Win32 API. All these options are very low-level. They can be useful for making a computer game where the window is basically just a window with a 2D/3D display.

If you want a more complete GUI, with menus, buttons, list-views, etc.., you need a more elaborate GUI library. One of the front-runners and most used library and toolset for this is Qt. This library is very complete, well-designed, and easy to use. And it works on all platforms. Another lesser popular alternative is WxWidget.

In the Microsoft world, they have pretty much given up on providing a modern C++ GUI library, you have to move to .NET in order to use WinForms. Technically, you could use C++/CLI which is a hybrid between C++ and C#, but I wouldn't recommend it, if you want to do .NET, just use C# (which, in a nutshell, is almost identical to Java).