A graphical user interface builder (or GUI builder), also known as GUI designer or sometimes rapid application development (RAD) integrated development environment (IDE), is a software development tool that simplifies creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs) by allowing a designer to arrange graphical control elements (often called widgets) using a drag-and-drop WYSIWYG editor. Without a GUI builder, a GUI must be built by manually specifying each widget's parameters in the source code, with no visual feedback until the program is run.
User interfaces are commonly programmed using an event-driven architecture, so GUI builders also simplify creating event-driven code. This supporting code connects software widgets with the outgoing and incoming events that trigger the functions providing the application logic.
Some graphical user interface builders automatically generate all the source code for a graphical control element. Others, like Interface Builder or Glade Interface Designer, generate serialized object instances that are then loaded by the application.
List of GUI builders
C language based GTK, Glade Interface Designer Motif XForms (toolkit) fdesign Intrinsics
C# based UWP, Windows Presentation Foundation, WinForms Microsoft Visual Studio XAML Editor, XAML based GUI layout Microsoft Expression Blend SharpDevelop Xamarin.Forms, .NET Xamarin Studio
C++ based UWP, Windows Presentation Foundation, WinForms Microsoft Visual Studio XAML Editor, XAML based GUI layout Microsoft Blend Qt (software) Qt Creator FLTK FLUID JUCE U++ wxWidgets wxFormBuilder
Objective-C, Swift based Cocoa (modern, formerly OpenStep) and Carbon (deprecated). Xcode GNUstep Gorm
Java based Android Studio, XML-based GUI layout NetBeans GUI design tool
HTML–JavaScript based Adobe Dreamweaver
Python based
Object Pascal based Delphi, Visual Component Library (VCL) Lazarus, Lazarus Component Library (LCL)
Tk framework based Tk (software) for Tcl Komodo Edit (No longer has a GUI builder)
Visual Basic based UWP, Windows Presentation Foundation, WinForms Microsoft Visual Studio XAML Editor, XAML based GUI layout Microsoft Expression Blend
Other tools Adobe Animate App Inventor for Android AutoIt Creately Embedded Wizard GEM Interface Builder LucidChart OpenWindows Resource construction set Stetic Scaleform Wavemaker
List of development environments
IDEs with GUI builders (RAD IDEs) 4D Komodo Edit (No longer has a GUI builder) Android Studio Anjuta AutoIt3 C++Builder Clarion Code::Blocks CodeLite dBase Delphi/RAD Studio Embedded Wizard Eclipse Gambas IntelliJ IDEA InForm JDeveloper KDevelop LabWindows/CVI LANSA Lazarus Liberty BASIC Microsoft Visual Studio MonoDevelop MSEide+MSEgui MyEclipse NetBeans OutSystems PascalABC.NET Projucer Purebasic Qt Creator SharpDevelop Softwell Maker U++ VB6 WinFBE Xcode Xojo
See also Model–view–controller Web template system Rapid application development (RAD) Human interface guidelines (HIG) Human interface device User interface markup language User interface modeling Linux on the desktop
References