Thomas M. Wetherbee said
This is the best book you can get for wxPython programming. The alternative is to jump around the Internet on a scavenger hunt, picking up little bits here and there, all out of sequence - you can do it, but it's not worth the time.
The price is typical for programming books, and easily worth it for a professional programmer like me. I used an on-line version for about three days, at which point I realized that it was available as a paper book. I ordered it right away. The paper book is easier to use, and includes good illustrations and examples.
"WxPython in Action" is suitable for beginners and old pros. The examples are detailed and progress step by step. Full source code is available for download from the publisher's web site.
"WxPython in Action" covers the wxWidgets GUI system as implemented in Python. It is not a Python tutorial. If you are new to Python, I recommend also purchasing "Learning Python" by Lutz.
RF RDC said
If you have been searching for wxPython books, you may notice that this is about it. And if you buy it you may wish there were others to choose from. I think the book is solid in foundation material but it is not very well organized. I like to be able to skim through a programming book, get ideas of functionality that are useful to my work, and then proceed with my work, turning back to the book for occasional reference, clarification, or a little more insight into advanced techniques, which typically helps with refactoring.
This book almost forces you to go through its code base, which is rather sparse and tied into much narrative (perhaps too much for a programming book). Maybe some people have a different learning approach, but I would prefer to get my hands dirty immediately and shoot off on a thousand experiments of "what if I changed this, tweaked that, used it in this way or that way." That is how I learn to code in a new environment; then back to some narrative and examples to perhaps explain why it works that way if not obvious.
That is how I find much of wxPython in general, not obvious. On the other hand, it seems about the best current solution for doing GUI with python. PyQt4 is amuck with the whole licensing issue and basically treats python users like second-class add-ons. No thanks. And quite frankly most of the other GUI development environment I have tinkered with just seem to fail in comparison.
So, if you are interested in wxPyhton, and don't find the online documentation that complete, then this it. There is a PDF version that I ended up getting from the publisher, not sure if Amazon offers it, but given that I will likely be tied to the book and the IDE for a while to get acquainted, I would consider this route if you find yourself in a similar learning mode/environment.
John Skinner said
Before I picked up this book I knew nothing about GUI programming, but a good bit about Python. This book let me jump right into writing useful GUI's. Typical programming text books build on concepts sequentially, which is great for classrooms but not for learning on the fly. This book just jumps right into applications and teaches through examples. I was so impressed by this method that I plan on buying more books from the in action series whenever I need to learn another programming language. This book has been my #2 resource right behind Google, which is saying a lot.
James Kepler said
This book is hard to use as a reference but it is better than nothing.
DW said
I bought this book when I needed to write a wxpython app at work. I'd done a lot of programming in python before, but had very little experience writing gui apps and non using wx. This book got me up and running very quickly and I was using wxpython productivly almost imidiatly. This book gives a solid introduction to the basics on wxpython and how to test and develop wxpython apps.
However the book doesn't cover a lot of more advanced or complex topics. If you need to to anything that isn't the most common and obvious approach you'll be on your own. I quite quickly found myself running into problems that wheren't covered in this book.
So on the whole this is a great book for quickly getting you up and running, and will have you writing simple wxpython apps in no time. However for anything more complicated you need to consult other sources.
An Advanced WxPython in Action book would be most welcome.
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