Rating: 
Summary: An exceptional book
Review: "Python and TKinter programming" is the kind of book that is very hard to find in a bookstore nowadays. This book is not just a gap-filling, long-awaited tome, full of valuable information regarding a scarcely documented technology. It is a well-designed, carefully edited and clearly written book, too. Since the first pages, it becames clear that Grayson is an expert programmer and a talented technical writer. He does not only demonstrate a complete dominance of the Python and TKinter programming but he also shows an attention for the reader that is rare to see in this world. The whole book, and every single part of it, are carefully designed and written to help the programmer in the learning process and in the everyday work. Also Manning, the publisher, made a very good work with this book, (as with all the book of this series).Consider to buy this book because: - It is an exhaustive guide to Python and TKinter programming. No "shadow zones" left. - It contains 14Mb of working and well written code (available online). You can play and learn from it. - It is well-organized, carefully edited and clearly written. No struggles to get the info you need. - It is a first-hand report from the world of real professional programming. No kid tales. - You get a real understanding of Python and TKinter programming from this book, not a simple, dry description of this language. The best characteristic of this book is its clear and flexible structure: you are not forced to follow the "flow-of-consciousness" of the author, chapter after chapter (Have you ever read "Programming Python", by Mark Lutz? ). You can easily spot and read the part that most interest you. All of the chapters focus on well-defined aspects of the Python/TKinter programming and are quite indipendent from the other ones. Grayson's writing is always clear and well-organized. You do not have to struggle for extracting the information you need. This is a book designed with a demanding and busy reader in mind. I hope to see more from Grayson and Manning in the future.
Rating: 
Summary: Not for the beginner
Review: As a complete novice GUI programmer (but with some Python experience) I found this book to be essentially useless. The beginning examples use classes for which there is no explanation, and it only gets worse. The book does not proceed in any organized manner. After hours of floundering, I have decided to abandon Tkinter programming until a better book comes out.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, but not quite perfect....
Review: Before I even reviewing this title, I have to come out and admit that this book sits on my desk at work. I keep it within an arms reach whenever working on Python GUIs. First, I felt that this was a pretty good book as far as the instruction of Tkinter goes. It assumes you have at least a basic understanding of Python, so you may want to learn the language before diving into it. There are three aspects of the book that I think deserve special attention: the examples, special topics covered, an how the book is broken up. It has no shortage of examples for each of the various widgets, and provides well commented code. The one complaint I have here is that the descriptive comments are all at the end of the code, so I frequently found myself flipping back and forth between the code and the comments. It also priovides several examples of common situations you may run across: dynamically changing widgets, "smart" widgets, and issues regarding GUI overhead. The first part of the book concentrates on looking under the hood of Tkinter and learning how to interact with its components and get applications running. The second part of the book spends is more of a textbook on the design of more effective/attractive interfaces. Secondly, the book is also an above-average reference manual. It has two colored sections that outline all of the widgets in standard Tkinter and Pmw (Python Mega-widgets). I find this especially usefull because once you learn the basics of the Tkinter system, you really only need a manual that reminds you of how to get the right widget you want. I think in the course of using the reference manual I've only found two errors, which is pretty good for around 175 pages of material.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding Reference
Review: I am new to the python programming langauge and was a little frustrated with the lack of documentation on Tkinter. Thank goodness Mr. Grayson has come out with a book that not only clearly documents Tkinter but the book is also filled with clear and concise examples from which to learn! The information on PMW (Python Mega Widgets) is also fantastic. I highly recommend this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Lots of info, poorly presented!
Review: I find that the author is out of touch with how to present material. He's already tackling a 'calculator' application by page 22. Quite a jump! He should have consulted with someone more experienced in material presentation for someone learning and/or trying to tie concepts together.By starting with basics in the early going, it would have made understanding a little easier in the more complex examples.
Rating:
Summary: Tkinter Sole Source
Review: I have added Mr. Grayson's book "Python and Tkinter Programming" to my trusted and tested reference library. He has done an excellent job of consolidating the available information for the first time. Importantly, he has included many, many observations and Tkinter code examples from his vast professional experience. The numerous Tkinter examples are both excellent code reference and fully explained in the accompanying text. Although I consider myself a relatively new Tkinter programmer, these examples have helped me immeasurably. Thank you very much Mr. Grayson! True to the Python tradition, Mr. Grayson incorporates comedy into his text and code. I both admire and find a certain welcomed familiarity to this unusual approach to a very technical and at times difficult subject. Perhaps the only fault I can manage is that the book and examples are not at the beginner level. Although I believe that anyone new to Tkinter will benefit, the task will be just a little harder; I know because I am such a person. Still, to Mr. Grayson's credit, he offers help to those buying the book through a on-line forum. Use of his forum is free and easy; their are no strings attached. His response is timely and right-on.
Rating:
Summary: Tkinter Sole Source
Review: I have added Mr. Grayson's book "Python and Tkinter Programming" to my trusted and tested reference library. He has done an excellent job of consolidating the available information for the first time. Importantly, he has included many, many observations and Tkinter code examples from his vast professional experience. The numerous Tkinter examples are both excellent code reference and fully explained in the accompanying text. Although I consider myself a relatively new Tkinter programmer, these examples have helped me immeasurably. Thank you very much Mr. Grayson! True to the Python tradition, Mr. Grayson incorporates comedy into his text and code. I both admire and find a certain welcomed familiarity to this unusual approach to a very technical and at times difficult subject. Perhaps the only fault I can manage is that the book and examples are not at the beginner level. Although I believe that anyone new to Tkinter will benefit, the task will be just a little harder; I know because I am such a person. Still, to Mr. Grayson's credit, he offers help to those buying the book through a on-line forum. Use of his forum is free and easy; their are no strings attached. His response is timely and right-on.
Rating:
Summary: Great Tutorial and Reference
Review: I have been coding for over 15 years, but have just recently started working with python; and then just writing scripts to reformat and analyze files. This book shows how to write just about any type of interface you could want and includes **entire code** for the examples, not just code snippets. This allowed me to get the examples running quickly so I could "play" with the various options. After two days I had a sockets based GUI allowing me to unit test server applications. Lots of examples, lots of code, and a good reference section in the back. Good Book.
Rating:
Summary: Not Enough about Tk
Review: I have programmed several commercial Macintosh and Windows applications and I have become fairly proficient with Python, so I figured that writing GUIs with Tkinter would be pretty straightforward and Grayson's book looked like a great place to start. Not so. While it's fine to have lots of code samples, what would have been even better was much more nitty-gritty discussion of Tk itself. Tk is very clever and powerful, but it is not straightforward. This is even more true of Megawidgets, upon which Pmw is based, and which is widely used in Grayson's examples. The appendices at the end are great if you know exactly what you are looking up but frustrating if you don't have a good overview of how Tk works. I recommend Effective Tcl/Tk Programming by Harrison and McLennan to fill in some of the many gaps in Grayson.
Rating: 
Summary: A brief description of the book
Review: I wrote 'Python and Tkinter Programming' to fill a void in the Python community. Tkinter is the preeminent GUI toolkit for Python, yet it has never been fully documented. Fredrik Lundh, and others, have made some excellent documentation available on the Web; with the Tcl/Tk man pages, an experienced programmer was able to make good progress. I've developed several real-world applications in Tkinter and have worked through many of the problems that you encounter as you begin to develop with Tkinter. The book draws on this experience and I hope it will make programming a little easier for those who follow! The book is intended for readers who already understand basic programming in Python and have a need to develop applications to solve real problems; these applications need Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs). Readers may also have a basic knowledge of Tkinter or possibly Tcl/Tk or X Window and need a cookbook to help them to write their applications. P-Tk-P will be useful for both Windows and UNIX environments (and MacOS, too). However, I have tried to avoid UNIX-only functionality, which means that the example code will be portable between the architectures. The examples in P-Tk-P are much more comprehensive than those one typically finds in programming texts. Most of the experienced programmers I have encountered benefit from complete, working examples rather than short code snippets. Also, because the examples are more complete, it has been possible to ensure that the appearance of the GUI has been considered, since that is an important part of application design. You cannot achieve that with 10-line examples! P-Tk-P begins by presenting the elements of typical Python and Tkinter applications discussing, in detail, their structure and methods along with more advanced topics. Sample code, available from Manning's web site, is used to illustrate each element and may be used as templates for application construction. There are lots of screen shots to help programmers get some ideas for novel layouts for their own applications. Extensions to Python are covered to assist the reader to unleash the full power of Python and its extensions. P-Tk-P covers elements and applications that go far beyond the 'fill the form' class of graphical user interface. Applications illustrating complex controls, drawn interfaces and photo-realistic panels are presented. Interfaces such as browsers, notebooks, wizards and image maps are discussed in detail. There are chapters on graphics, screen design, dialogs, graphs and more. The reader is also provided with complete details on extending Python to support external systems and on methods for packaging and distributing Tkinter applications. Tkinter classes and methods are fully documented. Until now, this level of documentation has not been available to Tkinter programmers, usually requiring them to read the code to understand component usage. Python Megawidgets (Pmw), which is a popular collection of extension widgets, are featured throughout the book and are documented in an appendix. There is also a complete Tk to Tkinter mapping table in an appendix to assist Tcl/Tk programmers transition to Tkinter and help Python programmers make better use of Tk man pages.
| 
