Python + PyGTK + WebKit in 20 minutes

Posted at 4:45pm on Tuesday May 11th 2010
Code

In season 2 episode 7 of our podcast we laid down the simple challenge for each of the four podcasters - Andrew, Graham, Paul and Mike - to produce something original for the website. Paul - eager to show the world how much he, er, loves Python - has now finished his entry, and you'll find it below: a video talking you through how to get started with Python, PyGTK and WebKit. It's easier than you think!

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Your comments

So Simple

Will Warren (not verified) - May 11, 2010 @ 5:50pm

This video was really good, I've used pyGTK before but never the webkit module. It looks very versatile and easy to work with!

Great video and really well explained. If i could rate this video it would be 5 stars! :D

Thanks

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - May 11, 2010 @ 7:05pm

Really enjoyed your video, it wakes my programming apetite

Thanks

Excellent!

Jean Christophe André (not verified) - May 11, 2010 @ 8:09pm

Really an excellent presentation!
I can only recommend it!

wonderfull

ThorstenS (not verified) - May 11, 2010 @ 9:11pm

wow, this screencast is really wonderfull.
I have never seen such an easy introduction into python+gtk.

keep on!
/thorsten

Brilliant!

Ray Woods (not verified) - May 11, 2010 @ 9:24pm

In my few years using Linux I've heard of these technologies but without understanding what they actually do. Although running at a frantic pace, Paul's introduction clearly shows just some of the possibilities open to us.

Once I've gone through my C coding books I at least now have an idea where to go for the next step.

Thanks Paul.

Re: frantic pace

Hudzilla - May 11, 2010 @ 9:38pm

Yes, it was recorded in a single take and in a great rush because I've spent most of today sending the latest issue of LXF off to the printers and still had a few more to go when I was recording this. 20 minutes is quite a short amount of time to cover all the things you do in the video, and in a way the pace of the recording reflects the speed of production with PyGTK - you can get so much done with so little code that my fingers naturally move faster than even I can speak ;)

Awesome!

Neil Munro (not verified) - May 11, 2010 @ 11:00pm

I actually found I could keep up with this tutorial it was amazing to have a quick introduction to how to work with webkit from within python and GTK.

If this video had been available 18 months ago, my final year uni project would have been so much better :P

really good stuff

marines (not verified) - May 12, 2010 @ 1:00am

thanks for that :)

A good start

Jeenu (not verified) - May 12, 2010 @ 5:11am

Thanks for taking time to put up such a nice tutorial. It sure is a good starting point for anyone to learn PyGtk! And excellent presentation too.

What did you use to create the screencast?

Crispibits - May 12, 2010 @ 10:35am

Haven't had a chance to watch the whole thing (pesky work keeps getting in the way), but looks good so far. What program did you use to actually record the screencast?

Love, Light and Peace, Crispibits

Repeat that same "You dare us" challenge

kltrg (not verified) - May 12, 2010 @ 10:41am

I wish you would repeat that same "You dare us" challenge in every episode and you, Paul, would produce such a video tutorial every two weeks.

I started learning Phyton a while ago but I never really managed to create a real app because I just could not read all those written tutorials. What I would need is probably a mentor I can ask every question I want. Such video tutorials are halfway between reading a tutorial and talking to a person so I'd like to see more (or get you, Paul, to answer all my questions :D )

Great

Cormac (not verified) - May 12, 2010 @ 12:55pm

Great video Paul. I think you should do more of these. Much easier to follow than an article.

Brilliant!

Tobi - May 12, 2010 @ 3:18pm

Loved it! Have been playing with Python for a while and would have really loved to start with a tutorial like this! A great amount of information ery well explained - others let you read for 3 hours to get the same stuff.

Well Done!

dar (not verified) - May 12, 2010 @ 5:26pm

I'm very impressed with this tutorial. It has a good conceptual flow and good productions qualities such as code that is readable and a voice is understandable. It is also my first introduction to a TuxRadar code tutorial.

btw: love the magazine.

Excellent video

Blarney (not verified) - May 13, 2010 @ 10:07am

Well done. Exactly what I wanted.

Cool!

Stephen Ward (not verified) - May 13, 2010 @ 12:24pm

Very inspiring! I agree that this is a much easier to follow than a dry article which always looks a bit daunting. This way, especially with python's command interpretor, you can see what's supposed to happen at each step.

Great video, I haven't

Jon Pritchard (not verified) - May 13, 2010 @ 4:40pm

Great video, I haven't watched it all yet but I love how you've used the interpreter, really shows off the power of the tools

In my entire Computing A-Level I didn't see as impressive an example as that.

Brilliant!

Cage - May 14, 2010 @ 7:39am

More of these please!

i vote for this one!

uomosenzanome - May 14, 2010 @ 6:20pm

Although I haven't seen the video yet, this couldn't possibly be as bad as the other submissions, so I vote for it!

I don't even program and I

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - May 14, 2010 @ 9:03pm

I don't even program and I found this video entertaining.

I love it!

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - May 18, 2010 @ 10:07am

I love this and would really like to see more screencasts like this! Great content, great format.

awesome

ssword (not verified) - May 20, 2010 @ 2:44pm

Your video is awesome, I love it. You made python really simple.

liked it but foggy...

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - May 20, 2010 @ 9:22pm

great video.. why don't you put the super high res too?
kind of foggy when I played it full screen...
[by the way I tried both mov and ogv]

+1

Evan (not verified) - May 22, 2010 @ 12:40am

Too good Paul. Adding my thanks. Consider doing a series. You'll be famous/er.

Crashing on Ubuntu 9.10 and 10.04

Sad Penguin (not verified) - May 22, 2010 @ 9:24pm

Python 2.6.4 on Ubuntu 9.10 32-bit crashes on the "browser = webkit.WebView()" line with error:

GLib-ERROR **: The thread system is not yet initialized.
aborting...
Aborted

:(

Python 2.6.5 on Ubuntu 10.04 32-bit crashes on the same line with endless output saying "error: line XXX: bad flag vector alias" and "bad flag alias index: 0"

:(

Progress Bar in Ubuntu 9.10

No Longer Sad Penguin (not verified) - May 23, 2010 @ 9:19am

The method name for showing and hiding the progress bar in Ubuntu 9.10 (with whichever version of webkit it has) is:

progress.set_child_visible

and not

progress.set_visible

(I've not used GTK/webkit until viewing this video, so I'm not an expert. The "child_visible" method worked, so I'm presuming that's what should be used. However, the space occupied by the progress bar remains at the bottom of the window. In the video, when the progress bar is removed, the browser space increases; on mine, the space for the bar is always allocated below the scrollbar.)

Is the code used there published anywhere

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - May 23, 2010 @ 9:22am

Awesome video tutorial at a breakneck pace, as many have already said. Full points from me !

How about making the code used in the tutorial available for download?

Really enjoyed the video!

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - May 27, 2010 @ 9:49am

Really enjoyed the video! Great stuff, have always wanted to get back into programming, and it's great to see it actually occuring in action. Can we have some more please? And would this also work on my N900 running maemo 5?

Thanks,

Dunc

Oh, very nice!

Dan Dart (not verified) - June 3, 2010 @ 5:44pm

Terrifically exciting! Just the sort of thing I needed, really. If only I didn't need so many dependencies!

Really wonderful! I like how

Moritz (not verified) - June 20, 2010 @ 9:56pm

Really wonderful!
I like how quick you talk and show how it works!

I don't want to wait longer ;)

how can i keep it?????

juanska (not verified) - July 3, 2010 @ 1:11am

how can I keep the browser or use it???? there's any way to save it? when I exit from Python I have to restart everything or there is a way to open it???

Thank for the tutorial

Brilliant, simply brilliant.

Steve (not verified) - September 8, 2010 @ 4:29pm

Thanks for the wonderful tut.

Amazing!

Filippop123 (not verified) - November 6, 2010 @ 9:02pm

Hello,
Thank You for a Wonderfull Tutorial!

Awesome Tut

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - December 27, 2010 @ 4:18am

Thanks so much for the tutorial. Great intro to pygtk and webkit. I programmed with Qt recently (with C++) and loved it. Gtk seems to be just as easy to use and this level of interactivity makes it much easier for a developer for visualize an app while programming. Awesome stuff and thanks again.

videos no longer available?

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - February 20, 2011 @ 8:45pm

I'm not getting the video from either of the links above. I get a 404 - Not Found response.

Please advise!

video links are broken

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - February 25, 2011 @ 3:39am

I also can not access either video. Please repost these videos. thanks...

anyone here to response the comments?

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - April 1, 2011 @ 4:16pm

come on.. the video was gone!

Missing video

mxvanzant - April 5, 2011 @ 2:05am

Any chance of getting this video restored? Thanks.

well done

Anonymous Nicolas :) (not verified) - April 18, 2011 @ 5:17pm

Great video... Never used Python, gtk or webkit and it gave me a very good overview!
I python interpreter is great to teach programming. very exciting.
This is great. I hope you would do more of these!

Awesome tutorial

Fresnick (not verified) - June 3, 2011 @ 8:19am

Excellent tutorial my friend. I'm astonished that you did not get a single syntax error. I bow to your superior typing/programming skills.

Docs

anon345233 (not verified) - June 24, 2011 @ 5:41pm

Would you please type a location to find some kind of docs about webkit with gtk ? Webkit under pyqt is so much easier to work with because pyqt or more specifiaclly Qt4 has excellent documentation. I find the C++ documentation for qt4 is all I need to find classes and functions to use with PyQt.

WOW!

Faruq (not verified) - July 30, 2011 @ 5:20pm

This is very useful video for beginner who are very much interested in pygtk and webkit.

Great

Shokry (not verified) - August 12, 2011 @ 2:26am

Very VERY well done tutorial, we would love to see more of that, in a series maybe?

Windows Webkit

Anonqt (not verified) - November 27, 2011 @ 2:52pm

gnome is somewhat of a PAIN in windows however python qt is a much more straightforward proposition. google pyqt which will show RiverBank.
Download a binary pyqt package preferabaly a python 2.7 or something, download the coresponding python package, and you are good to go. qt and pyqt will include webkit, plus the documentation for qt is better than for gnome.

This has been ever so

Greg (not verified) - July 1, 2012 @ 8:51pm

This has been ever so useful. Thank you!

i need some advice for

YOUR MOM (not verified) - August 31, 2012 @ 1:04pm

i need some advice for this...is it good for making online games???

¡Muchas gracias!

Armando (not verified) - January 3, 2013 @ 11:30pm

¡wow!
Muchas gracias por el vídeo!
me ha sido de gran ayuda!

i am not able to download

chandankumar (not verified) - April 18, 2013 @ 4:13am

i am not able to download the videos of the tutorials.
Please fix it.

great video

loved it (not verified) - July 12, 2013 @ 4:00am

nice video, loved the explanation. Inspired to explore webkit further :)

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