One of the reasons why Java is so popular is because it can be used to build applications, web pages, applets and beans that can run on several platforms including Windows, Linux and Solaris. Java runs a virtual machine called JVM, and code is compiled into an intermediate format known as Java byte code, which is platform independent. When that particular piece of code is executed within the JVM, the JVM optimizes the code for the particular platform on which it is running as it is being compiled.
Microsoft's latest technology, .NET follows the same principles. Code is compiled into Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL) and is then executed within the .NET framework as an application domain. Microsoft are hoping to standardize C# and MSIL so that .NET code can run cross platform.
So what has all of this got to do with PHP-GTK? Well, both Java and .NET can be used to build windowed applications and web pages. Thanks to PHP-GTK, we can now build cross platform windowed applications with PHP as well.
In this article we're going to take a look at PHP-GTK: what it is, how to download and install it, as well as how to use it to build cross-platform interactive GUI applications. To test the PHP-GTK samples in this article, you should have PHP 4.1.1 or later and MySQL installed on a Windows, Linux or Unix machine.
