Tkinter Icon Buttons Demo

This code is based on the Tcl icons.py demo.  The interesting bit was in styling the Checkbuttons. In the original demo both appeared as buttons without the 'checkbox' indicators; one appeared sunken when selected, the other had it's background colour changed.

ttk.Checkbuttons do not have the indicatoron option so how to get rid of the 'checkbox' was a bit of a head scratcher which turned out to have a surprisingly simple solution. By setting the style to TButton (vs TCheckbutton) the 'checkbox' disappears; then, when the checkbutton is selected, the style is set to Toolbutton to get the 'sunken button' appearance.  The buttons  also display a different image depending on their state.

Tkinter Radiobutton Demo

This code is based on the Tcl radio.tcl demo modified to use ttk.Radiobutton and excluding the 'tristate'option (see the Checkbutton Demo if you're interested in knowing how 'tristate' works with ttk widgets.)

Also, I've used a different graphic for the image label. The original demo used a built-in bitmap, questhead. Using a tkinter Label, built-in graphics can be loaded by assigning label['bitmap']='built-in image name'; the bitmap option is not available to ttk.Label.  Neither is the winfo_reqheight option, so, while I've used a different graphic due to the limitations of ttk.Label, in the end I opted to stick with a standard tkinter Label in order to retain full control over the Label resizing properties. When a ttk.Label is used the label grows and shrinks based on the position of the graphic (top, left, etc) which I find distracting.

Similar resize behaviour happens when the Point size is set to one of the larger values; unfortunately, I couldn't find a way to prevent the resizing ... hopefully I'll trip over it one day.

Tkinter Checkbutton Demo

This code is based on the Tcl check.tcl demo, modified to use ttk.Checkbutton. A ttk.Checkbutton does not have the same options as a standard tkinter checkbutton; in particular, the tristatevalue option referenced in the original demo is missing.

checkbutton $w.b0 -text "Safety Check" \
    -variable safety -relief flat \
    -onvalue "all" \
    -offvalue "none" \
    -tristatevalue "partial"

The option determines the value of a checkbutton when it is neither checked (onvalue) nor unchecked (offvalue); it corresponds to the alternate visual state for display purposes. As nothing prevents you from assigning an invalid value to a checkbutton I was able to indirectly mimic the behaviour found in the original demo (see _value_changed and _safety_changed methods in code below). The screenshot on the right shows how the Safety checkbutton's alternate state looks under Windows 7.

The original demo displays the checkbutton control variables in a separate window via a See Variables button. I've chosen to display them in a separate panel along side the checkbuttons themselves.

Tkinter Button Demo

This code is based on the Tcl button.tcl demo, modified to use ttk.Button and its associated ttk.Style.

Four buttons are presented, the panel background is changed to match the selected button's colour name.

The original demo uses the option -highlightbackground  to change the button colour to match the selected background colour; ttk.Button does not have a highlightbackground option, instead, we need to change the ttk.Button style. To ensure that only the demo buttons are changed (and not all buttons), we clone the original button style, TButton, as Demo.TButton; assign it to each button in the demo panel, and then modify it.

On the left is the button appearance if the button background is not modified to match the selected demo panel background; on the right, the button`s appearance once it`s background has been set by modifying it`s associated style.