PHP-GTK is an extension for the PHP programming language that implements language bindings for GTK+. It provides an object-oriented interface to GTK+ classes and functions and greatly simplifies writing client-side cross-platform GUI applications.

PHP-GTK 2 is the second major release of PHP-GTK. PHP-GTK 2 combines the power of PHP 5 with the flexibility of Gtk+ 2 to allow developers to create extremely rich desktop applications with relative ease. PHP-GTK 2 not only simplifies the process of building applications with PHP, but also provides greater flexibility and more features than its predecessor.

Features

• Powerful Object Oriented Programming
  Because PHP-GTK 2 is built ontop of PHP 5, it makes heavy use of the improved object model. PHP-GTK 2 applications can implement Object Oriented practices such as inheritance, interfaces, overloading and exceptions.
• Improved Garbage Collection
  PHP-GTK 1 suffered from memory allocation issue because it was built ontop of PHP 4, which was not designed with long running applications in mind. Improvements in PHP 5 have minimized memory leaks allowing for long running applications without the fear of excessive memory consumption.
• Unicode Support
  Text in PHP-GTK 2 is always UTF-8 encoded making for applications which can easily be internationalized. PHP-GTK 2 will seamlessly handle conversion of input and output strings based on a global code-page setting freeing the developer from worrying about most encoding problems.
• Model-View Architecture
  Gtk+ 2 implements a Model-View architecture to separate data from the display. This allows for multiple representations of the same data in different ways and greater control over the data itself. The separation of data from display makes working with complex data like trees and multi-line text much easier than before.
• Improved Graphics Support
  Improvements in image support in Gtk+ 2 make displaying and manipulating images and animations much easier with PHP-GTK 2. Aside from an extensive collection of stock images, loading and manipulating custom images is relatively simple when compared to working with images in PHP-GTK 1.