Introducing Brisk: A Modern, Cross-Platform C++ GUI Toolkit

18 October 2024
Release

Welcome to the official blog of Brisk, a C++ GUI toolkit designed to help developers build responsive, high-performance applications with ease and flexibility. Brisk is a modern, cross-platform library that provides the tools you need to create powerful and visually appealing applications.

What is Brisk?

Brisk is more than just another GUI toolkit. It’s a complete solution for developers who want to build sleek, modern user interfaces without sacrificing performance or compatibility. Currently in the Alpha stage, Brisk is undergoing rapid development, with exciting new features and improvements on the horizon. We are constantly refining and expanding the library, with a Beta release planned in the near future.

At its core, Brisk is built to provide a flexible and modular architecture, allowing developers to tailor the toolkit to their specific needs.

Key Features of Brisk

  • Stateful & Stateless Widgets: Choose between persistent stateful widgets or efficient stateless ones, depending on the needs of your application.
  • Hardware-Accelerated Graphics: Leverage modern graphics backends, including Vulkan, Metal, DirectX, OpenGL, and WebGPU, for smooth rendering and performance.
  • Comprehensive Unicode Support: With full UTF-8, UTF-16, and UTF-32 support, Brisk ensures that your application can handle multilingual text and complex scripts effortlessly.
  • Modular Architecture: From the core system to graphics, windows, and widgets, Brisk’s modular architecture lets you use only what you need, reducing overhead and improving maintainability.

Why Choose Brisk?

If you’re working in C++, you know how challenging it can be to find a modern, lightweight GUI toolkit that can scale to your project’s needs. Many libraries either feel outdated or lack the flexibility required for modern development workflows. Brisk addresses this by focusing on:

  1. Performance: Brisk is optimized to run fast, using hardware-accelerated graphics and an efficient event-handling system.
  2. Cross-Platform Support: Build your applications for Windows, macOS, and Linux with minimal changes to your codebase. Mobile devices support is ongoing.
  3. Modern C++ Standards: Brisk is built with C++20, taking full advantage of the latest language features for improved safety, expressiveness, and performance.
  4. Flexibility: Whether you’re developing a simple tool or a complex desktop application, Brisk’s flexible architecture allows you to adapt the toolkit to your needs.

A Sneak Peek into Brisk’s Architecture

Brisk is divided into several core modules, each of which serves a specific purpose:

  • Core Module: Provides utilities such as string manipulation, localization, logging, threading, and reflection. It also offers basic cryptography, compression, and powerful data-binding support.
  • Graphics Module: Supports color management, 2D geometry, image processing, font handling, and SVG rasterization.
  • Window Module: Manages OS interactions like clipboard access, display information, and native dialogs.
  • GUI Module: Offers flexible layout systems, CSS-style theming, and support for both stateful and stateless widgets.
  • Widgets Module: A rich collection of UI components like buttons, text editors, sliders, and more, all of which can be styled and bound to data.

Get Involved

We encourage you to explore the Brisk library and contribute your feedback. Whether you’re interested in contributing code, reporting bugs, or sharing ideas, we’d love to hear from you. You can also check out our example projects to get started quickly with Brisk.

Stay tuned for more updates, tutorials.

What’s Next for Brisk?

As we continue to refine and expand Brisk, we’re focused on delivering a stable Beta release that incorporates feedback from early adopters. Our goal is to make Brisk a go-to toolkit for C++ developers looking to build modern, high-performance applications without the usual hassle of managing cross-platform compatibility.

In future blog posts, we’ll dive deeper into specific features of Brisk, such as how to leverage hardware acceleration, build custom widgets, and optimize your application for different platforms.