When it comes down to feature-richness in UI Libraries Cocoa really shines. Especially the 10.5 bump, bringing Core Animation to the table, really extended the graphicall capabilities of Cocoa. The Windows Vista pendant, “Avalon”, for example, offers a wide set of features just as well, but still lacks a extensive integrated animation package (apart from many other smaller details).
Avalon however, just as well as Cocoa, is bound to the underlying operating system and thus not available for other platforms.
So if one intends to write a multiplatform graphically extensive application, one either has to write seperate backends for each operating system, or use a agnostic framework, like for example Trolltech’s Qt or the open source Clutter.
Clutter has a lot to offer:
- OpenGL / OpenGL ES compatible
- 2D Layered scenes with possible 3D transformations
- Built-in Effects and Filters
- Media Playback
- WebKit Support, meaning one can mix WebKit with UI Elements just as with Cocoa
- Built-In Animation engine, much like Core Animation (albeit less powerfull)
- Linux, Windows, MacOSX and even iPhone Support
- Written in C, bindings for Perl, Python, C#, C++, Vala and Ruby
And much more. As you can see, Clutter has a lot to offer. It’s still at version 0.6.2, so maybe not yet ready for production use. However, if you’re thinking about developing a graphically extensive application that has to be deployed to several platforms at the same time, including iPhone, Clutter could come to the rescue.