The cause?  Not in the HTML or CSS code.  It’s in the browser.  Firefox and many other browsers (except Microsoft’s IE) hide the vertical scroll bar on short web pages, and show them in long pages.  The difference of ~16 pixels is enough to irk many web designers when the design of the page realigns to accomodate the scroll bar on longer pages.

The solution is fairly simple; force the scroll bar to show on all pages:

html
{
    min-height: 100%;
    margin-bottom: 1px;
}

1. Select your target.  wxWidgets compiles onto Windows, Mac OS X, GTK+, X11, Motif, WinCE, and many more platforms.
2. Choose you weapon.  wxWidgets supports C++, Python, Perl, C#, and
   many more languages.  You can choose C++ for highly optimized
   applications, to Python, for a very dynamic code base.
3. Ever spot a Java app a mile away?  The wxWidget application GUI integrate seamlessly into your desktop because it uses native GUI elements.
4. Maturity.  wxWidgets has come a long way and is a stable platform for development.
5. Community.  wxWidgets has a strong developer community writing code and willing to answer questions.

Compiling wxWidgets is not difficult. Here are instructions for compiling wxWidgets.

Windows

1. Download and install Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition.
2. Download the latest wxWidgets stable release for Windows (under “wxMSW”).  I prefer the zip archive over the installer version.
3. Extract wxWidgets.  For this example, I downloaded wxMSW-2.8.9.zip and extracted the “wxMSW-2.8.9″ directory to “c:\dev\libs” (directories I created).  My wxWidgets path is “c:\dev\libs\wxMSW-2.8.9\” .  Yours may be different; adjust accordingly.
4. Open “wxMSW-2.8.9\build\msw\wx.dsw” .  This should bring up Visual C++.
5. Choose one of the DLL build configurations under “Solution Configurations” in the toolbar.  (Do not choose a “Universal” configuration, as this configuration is limited and does not use native widgets.)

   I prefer to use the “DLL Unicode Debug” and “DLL Unicode Release” builds.  wxWidgets 3 (The Next Generation) may only support Unicode builds, and not ANSI.

   Furthermore, if you are contemplating using wxWidgets for a proprietary or closed source project, the LGPL license does not permit you to statically link your project.  However, you may use dynamic linking via DLL’s.

6. Right click on each project in the “Solution Explorer” and choose “Build”.

   Projects must be built in the following order:
   jpeg
   png
   tiff
   zlib
   regex
   expat
   base
   net
   odbc
   core
   gl
   html
   media
   qa
   adv
   dbgrid*
   xrc
   aui
   richtext

   *If dbgrid fails to build, make sure “dbgrid” is selected in Solution Explorer.  Go to the “Project” menu / “Properties” / “Configuration Properties” / “Linker” / “Input”.  Under “Additional Dependencies”, delete the entry “..\..\lib\vc_dll\wxbase28ud_odbc.lib”.  Attempt to build dbgrid again.

7. Go to the “Start” menu / “Control Panel” / “System” / “Advanced tab” / “Environment Variables” button.

   Click on “New” and under “Variable name:” enter “wxwin”.
   Under “Variable value:” enter “c:\dev\libs\wxMSW-2.8.9″ or the path to your wxWidgets base directory.  Click on “OK”.

8. If all has gone well, wxWidgets is fully compiled and ready for use.  The following are important variables to feed into your compiler for your own apps:

   Additional Include Directories: “($wxwin)\include” “($wxwin)\lib\vc_dll\mswud”
   Additional Library Dependencies: “($wxwin)\lib\vc_dll”

9. That’s it!  Open the sample applications and compile them.

table = [ [ None for c in range(columns) ] for r in range(rows) ]

Linker Not Found

Mozilla Build Tools blends a *nix build environment with Microsoft’s Visual Studio build tools. Many packages though, aren’t aware of Microsoft’s build tools. A common error is:


configure: error: no acceptable ld found in $PATH

A quick and easy fix for this is to run the ‘./configure’ command as:


LD=link.exe ./configure

where ‘link.exe’ point to the path of your linker.

Cairo is growing in popularity, and is used in applications such as Firefox 3.

Compiling Cairo can be a long and difficult process, especially if one has never done it before.  The following is a guide to make that task simpler.

Cairo requires several libraries in order to fully compile with PNG and PDF extensions.

1. Download the latest version of Cairo, pixman, libpng, and zlib.  Here are the URLs:

2. Extract the files.  In my case, the resulting directories are:
C:\devel\libs\cairo-1.8.0
C:\devel\libs\pixman-0.12.0
C:\devel\libs\libpng-1.2.32
C:\devel\libs\zlib-1.2.3

Compiling zlib

Open “C:\devel\libs\zlib-1.2.3\contrib\vstudio\vc8\zlibvc.sln” and convert the solution.

Change the “Solutions Platform” in the toolbar from “Itanium” to “Win32″. Make sure “Solution Configurations” in the toolbar is set to “Debug”.

Right click on “zlibvc” in the “Solution Explorer” and go to “Properties”. Perform the following actions:

Click on “OK” to close the “Properties” box. Right click on “zlibvc” in the “Solution Explorer”, and click on “Build”.

The output files, “zlib1.lib” and “zlib1.dll”, are located at: “C:\devel\libs\zlib-1.2.3\contrib\vstudio\vc8\x86\ZlibDllDebug”
The zlib include directory is: “C:\devel\libs\zlib-1.2.3″.

Compiling libpng

Open “C:\devel\libs\libpng-1.2.32\projects\visualc71\libpng.sln” and convert the solution.  Delete the “zlib” project from the “Solution Explorer”.

Make sure “Solution Configurations” in the toolbar is set to “DLL ASM Debug”.

Right click on “libpng” in the “Solution Explorer” and go to “Properties”.

Click on “OK” to close the “Properties” box.  Right click on “libpng” in the “Solution Explorer”, and click on “Build”.

The output files, “libpng13d.lib” and “libpng13d.dll”, are located at: “C:\devel\libs\libpng-1.2.32\projects\visualc71\Win32_DLL_ASM_Debug”
The zlib include directory is: “C:\devel\libs\libpng-1.2.32″.

Compiling Pixman

Pixman includes a makefile for Microsoft Visual Studio’s compiler and linker.  However, the makefile itself is not compatible with Microsoft’s nmake.exe.  A good path to take that does not involve installing Cygwin is to install the MozillaBuild environment.  Visual Studio 9 includes all the necessary windows headers and libraries, but MozillaBuild demands a Windows Platform SDK installation.  Install the Windows Server 2003 version, not the Windows Server 2008 version!  MozillaBuild won’t recognize the latter.

Start MozillaBuild by executing “C:\mozilla-build\start-msvc9.bat”, and go to the pixman directory by executing “cd /c/devel/libs/pixman-0.12.0/pixman”.  Execute “make -f Makefile.win32 CFG=debug”.

The output file, “pixman-1.lib”, will be in the directory “C:\devel\libs\pixman-0.12.0\pixman\debug”.
The pixman include directory is: “C:\devel\libs\pixman-0.12.0\pixman”.

Compiling Cairo

And now, for the last leg of this marathon build session!

Start Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition.  Start a new “Empty Project”. Here are my settings:

From “C:\devel\libs\cairo-1.8.0\src”, add the following files to the “Solution Explorer”:

Do not add the following files:

Open “cairo-features.h” from the “Solution Explorer” and replace its contents with the following:

#ifndef CAIRO_FEATURES_H
#define CAIRO_FEATURES_H

#endif

Close and save cairo-features.h .

Make sure “Solution Configurations” in the toolbar is set to “Debug”.

Right click on “libcairo” in the “Solution Explorer” and go to “Properties”.

Click on “OK” to close the “Properties” box.  Right click on “libcairo” in the “Solution Explorer”, and click on “Build”.

The output files, “libcairod.lib” and “libcairod.dll”, are located at:
“C:\devel\libs\cairo-1.8.0\vs9\libcairo\Debug”
The Cairo include directory is: “C:\devel\libs\cairo-1.8.0\src”.

That’s it.. enjoy! Make sure to visit my wxCairo tutorial!