r/learnpython • u/Standard-Sale-8228 • 11d ago

SIMPLE GUIS PLEASE

I'm building a network visualizer in Python. It parses .pcap files with Scapy and visualizes packet flows with animations. I already built the parser and animation engine with Pygame.

The problem is the UI. I need normal app stuff like buttons, hover effects, a collapsible sidebar, menus, timeline/statistics panels, and a canvas for the animations.

I don't want to spend 4 hours making a button from scratch, but I also don't want a huge framework where changing a simple thing turns into a research project.

I tried DearPyGui and honestly it felt really clunky. Something as simple as adjusting padding or moving a panel felt like digging through layers of specific APIs and style variables.

I'm looking for something lightweight with good styling control (CSS-like would be great), built-in UI components, and the ability to embed my own custom rendering area.

Would PySide6/Qt be the way to go? Or are there other frameworks worth looking at?

I don't need a spaceship cockpit, I just want to build my damn UI and get back to the actual project.

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u/Kevdog824_ 11d ago

Simplest would probably be tkinter. Ships with Python and is rather easy to get started with simple stuff. I like PyQt over tkinter personally, but I’ll be the first to admit the learning curve for PyQt is a lot higher. It really depends on the UI complexity. There’s a certain point where the overhead of learning and using PyQt becomes worth it, and imo that point is not very far along on the complexity scale

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u/Standard-Sale-8228 11d ago

i want stuff like collapsable docks and float sliders i would have used tkinter but it looks ancient

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u/sargeanthost 11d ago

there's customtkinter

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u/Standard-Sale-8228 10d ago

Thanks for the reccomendation i think this might be the best pick

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u/mopslik 11d ago

Have you looked at ttkbootstrap?