If it's your first GUI, I would stick with Tk. The reason is the support available. The other GUI's may have some technical superiorities, but when you hit a roadblock, you are often on your own. Whereas the more numerous Tk users are always willing to help with problems.

As far as appearance goes, you can put as much into it as you want. There is nothing stopping you from making your own custom file dialogs, based on a canvas or dirtree in a toplevel widget. You can make the dialog look like anything you want.

As an example, here is the beginning of a custom file dialog, which looks "pro". You just need to "flesh it out".

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use Tk;
require Tk::DirTree;
require Tk::Adjuster;
require Tk::TList;

# The initial directory 
my $initial_dir = '/';

# The main window... 
my $main = new MainWindow( -title => 'Explorer)' );

# A frame for the tree, adjuster and tlist 
my $tree_adj_tablist = $main->Frame();
$tree_adj_tablist->pack(
    -expand => 'yes',
    -fill   => 'both',
    -side   => 'top'
);

# A scrolled directory tree 
my $tree = $tree_adj_tablist->Scrolled(
    'DirTree',
    -width            => 35,
    -height           => 25,
    -scrollbars       => 'osoe',
    -background       => 'White',
    -selectmode       => 'single',
    -selectbackground => 'DarkBlue',
    -selectforeground => 'White',
    -showhidden       => 1,
    -directory        => $initial_dir
);
$tree->pack(
    -expand => 'yes',
    -fill   => 'both',
    -padx   => 2,
    -pady   => 2,
    -side   => 'left'
);

# An adjuster 
my $adjuster = $tree_adj_tablist->Adjuster(
    -widget => $tree,
    -side   => 'left'
);
$adjuster->pack( -side => 'left', -fill => 'y' );

# A scrolled tab_list widget 
my $tab_list = $tree_adj_tablist->Scrolled(
    'TList',
    -background => 'White',
    -orient     => 'vertical',
    -selectmode => 'extended',
    -scrollbars => 'os'
);
$tab_list->pack(
    -expand => 'yes',
    -fill   => 'both',
    -padx   => 2,
    -pady   => 2,
    -side   => 'right'
);

# A Quit button (will be suppressed???...) 
my $quit = $main->Button(
    -text      => 'Quit',
    -underline => 0,
    -width     => 6,
    -command   => sub { exit }
);
$quit->pack( -side => 'right', -padx => 10, -pady => 10 );

# Configuring tree and tab_list widgets... 
$tree->configure( -browsecmd => sub { list_dir( $tab_list, @_ ); } );

# We list the content of the initial dir inside the tab_list 
list_dir( $tab_list, $initial_dir );

MainLoop();

#---------------------------------------------------------------------
+------- 

# Displays Dirs and files in TList widget 
sub list_dir {
    my ( $tab_list, $path ) = @_;

    # Erase the TList content 
    $tab_list->delete( 0, 'end' );

    opendir MY_DIR, $path or return;

    foreach my $file ( sort readdir(MY_DIR) ) {

        # Do not display '.' and '..' 
        next if ( $file eq '.' or $file eq '..' );

        # Insert the files in the TList 
        $tab_list->insert( 'end', -text => $file );
    }
    closedir MY_DIR;
}
[download]

---

---

Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!

Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.

Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.

Please read these before you post! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:

a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr

You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)

	For:		Use:
	&		&
	<		&lt;
	>		&gt;
	[		&#91;
	]		&#93;

Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?

See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.