What's next for ttkbootstrap?

[israel-dryer]

Hey all. I'm sure you're aware, but if not, I've been spending the last year on R&D for ttkbootstrap-next. It's been a huge project, and I've spent a LOT of time experimenting, researching, and trying out different approaches to try to squeeze the most out of a 30+ year old technology. It was originally intended as a replacement for this library, but the changes went a bit too far and it became it's own thing.

That said, ttkbootstrap-next is still moving forward, but I'm going to be taking a bit of a break from that project for next 6 months so that I can spend some time implementing some updates to this one. There are a LOT of things that I learned while working on 'next' that I can use to improve this library, and that's what I plan on doing for the next 6 months or so.

Don't fear, I will not be making huge breaking changes to the API, but definitely a lot of improvements to the style engine performance, more flexibility, and hopefully several new interesting widgets and features.

So, if there some things you've want or have thought lacked in the current setup, now is the time to speak up.

[israel-dryer]

Testing out some new color tokens & simulated transparency...

You will be able to opt-out of the new bootstyle tokens if you want... you can also opt-out of surface color inheritance... but you would miss out on some of the cool features...

The v2 token system is both simplified and expanded... <color>-<variant>-<widget>. All of these parts are optional, of course, but depending on the context, you may need them all.

In addition to the typical color tokens of primary, secondary, etc.. you will also have access to the spectrum of shades from which the theme colors are derived, so that you can add layers.

I'll post more about the enhanced color system in the future, but you will be able to augment color tokens with shades between 100 and 900....

gray[100]-outline or blue[700]

And, "surface" widgets such as frames will project their background color to the children so that it you get a simulated transparency. This is useful now, but also will be more useful and helpful when some of these are converted to nice image layouts.

In the example below, you can see that the outline button appears to be transparent against the frame surface. Only the frame color has changed, but the button is smart enough to recognize what color should be set for the background.

[israel-dryer]

Testing out built-in icon support and color elevation

This video shows a few new features I'm testing... first, built-in icon support... with custom overrides on state mapping.

Also, adding elevation to the color tokens... so you can specify a bootstyle color of background[+1] to increase the elevation of the surface color 1 level... there are 5 levels of elevation. These layers will automatically work for dark and light theme if you decide to switch themes at runtime.

Recording.2025-11-09.200620.mp4

Surface elevation

ttk.Frame(frm, padding=20, bootstyle="background[+1]")

Simple and complex icon references

ttk.Button(frm2, text='Outline', icon="alarm", compound="left", bootstyle="outline").pack(side='left', padx=10, pady=10)

ttk.Button(frm2, text='Default', icon={"name": "house", "state": [('hover', {"name": "house-fill"})]}, compound="left").pack(padx=10, pady=10, side='left')

[israel-dryer]

Button Variants

Adding text and ghost to the line up.

Recording.2025-11-11.065201.mp4

[israel-dryer]

Radio button updated

[israel-dryer]

Check button updated

[israel-dryer]

Toggle updated

[israel-dryer]

Progressbar update

[israel-dryer]

Label style with Icon support

[israel-dryer]

Scale update (dark theme)

Normal and Pressed states displayed

[israel-dryer]

New "Badge" label style

default (square) and pill

[israel-dryer]

Menubutton update

The solid button has focus, the ghost button is hovered

[israel-dryer]

Entry update

[israel-dryer]

Combobox update

[israel-dryer]

Spinbox update

[israel-dryer]

Notebook styles

The notebook border can be hidden using the style_options={"show_border": False} argument.

Tab style (default)

Pill style

bootstyle="pill"

Underline style

bootstyle="underline"

[israel-dryer]

Labelframe styles

[israel-dryer]

Treeview style

Treeview (show="tree")

Customizable style options:

• show_border
• border_color
• select_background
• header_background
• open_icon
• close_icon

Treeview (show="headings")

[israel-dryer]

Toolbuttons

[israel-dryer]

Labeled scale

[israel-dryer]

Meter

Updated the API (with backwards compatibility). The new API is much more readable and understandable. Canvas provides better control over the text components.

[TheDemonGuard]

Just wanted to inform,
There is a discussion about how to change the background color of the Meter widget. #599
From my understanding, the discussion is about changing the background of the inner circle of the meter(?)

[TheDemonGuard]

By the way, handling negative value(s) also addressed?
I vaguely remember there was some discussion? but I could not find it at the moment.

[israel-dryer]

@TheDemonGuard , yes negative values have been addressed already in the existing version.

Currently, there is no means of changing the inner circle background color. The indicator is just an image generated on demand, so theoretically that could be done. But I think for now I'll leave it as is.