Modern GUI Animation using QPropertyAnimation with Python, Qt Designer, and PySide2 (or PyQt5) Widgets

Introduction:

In this tutorial, we will learn how to create a modern graphical user interface (GUI) using Python, Qt Designer, and PySide2 (or PyQt5). We will focus on using QPropertyAnimation to create dynamic animations for our widgets, which will enhance the user experience of our application.
We will cover the following topics in this tutorial:

1. Setting up your development environment
2. Designing your GUI using Qt Designer
3. Using PySide2 (or PyQt5) to load and interact with your GUI
4. Using QPropertyAnimation to animate widgets in your GUI

Setting up your development environment:

Before we begin, make sure you have Python installed on your computer. You can download Python from the official website (https://www.python.org/). We will also need Qt Designer, which is part of the Qt development tools. You can download Qt Designer from the Qt website (https://www.qt.io/download).

Once you have Python and Qt Designer installed, you will need to install PySide2 (or PyQt5) using pip. Open a terminal window and run the following command:

pip install PySide2

or

pip install PyQt5

Designing your GUI using Qt Designer:

Open Qt Designer and create a new form using the "Main Window" template. Design your GUI layout by dragging and dropping widgets from the toolbox onto the form. For this tutorial, we will create a simple application with a button that animates when clicked.

Add a QPushButton widget to the form and set its text property to "Animate". Save your form as "mainwindow.ui".

Using PySide2 (or PyQt5) to load and interact with your GUI:

In your Python script, import the necessary modules:

import sys
from PySide2.QtWidgets import QApplication, QMainWindow
from PySide2.QtUiTools import QUiLoader

If you are using PyQt5 instead of PySide2, you can use the following imports:

from PyQt5.QtWidgets import QApplication, QMainWindow
from PyQt5.uic import loadUi

Create a class that inherits from QMainWindow:

class MainWindow(QMainWindow):
    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__()
        loader = QUiLoader()
        self.ui = loader.load("mainwindow.ui", self)

If you are using PyQt5, you can load the UI file using the loadUi function instead:

class MainWindow(QMainWindow):
    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__()
        loadUi("mainwindow.ui", self)

Instantiate the QApplication and MainWindow classes:

if __name__ == "__main__":
    app = QApplication(sys.argv)
    window = MainWindow()
    window.show()
    sys.exit(app.exec_())

Run your script to see your GUI displayed with the "Animate" button. Next, we will add animation to the button using QPropertyAnimation.

Using QPropertyAnimation to animate widgets in your GUI:

Import the necessary module:

from PySide2.QtCore import QPropertyAnimation

If you are using PyQt5, you can import QPropertyAnimation from the PyQt5.QtCore module instead.

Add the following method to the MainWindow class to animate the button:

def animate_button(self):
    animation = QPropertyAnimation(self.ui.button, b"geometry")
    animation.setDuration(1000)
    animation.setStartValue(self.ui.button.geometry())
    animation.setEndValue(self.ui.button.geometry().adjusted(200, 0, 200, 0))
    animation.start()

Connect the "clicked" signal of the button to the animate_button method in the MainWindow class:

self.ui.button.clicked.connect(self.animate_button)

Run your script and click the "Animate" button to see it move to the right. You can customize the animation by adjusting the duration, start value, and end value properties of the QPropertyAnimation.

Conclusion:

In this tutorial, we have learned how to create a modern graphical user interface using Python, Qt Designer, and PySide2 (or PyQt5). We have demonstrated how to use QPropertyAnimation to animate widgets in our GUI, enhancing the user experience of our application. Experiment with different animations and customize them to suit your design preferences. The possibilities are endless, so have fun exploring and creating dynamic GUIs with Python and Qt!