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To get a wxRuby application going, you will need to derive a Wx::App class and implement Wx::App#on_init in which you will typically create your application main top-level window.

This window can be a Wx::Frame or a Wx::Dialog and may contain one or more instances of classes such as Wx::Panel, Wx::SplitterWindow or other windows and controls. These windows can be created from Ruby code or loaded from resource definitions in XRC format.

A frame can have a Wx::MenuBar, a Wx::ToolBar, a Wx::StatusBar, and a Wx::Icon for when the frame is iconized.

A Wx::Panel is used to place controls (classes derived from Wx::Control) which are used for user interaction. Examples of controls are Wx::Button, Wx::CheckBox, Wx::Choice, Wx::ListBox, Wx::RadioBox, and Wx::Slider. Such controls need to be positioned correctly – and also repositioned when the top-level window is resized by the user – and to do this you use Wx::Sizer-derived classes, such as Wx::BoxSizer and Wx::FlexGridSizer, to layout everything correctly.

Instances of Wx::Dialog can also be used for controls and they have the advantage of not requiring a separate panel inside them.

Instead of creating a dialog box and populating it with items, it is possible to choose one of the convenient common dialog classes, such as Wx::MessageDialog and Wx::FileDialog.

You never draw directly onto a window – you use either one of the older device context (DC) classes or the newer graphics context (GC) one, that support features such as alpha transparency or anti-aliasing. Wx::DC is the base for Wx::ClientDC, Wx::PaintDC, Wx::MemoryDC, Wx::BufferedDC, Wx::BufferedPaintDC, Wx::AutoBufferedPaintDC, Wx::PostScriptDC, Wx::ScreenDC, Wx::MirrorDC, Wx::SVGFileDC, Wx::GCDC and Wx::PrinterDC. If your drawing functions have Wx::DC as a parameter, you can pass any of these DCs to the function, and thus use the same code to draw to several different devices. You can draw using the member functions of Wx::DC, such as Wx::DC#draw_line and Wx::DC#draw_text. Control colour on a window (Wx::Colour)) with brushes (Wx::Brush) and pens (Wx::Pen).

With Wx::GraphicsContext, you create it using one of the methods of Wx::GraphicsRenderer and then construct your drawing from Wx::GraphicsPath objects, finally using Wx::GraphicsContext#stroke_path or Wx::GraphicsContext#fill_path.

GUI programs spend most of their time waiting for the user-initiated events – and then processing them. To do it, you use either one of the named event connector methods (like Wx::EvtHandler#evt_menu, Wx::EvtHandler#evt_button etc.) or Wx::EvtHandler#connect to specify the handler for an event of the given time. Event handlers receive the object describing the event, such as Wx::KeyEvent or Wx::MouseEvent, and perform whichever action corresponds to it. See events handling overview for much more information about this subject.