Saturday, June 30, 2018

An IDLE Shortcut After Installing Python

After installing the Python programming language you will want to create a short cut to the Idle program.  IDLE stands for Integrated Development and Learning Environment and is a very useful tool.  You can execute lines of Python code, segments of Python code, and entire Python programs with this tool.  Here is the desktop shortcut I use to launch Python IDLE. 

The Python installer will not create this for you, so I am explaining how to do it.
Go to this location  C:\Python27\Lib\idlelib\
Make a desktop shortcut to idle.bat
Right click on the new shortcut and select "Properties"
Change the icon with  the Change Icon button.
Browse to this location to find the icon   C:\Python27\Lib\idlelib\Icons\
Select idle.ico as the icon.  Yes, dot ico means icon, but your Windows explorer has to be set to show the dot ico.  Do that by clicking on the View menu in your Windows Explorer and checking the box that says "Filename extensions."  
Finally, right click on the desktop shortcut and select "Rename."
I changed the name to IDLE (Python). 
Double click on this shortcut and you get this GUI.
See how I used it to multiply two numbers together.  I use IDLE frequently as calculator.  Click on the File menu and you can open a Python source code program.
The program opens in a new window and has a Run menu.  The Python Idle GUI is the door way to a lot of useful functionality.

Robert







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