Since version 2.12, GTK+ provides #GtkBuilder to construct user interfaces from XML descriptions, similar to the functionality provided by #GladeXML in the libglade library. While GtkBuilder strives to be a complete replacement for libglade, there are a number of areas where it is currently still behind libglade: GtkBuilder can not construct partial trees, it lacks the equivalent of the @root parameter of glade_xml_new(). Due to the way GtkBuilder parses its input, this is difficult to implement, see bug 447998. As a workaround, you can split your glade file into multiple GtkBuilder input files. The gtk-builder-convert conversion script has a --root option that can help with this. GtkBuilder does not yet implement support for accessibility properties. It parses the same <accessibility> elements as libglade, but ignores them. See bug 454983 for the current status of accessibility support in GtkBuilder. GtkBuilder supports context information in translatable properties in a slightly different way than libglade. Intltool does not yet support this; see bug 454894 for the current status of intltool support for GtkBuilder files. Thankfully, context in translations is a rarely used feature, and if you are not using it, intltools glade format support works just fine for GtkBuilder files. More details about migrating from libglade to GtkBuilder will appear here over time...