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Qt in a Nutshell

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Getting Started with Qt
 > Qt in a Nutshell > Qt Technical Overview > Qt Quick Start

Qt (pronounced "Cute") is a powerful cross-platform application and UI framework. It allows you to write graphics and animation rich applications for Symbian mobile devices that can be deployed across other desktop, mobile and embedded operating systems with little or no platform-specific source code.

Qt development is based on standard C++. Qt adds its own frameworks, programming idioms and additional tools in order to improve application portability, and to make life easier and safer for C++ developers (e.g. in areas like memory management and inter-object communication). The Qt APIs are well designed, and provide a fairly high level of abstraction; this makes development easier and faster than with other C++ options on the Symbian platform.

Qt binaries can be separately installed onto Symbian mobile devices from S60 3rd Edition, FP1 through to Symbian^2. In Symbian^3, Qt binaries will be pre-installed on mobile devices, co-existing with the current Symbian C++ GUI Framework. From Symbian^4 the intention is that Qt will be the only UI framework on Symbian devices.

Contents

Key features

  • Enables the rapid development of rich user interfaces
  • Intuitive APIs, with idioms that make C++ programming easier for developers
  • Designed for cross platform development; write once, compile for any supported target
  • Compatible with Standard C++ making it easier to port code from Linux
  • New APIs provide cross-platform access to key mobile use cases

Pros and Cons

Pros
  • Portability across desktop and embedded operating systems
  • Rich GUI widget set and intuitive C++ class library
  • Powerful frameworks for graphics and web hybrid applications
  • Powerful and intuitive tools, including IDE and tools for internationalization
  • Large and active developer community
  • Code is open source
  • Supported by other mobile platforms such as Windows Mobile and maemo
  • Can integrate with Symbian C++ and Open C/C++ code to leverage full power of the platform
Cons
  • Applications need to bundle Qt binaries for all current phones
  • Not all Qt libraries have been ported yet
  • Qt may not run as effectively on devices with older hardware
  • Cross platform goal not yet fully realised on mobile devices:
    • Currently missing cross platform APIs for core mobile use cases (e.g. camera)
    • Desktop user interface layouts may need to be recreated for smaller mobile screens

Effort estimate

3 (1 – 5, where 1 is the easiest)

Market share indicator

Qt is used by hundreds of thousands of developers worldwide, working on Linux, Windows, Mac OSX and embedded platforms. Qt can run on S60 3rd Edition, FP1 based phones and later, a market which comprises in the region of a hundred million units.

Examples

At time of writing most Symbian platform Qt applications have been written for demonstration purposes. Qt applications running on the desktop, including Google Earth, are listed here: Qt in Use

Getting Started with Qt
 > Qt in a Nutshell > Qt Technical Overview > Qt Quick Start
Retrieved from "http://developer.symbian.org/wiki/index.php/Qt_in_a_Nutshell"

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