So whats in the box?
8 APIs at a Beta level of maturity, 3 new APIs at a Technology Preview level of maturity, some new demonstration applications and many more updates :)
If you were the kind of kid who liked to rip the wrapping of your pressie and get straight to playing, then you will be interested to try the new demo applications first.
We have included:
Flickr demo , which displays a list of flickr images corresponding to the users current location, (or for demo purposes, a hard-coded location is used if there is no GPS source).
Weather Info demo
This displays the weather forecast at the users current location or again, for demo purposes, if no GPS is found then a default location is used. (As you can see its pretty hot these days in Brisbane).
"Lightmaps" demo which is an update to an older demo you may have seen, it shows a lookup of the local street map based on the users location, as determined by GPS.
If no GPS is detected a default location is selected.
The above all utilise the new Bearer Management and Location APIs.
In total there 27 examples. Although some are fairly sparse simple API feature examples, others are a little more interesting, like the above.
Also, for those who like to take their time and get a understand things before diving in, you may enjoy reading our new Whitepaper which covers all of the Beta level APIs.
What else?
Oh yeah, in addition to the source package with documentation updates we have sis and debian packages for you to try on your Maemo and Symbian devices.
Our webpage will direct you toward where you can obtain the downloads.
For those wondering how you can contribute:
The team are moving as fast as they can to offer new APIs, documentation and examples.
There is a lot of work ahead for us, and some great new APIs we hope to include in the future. The todo list is ever growing and our efforts, to be honest, are prioritizing first our Symbian and Maemo platforms. What we would benefit from is contributions toward other Qt platforms which are currently on a lower priority list for the team, but certainly would offer value to developers.
Note: Where we are introducing one of our APIs into Qt, we will first ensure appropriate platform support coverage is in place.
Next steps?
We will continue to mature the APIs and, for most, finalize in the next months.
Sensors and Camera APIs, which are currently at a Technology Preview level of maturity are likely to finalize a little later, as we hope to validate those, with your input, for a while longer.
Other APIs under development include: Document Gallery, Service Framework (out of process), Landmarks, Calendar and many more are on the list to be scheduled.
Have fun with the release and we welcome your feedback and contributions.
kind regards,
Gerard.
PS..
For those of you lucky enough to be attending MWC 2010 in Barcelona you will be able to see some of our demos at the Qt Booth. Its also a good opportunity to meet some of the Qt team face to face. The trolls are located in Hall 1 at stand #1E44.
