Qt Quick is here, with community driven Qt ports for Android and Integrity RTOS and an exciting Qt roadmap
March 01, 2011 by Daniel Kihlberg | Comments
With the release of Qt Creator 2.1, we have now passed the official milestone needed to mark the official release of Qt Quick! Qt Quick (Qt UI Creation Kit) introduces exciting new functionality into Qt that lets developers and UI designers work together to rapidly create beautiful, fluid UIs and applications for any Qt platform, all based on our simple-to-learn QML language.
Qt Quick’s arrival is a good time to share some thoughts on its importance to Qt growth. Since 2007 we have been working towards making Qt a strong framework for building web-enabled devices. This was further supported with the introduction of the Qt Webkit integration in Qt 4.4. Following our acquisition by Nokia, we had additional requirements for designing and creating sexy UIs and apps for touch screen devices.
Without exaggeration I can say this about Qt Quick: Qt Quick is our next game changer. Qt Quick makes Qt easily accessible to many new developers and designers that are reluctant to learn or perform C++ coding, or those that find it challenging to create fluid touch UIs using our current tools. We estimate that many, many developers fall into one of these two categories.
Qt Quick arrives at a time where on-going investments in Qt by Nokia and by community members continue. Developers can look forward to a strong Qt roadmap. As you may know, Qt is used by many leading consumer electronic companies – in addition to Nokia – that use Qt to deliver tens of millions of web enabled devices such as printers, tablets, eBook readers, photo frames, Skype / video phones and more.
Results of some of our Qt research projects such as Lighthouse, intended as an upgrade and replacement for Qt for Embedded Linux, as well as the improvements in Qt WebKit for a better Internet experience will make Qt an ever more interesting choice for, in particular, Linux device developers for the years to come.
There are also some interesting research projects in Qt Labs and on our roadmap that can add even more force to Qt Quick’s growth, such as:
- Research of Google’s V8 JavaScript engine for use in Qt
- Research of how to export Photoshop (and Illustrator) files into QML
- The Scene Graph research project on making better use of modern graphic hardware
Follow our Qt blog and Qt Labs blog during this week and you’ll see a number of posts about cutting edge Qt Quick work, including Qt components for desktop, pinch area for two-finger interaction (4.7.3), touch area for raw touch point access, as well as right to left support for QML UIs.
As well as living within Nokia on Symbian and MeeGo, Qt lives in many places outside of Nokia too. Qt Community ports (not official Qt supported ports) are increasing in number and in popularity, and they are driving innovation and improvement by increasing involvement by the Qt developer community. We see this as a great up-side of being part of an open source community.
Probably the most interesting initiative, in good alpha quality, is the Qt for Android port using the Qt Creator IDE to let developers manage, develop, deploy, run & debug Qt Applications on Android Devices.
That Qt is also making its inroads in other areas – such as WebOS – is also interesting.
Finally, let us not forget the existing RTOS ports: QNX, INTEGRITY and VxWorks, used in industries such as IP-based communications, aerospace, medical and automotive. During the last few years we have seen a strong up-take in Qt in embedded devices, including this example of what Qt can be used for.
Developers wanting to enhance the functionality of these incomplete community ports can do so through contributions to the Gitorious open repository.
So with Qt Quick and our new releases, developers in the Qt community have even better tools to create great UIs and applications for multiple platforms.
Qt is very much alive, and now is an exciting time to be working with it. We are energized and ready to take Qt even further in collaboration with all of you.
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Commenting for this post has ended.
And Nokia itself goes to WP7 with no Qt :P That's the most stupid decision Nokia has ever made :P So now other platforms like Android are getring Qt and Nokia abandons it on it's own devices... I can only say IDIOTS !!!
Great news!
Great news indeed. That this runs on Green Hill's Integrity just rocks.
Wish Nokia would smell the bacon too and embrace Qt instead of that Silverlight crap.
Does Qt on QNX mean Blackberry TabletOS will have Qt support?
Like most Qt developers, I was sceptic of the whole Nokia-Microsoft deal. Nothing against MS here, just that the investments under Qt were under a question mark, if not entirely doomed.
With the benefit of the time that has passed, one things I can personally reassure myself that Qt is going to stay.
And the whole deal is not bad from company's perspectives either. They are behind the game and it's better to shake up and wake up while you still have a market reach and distribution network rather than lose your network to competitors. While we developers want to feel self-important, there are others at the end of the supply chain who impact the whole game.
I personally don't like the way 3rd ecosystem noise is being made ( primarily the part about telecom networks not being a dumb pipe, I think they are and should be a dump pipe only ) but from our perspectives, specially as a Qt developer, I have started believing in its good future again.
At times there are beepers (highlighting WeTab 10 days ago when it's out there and known to us for months already) which kind of seems like someone weaving wool over our eyes... But for now, we can discount htose as over-zealous and self-conscious managers trying to show their worth.
( back to downloading couple of gbs of SDK )
I've been at Embedded World in Nürnberg today.
Lots of Qt to be seen there. The other thing I noticed was that Ubuntu is everywhere. Ubuntu+Qt = winning combination.
Hi everyone from Ecuador and writing in spanish:
Voy a apoyar y crear proyecto para hacer de QT una gra comunidad monopòlica entre los IDEs o SDKs :-)
Larga viva a QT Creator
desde Riobamba-Ecaudor
Pretty funny. The CEO of Nokia declares war against Android and a new announcement that QT will work on Android. I guess at Nokia , the left hand does not speak to the right hand.
UN----BELIEVABLE!
It seems to me that puppeteer will have disobedient hand thrown in wood chipper pretty soon.
Qt puts .NET to shame and Balmer is red with anger. So he will order his puppet to do something about it.
Daniel, many thanks for linking to my blog post of the QNX medical reference design, which features a Qt-based interface. I've just linked to a video that shows the reference design in action, if anyone is interested:
http://onqpl.blogspot.com/2...
Thanks,
- Paul
"As you may know, Qt is used by many leading consumer electronic companies – in addition to Nokia – that use Qt to deliver tens of millions of web enabled devices such as printers, tablets, eBook readers, photo frames, Skype / video phones and more."
I think the message is pretty clear :)
Qt is being used in so many areas these days that the decision by Nokia to drop it from its next line of mobile phones will just be a major shot in the foot. In fact, it would be great irony if Qt will run on Android, RIM's QNX and WebOS as well as countless other "non-mobile" platforms while Nokia's own smartphone platform will not support Qt. In any case, it is good that Qt is progressing.
QT for iPhone!!!
QT for Android!!!
QT for Symbian.
then QT will QT for everything!
Nokia will create a special device named "Everything" which will run QT. Then QT for everything! :D
Well, it's very interesting to run QT on embedded/real time system: make QT technologies available for developer, which reduce difficulties and time.
ARM has posted a new video of the QNX medical reference design -- it provides a closer look at the unit's Qt-based user interface than the video I provided a few days ago (see comment above).
To see the new video, visit: http://onqpl.blogspot.com/2...
@Konstantin Tokarev
Please check out the Toshiba ac100 its available in russia as 3g version with 32G emmc
@Pat: I believe in theory it is possible to have Qt on the Blackberry, however I have not heard anything about this happening at this stage. We had initial QNX support before they were acquired by RIM.