Qt Gets Prettied Up (
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Qt Software (pronounced “cute”) gets gussied up with a makeover in Qt 4.5 and also is chosen as a key platform for development on the Nokia S60 smart phone software stack. Qt 4.5 focuses on performance, WebKit integration and 64-bit support. Meanwhile, the S60 support gives Qt developers a new area of focus, as Nokia has shipped more than 80 million S60 3rd Edition handsets (the version Qt will support).LONDON—Already attractive to
thousands of developers, the Qt (pronounced "cute") cross-platform
application framework became a lot more attractive to a whole new group of
developers recently.
Not only did Qt Software announce the availability of the Qt framework for
the Nokia S60 platform on Oct. 20, but the company formerly known as Trolltech
and now owned by Nokia
also released a technology preview of Qt 4.5, the next version of the software.
On Oct. 21, Qt Software announced the Technology Preview of Qt 4.5—the
upcoming new version of its cross-platform application framework for desktop
and embedded development. Qt officials said preview packages are now available
to commercial and open-source users for download, testing and feedback.
The
Technology Preview provides a first, complete look at new Qt features—all of
which are aimed at achieving the three primary design goals for the Qt 4.5
release: to improve the run-time performance of Qt-based applications; to allow
Qt users to realize the full potential of WebKit; and to future-proof Qt users’
investments on the Mac platform with added 64-bit support, Qt Software
officials said.
In a meeting with eWEEK at the Symbian
Smartphone Show here, Benoit Schillings, chief technology officer at Qt
Software, said his group "spent a lot of time focusing on performance,
graphics processing and other things. Compatibility with 64-bit Mac OS is
important, as is enhanced support for the WebKit engine. Qt engineers are quite
familiar with WebKit."
Nokia sets Symbian Foundation road map. Learn more here.
Qt Software officials said Qt 4.5 brings a new performance benchmarking
library, focused re-engineering of key functionality and a new pluggable
graphics system—all aimed at increasing the performance of Qt-based
applications. And because most engineering work has been done to the core
Qt API, in most cases Qt users need only to
upgrade to Qt 4.5 to realize performance benefits immediately, the company
said.
Moreover, the company said Qt integrates with the WebKit browser engine, and
with Qt 4.5 that integration has been upgraded to utilize the latest version of
WebKit. Qt users can now preview new Netscape plug-in support—which allows
developers to incorporate Adobe Flash content—added support for HTML 5 and
integration with a new JavaScript engine, SquirrelFish.
And, continuing the Qt tradition of insulating developers from
platform-specific changes, Qt 4.5 adds support for developing 64-bit
applications on top of the new Mac Cocoa API,
making it possible for Qt developers to deploy resource-intensive applications
to the latest version of the Mac OS (10.5), Qt Software officials said.
In addition, Qt 4.5 takes advantage of Greenhouse, Qt's IDE
(integrated development environment). Greenhouse "is not a full-fledged IDE
like Eclipse or Visual Studio, but a lightweight IDE
driven by our needs in that area," Schillings said.
Application Development 
