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Nokia on Dec. 1 released Qt 4.6, “the latest version of the company’s cross-platform application and UI framework” for building applications for Symbian OS-based smartphones, Nokia’s Maemo and other platforms.
In addition to “new platform support,” Qt 4.6 features “new graphical capabilities and support for multitouch and gestures,” Nokia said. The news release continued:
““Qt 4.6 includes support for the Symbian platform for the first time, and also adds Windows 7, Apple Mac OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and the upcoming Maemo 6 to the list of Qt supported platforms. Also available is community support for real-time operating systems QNX and VxWorks. Support for Maemo 5 is also currently in development, with the second technology preview being released today.Qt support for Symbian and Maemo creates the first opportunity for developers to target both of these platforms from the same codebase. Being able to share code across platforms means that the applications they create will reach the market faster and reach a broader audience of device users.”“
“Qt 4.6 marks an exciting time for developers, regardless of their target form factor or platform,” Sebastian Nystrom, Nokia vice president of Application Services and Frameworks, said in a statement.
“Developers can easily create visually appealing and Web-connected applications for desktops or devices, including targeting the hundreds of millions of Symbian and Maemo-based devices,” Nystrom said. “The community will enjoy using Qt’s intuitive programming interface to quickly create powerful, appealing applications.”
Meanwhile, Nokia also released a “technology preview of new Qt APIs from the Qt Mobility project. These cross-platform APIs provide developers with functionality such as location for navigation-type devices, as well as messaging, contacts and bearer management,” Nokia said.
Qt 4.6 also includes a “new Animation Framework–including intuitive state machine functionality–plus new advanced graphics effects like opacity, drop shadows, glow and filtering.” And the new version also supports “new multitouch and gesture-based input methods such as flicking and kinetic scrolling [to] make Qt 4.6 a powerful framework for creating dynamic, tactile ways for users to interact with applications and devices.”
The new release features “performance improvements … in the form of a highly optimized, rewritten Qt GraphicsView rendering algorithm, a new OpenGL paint engine, WebKit, 2D vector graphic support using OpenVG and new DirectFB support,” Nokia said.
Also, in conjunction with the release of Qt 4.6, comes “an updated release of Qt Creator, a cross-platform IDE [integrated development environment] for Qt development. Qt Creator 1.3 and Qt 4.6 form the Qt SDK [software development kit], which contains everything developers need to create cross-platform applications.
“To learn more about Qt 4.6, Qt Creator 1.3 and to download the packages, please visit http://qt.nokia.com/whatsnew.“