Qt for Rapid Mobile Application Development

Abstract

Today s mobile devices landscape requires a change in the way applications are developed. The challenges and the pressures increase every single day, from a demand for multiple-platform applications, ease of use of the development tools, as well as a much faster time-to-market. Qt is a well-known, multi-platform application GUI framework developed by Oslobased Qt Software. Unique in its class, Qt is distributed under a dual license that permits both open-source and commercial application developments. It is thus not a surprise that Qt serves as the basis of many prominent software, from KDE - a leading graphical desktop environment for Linux - to high-profile end-user applications such as Opera, Skype, Google Earth and many others. Although originally designed as a toolkit for desktop applications, Qt has been ported to various mobile operating systems. As of now, Qt is also available for Embedded Linux, Windows CE/Windows Mobile, and S60, among others. The main target of Qt is C++. However, there is also a binding which allows seamless integration with the Java-based development model. Qt offers a rich set of classes required to build any modern desktop and mobile applications. There are a set of standard widgets for GUI, look-and-feel styling and skinning, network classes, XML parsing module, advanced low-level and high-level painting system, high-performance canvas, internationalization support, unit-testing framework as well as a web rendering engine through WebKit. This talk will highlight the advantages of using Qt for mobile application development, such as the write-once-compileeverywhere mantra, beautiful and blazing-fast graphics, rapid GUI designing and prototyping, multimedia support, application scripting, Web 2.0 integration, and many others related topics.