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QT 4.5 Released, Plus New IDE and Analysis Tool

Posted by timothy on from the cute-train-is-the-q-train dept.

stoolpigeon writes "QT 4.5 has arrived and is now available for download. This new release is quite significant due to licensing changes that now make it simpler to use QT in a wider range of products without cost as well as a number of new features. The latest version of Webkit is now integrated into the product. Qt 4.5 sees the introduction of QtBenchLib, a new component to make measuring the performance of the toolkit and checking for regressions easier. Mac developers who use Qt will note a major reworking of 4.5 on the Mac, now providing 64-bit support. QT Creator is a new IDE that looks to have combined a number of previously separate tools. And there is much more."

12 of 62 comments (clear)

  1. From native to web by arendjr · · Score: 4, Informative

    In a world that's moving fast from native application to web-based applications, I believe their bet in integrating WebKit is an excellent choice.

    At my company (a web company) we had to choose a platform for our native client and basically the choice boiled down to Mozilla's XUL platform, Adobe AIR and (just in time) Qt with WebKit. We decided for the latter and do not regret it!

    While QtWebKit has a lot of rough edges in Qt 4.4, I believe there is a *lot* of potential, especially given the huge improvements they made in that area in Qt 4.5. JavaScript has seen a huge speed bump due to the SquirrelFish engine, you can expose C++ objects to JavaScript (already in 4.4), and with some work you can even connect native Qt signals to JavaScript methods, there now is support for HTML5 and CSS3 transformations. Without exaggeration, this really is the best of both worlds.

    And now with the LGPL license option it's even available to about everyone who wants it. Good job!

    1. Re:From native to web by arendjr · · Score: 4, Informative

      It's the latter. You can just use web controls as part of a native application. Basically you can just create a native application window, and render its entire contents using HTML/CSS. Or just a part of the window if you like. And all JavaScript code in those web parts can just call back to your native code where needed.

      And the other way around is also possible. You can embed native controls into your web view just like how you embed a Flash object into a web page. And again, there's no problem in communicating between native code and JavaScript. Though if you want to pass complex data structures you will likely want to pass those as JSON objects (which in turn can be easily mapped to and from QVariantMaps, if you Google around you will find plenty solutions for that).

  2. WebKit support and Acid 3 by MrHanky · · Score: 2, Informative

    Using Qt 4.5-rc1 from Debian Experimental and the Arora browser, I get 98/100 on Acid 3. It renders pretty fast as well.

    1. Re:WebKit support and Acid 3 by IceFox · · Score: 2, Informative

      After the rc was released the last fixes went in so 4.5.0 QtWebKit gets 100/100 on the acid3 test.

      --
      Do you changes clothes while making the "chee-chee-cha-cha-choh" transformation sound?
    2. Re:WebKit support and Acid 3 by ardor · · Score: 2, Informative

      99/100 here, using the official 4.5 release. Apparently, the link test fails.

      --
      This sig does not contain any SCO code.
  3. Re:LGPL by stoolpigeon · · Score: 3, Informative

    This new release is quite significant due to licensing changes that now make it simpler to use QT in a wider range of products...
     
    fully spelled out in the linked article.

    --
    It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
  4. Jambi (Qt for Java) discontinued by Maxwell42 · · Score: 4, Informative

    And for those like me who were quite excited with the new licensing and wanted to use it with java... Don't think of it...

    Qt Jambi - a port of Qt to the Java programming language - has been discontinued in order to focus resources on the Qt cross platform application and UI framework. Qt Jambi will be maintained for one year after the March 2009 release of Qt Jambi 4.5.0_01, and will be made available upon release under the LGPL license

    QT Programming Language Support

    1. Re:Jambi (Qt for Java) discontinued by pembo13 · · Score: 3, Informative

      PyQt is also currently in the middle of nowhere. And PyQt, as far as I can tell, isn't really community maintained. Its a very small group of guys doing all the work, and who as of yet haven't come to a decision on what will happen to the project now that the little revenue they got from commercial licensing will likely dry up.

      I was hoping that Qt would actual pull in more projects and not drop them.

      --
      "Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
    2. Re:Jambi (Qt for Java) discontinued by Simon · · Score: 2, Informative

      PyQt is developed as a commercial product which is available under a closed source license and under the GPL plus the other FOSS licenses that Qt itself used before the recent change to LGPL.

      --
      Simon

  5. GCC 3.4.5 by PhrostyMcByte · · Score: 2, Informative

    Wow, blast from the past with errors compiling standard C++ I haven't had to worry about for a long time. The Windows bundle package comes with MinGW GCC 3.4.5 built in January 2006. TDM's GCC builds to the rescue!

  6. QT ftw by sapelko · · Score: 2, Informative

    As much as I like gtk+ and gnome apps better, I've been using QT for a while and it really is a joy to use, years ahead of any other toolkit in terms of features and elegance

    --
    .: sapelko dixit :.
  7. Re:Excellent! QuickTime from Apple by c_g_hills · · Score: 4, Informative

    Actually, editor fail. The article is referring to Qt - not QT.