QT 4.5 Released, Plus New IDE and Analysis Tool

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."

Comments

From native to web

[arendjr]

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!

Re:From native to web

[arendjr]

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).

Re:LGPL

[nedlohs]

You mean other than in the first fucking paragraph.

You know the paragraph that is about nothing except the addition of LGPL to the licenses.

Jambi (Qt for Java) discontinued

[Maxwell42]

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

Awesome

[sjones130]

This is great. I was a GTK+ advocate back in '05. I recently changed over to QT4 (this past weekend infact) and I kept saying to myself "This really needs a good IDE, something like VS".. and here it is. This saves me having to use Eclipse (which I can't stand). woot!

Re:Awesome

[HatofPig]

You really need to keep your eye on KDevelop 4.0 then. Check out one of the main developer's blogs for tons of screenshots. It's a complete rewrite from 3.5 that takes advantage of just about everything KDE and Qt have to offer. I'm sure it is going to blow every other Qt/KDE IDE out of the water.

Re:Excellent! QuickTime from Apple

[c_g_hills]

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