31 January 2011

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Development

Community »« Applications

Doing things the "right" Qt way whilst waiting for Qt Quick Components

The current Qt strategy for developers is to use QML as the declarative expression of your application's user interface. This works well for games and other applications with bespoke UIs; but leaves developers wanting to integrate properly into the user's platform's look & feel scrambing around for a solution. The official solution, Qt Quick Components, is not yet released. In a blog post, Ville Vainio explores the options: this may lead some developers to crawl in a hole, incapable of getting any development done because they are waiting for the Components release (as they harbor the misconception that QML alone can't get the job done). This is the wrong attitude. Even when using Qt Quick Components, you need to understand QML anyway - there is no way around creating custom list delegates, for example. It's a better idea to write your application completely in raw QML right now, and when official components become available, you can easily change your own buttons for the official, theme-following buttons. In short, the suggestion is that using the trunk; developing your own or using one of the other libraries will still allow you to build a "good-enough" user interface that will provide a solid foundation for switching to the proper Components when they are released.

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Forum Nokia hotfixes for QML applications

Ville Vainio has announced that there is now a hotfix package which Qt developers should depend on to ensure the correct and expected operation of Qt and, in particular, Qt Quick: Now that Qt SDK 1.1 is finally out (in form of Tech Preview), people are rightfully hacking with QML. There is, however, a snag with QML on N900: Image elements with remote URL don't load. So, if you are doing a QML application, remember to install "mcsp" on your device (sudo gainroot; apt-get install mcsp), and add it as a dependency on your debian package. This is Forum Nokia's "service pack" for a number of Qt bugs. Instead of waiting on a (probably) never arriving PR update from Nokia, this package allows them - as members of the Maemo community - to improve interoperability with Nokia's other platforms, and make developers' lives easier.

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Qt Quick Components for MeeGo goes private... for a while

As noted above, Qt Quick Components has not yet been released. However, it may well be soon - as may Nokia's take on the MeeGo user interface - since the development of the MeeGo implementation has now gone closed source: For the last six months, we have been building a set of UI components for Qt Quick. This has been done completely out in the open, with both project content and progress reflected in our Jira instance, developing using the gitorious repo, hanging out in #qt-components on freenode and emailing. We have been having a lot of fun, and it's starting to become feature complete.

For a while we will not be pushing changes to the MeeGo style branch of Qt components, as we are busy finalizing it and are unable to make certain pieces of the final user experience public. Bear with us for a while, the code will be released upstream as soon as we can.

We are very aware of the fact that this is a suboptimal solution, but this is the only way we are able to work with the efficiency we need while at the same time keeping certain aspects of upcoming platform look and feel under wraps. This is the same "big reveal" mentality that Carsten Munk noted in the run up to the MeeGo Handset UX launch. That Nokia feel that the core UI technology of MeeGo can be developed in a closed manner, so that they can maintain secrecy in the run-up to the launch of their MeeGo user interface, presents a barrier which may prevent MeeGo from ever being developed in an open and collaborative way. MeeGo's unique selling point against the entrenched Android is, we're told, it's openness; but developing such a critical part behind closed doors shows that - when it comes down to it - Nokia won't support that goal if it conflicts with its short-term marketing interests.

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Qt Mobile Contest - early bird results

Whilst extending the final deadline for entries to 31st March 2011, five early entrant winners have been announced in a Qt programming competition: Late last year, qt-apps.org announced a competition challenging people to port their existing free software Qt apps to Symbian and MeeGo. There was a prize of 10,000 Euros for the best app submitted to the Ovi store, and entries that were submitted before December 31 were eligible for one of five early bird prizes. Well, the five lucky early bird winners have been chosen. Each of them will receive a Nokia N900, T-shirts and a Qt gyrotwister. Your editor (offline in a plane) has no idea what a "gyrotwister" is.

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Community »« Applications