Qt for mobile cross-platform development

Original author: Ekkehard Gentz
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I would like to introduce Ekke Gentz's thoughts on the use of Qt 5.6 in cross-platform mobile development. You can also watch a video with Ekke's talk on MobileTechCon (in English). Below is a translation of the note.

You may know that my main activity is the development of business applications for BlackBerry 10. But since BlackBerry PRIV is running Android 5.1.1 (and expected 6.0), users asked me to release cross-platform applications running on BlackBerry 10, Android and iOS (and later Windows 10). I am not a fan of web or hybrid applications and prefer the development of native programs. On the other hand, I don’t really want to develop applications for all platforms in a native, but in a different way, using different programming languages, development environments, etc.

My development for BlackBerry 10 is underway in the Cascades UI Framework using QML to describe UI and C ++ / Qt 4.8 for program code, networking, etc. I actually really like this approach for developing complex graphical interfaces with QML.

Qt 5.6 came out literally last week and I did some tests. Qt 5.6 contains a trial version of qt.labs.controlsProviding all the necessary UI controls that are required for mobile applications. Also there is Google Material and Microsoft Universal Style that allow you to gracefully control the appearance. New controls eliminate all the difficulties of the previous Qt Quick Controls 1 and event handling is now performed in C ++ (in Cascades it always has been). Starting with Qt 5.6, HDPI is supported for all available platforms. All these technical innovations, as well as the new Startup / Indie Dev offer prompted me to start cross-platform development with Qt. But the use of a commercial license is not necessary - there are options for using the Open Source license without even making your own application open. Qt has been around for over 20 years and is free and open source.

Qt allows you to reuse code for cross-platform development:



My presentation on MobileTechCon was successful, and later recording became available . The performance was in German, and I received requests for the release of the English version, so I prepared a translation of the slides and made an English webcast online:



Also, the author of the original post promises to publish a series of notes with a more detailed description of the details and tips for getting started with Qt.

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