Nokia has released a beta version of Qt 4.7, a cross-platform C++ framework. The release includes a beta version of Qt Quick, a new high-level UI technology that lets developers and designers work together to create animated, touch-enabled UIs and lightweight applications for mobile and embedded devices.
Three new technologies come together to form the Qt Quick UI creation kit:
- An enhanced Qt Creator IDE that includes an advanced C++ code editor, project and build management tools, and visual debugger, among other tools.
- QML ("Qt Meta-Object Language"), an easy-to-use, declarative language.
- A new module in the Qt library called QtDeclarative that provides a declarative framework for building highly dynamic, custom UIs.
QML is a declarative language designed to describe the UI of a program: both what it looks like, and how it behaves. In QML, a UI is specified as a tree of objects with properties. JavaScript is used as a scripting language in QML.
The three features combine to make Qt easier to use for developers and designers who are not conversant in C++.
Additionally, the Qt 4.7 release will be the first Qt release controlled by the Qt Continuous Integration System, which controls the process of merging changes into Qt, preventing new errors and increasing quality and stability.
The Qt 4.7 and Qt Creator 2.0 betas are available under the commercial Technology Preview license and GNU LGPL version 2.1. The final release of Qt 4.7 is planned for mid 2010.
