From deep within the troll's lair that is the Qt development team's Oslo headquarters, news has broken of an updated Qt SDK. Now at its 1.2 status release, the new SDK includes the latest version of the Qt Creator cross-platform IDE (version 2.4.1) as well as Qt 4.8 for desktop and embedded developers, including Windows, Mac, and Linux/X11. Additionally, Qt Creator 2.4.1 is a patch version containing some fixes and enhancements for Qt Creator 2.4.
Writing on his firm's official blog, global director of the Qt ecosystem Daniel Kihlberg says that Qt mobile app downloads continue to grow on the Nokia Store. At a deeper level, the SDK update contains mobile improvements for Symbian and the MeeGo Harmattan 1.2 project.
New Qt mobility examples in Qt Creator show that the firm (and its adjoining open source community) is clearly looking to maximize the practical side of its developer offering. Also included is integration of the Qt In-App Purchasing API, which enables developers to build in-app purchasing into their Qt mobile application.
"Having the opportunity to include In-App Purchasing can increase revenue substantially for mobile developers. With strong, continued growth of Qt app downloads in Nokia Store — over 11 million downloads per day — Qt continues to be a good choice for developers creating mobile apps for the 155+ million Qt enabled Nokia phones currently in the market," said Kihlberg.
In-App Purchasing enables developers to offer additional, premium content for purchase, such as new items/levels/functionality and try-and-buy application upgrades, within the confines of the app experience.
Other new developments include:
- Improvements in the C++ and QML editors, such as syntax highlighting in QML, and improved static QML code-checking features
- Improvements of the code refactoring tools
- Reusable "schemes" for the coding styles (C++ and QML) between projects
- Qt 4.8 for desktop and embedded Windows, Mac, and Linux/X11
- Qt Platform Abstraction, which makes it easier to port QtGui to new windowing systems
Finally, Qt Quick improvements include the possibility to embed OpenGL shader effects in Qt Quick apps with the help of a QML shader add-on. Threaded Open GL also makes it easier and more threadsafe to render OpenGL from more than one thread concurrently.
