Qt5 Cadaques

This book provides you with a walkthrough of the different aspects of application development using Qt 5.12. It focuses on the new Qt Quick technology, but also provides necessary information about writing C++ back-ends and extensions for Qt Quick.

This chapter provides a high-level overview of Qt 5. It shows the different application models available for developers, as well as a Qt 5 showcase application, as a sneak preview of things to come. Additionally, the chapter aims to provide a wide overview of the Qt 5 content and how to get in touch with the makers of Qt 5.

History

Qt 4 has evolved since 2005 and provided a solid ground for thousands of applications and even full desktop and mobile systems. The usage patterns of computer users changed in recent years. From stationary PCs to portable notebooks and nowadays mobile computers. The classical desktop is more and more replaced with mobile touch-based always connected screens. With it, the desktop UX paradigms also change. Whereas in the past Windows UI dominated the world we spend more time nowadays on other screens with another UI language.

Qt 4 was designed to satisfy the desktop world to have a coherent set of UI widgets available on all major platforms. The challenge for Qt users has changed today and it lies more to provide a touch-based user interface for a customer-driven user interface and to enable modern user interface on all major desktop and mobile systems. Qt 4.7 started to introduce the Qt Quick technology which allows users to create a set of user interface components from simple elements to achieve a completely new UI, driven by customer demands.