Qt is perhaps best known as a cross-platform user interface toolkit, and only in the last few years has Qt Creator really evolved to be a full software development environment. Even in its early releases, however, Qt had an excellent facility for building user interfaces with Qt Designer, now part of Qt Creator. More recently, the developers building Qt have added Qt Quick, as a second option for user interface development. Qt Quick extends the Qt libraries and Qt Designer capabilities of Qt Creator, to build fluid interfaces for touchscreens and set-top boxes (STBs). This is facilitated by the declarative nature of Qt Quick and the Qt Meta-Object Language (QML).
In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:
- Introducing signals and slots
- Creating user interfaces with Qt Designer
- Instantiating forms, message boxes, and dialogs in your application
- Wiring the Qt Widgets application logic
- Introducing Qt Quick's support for declarative user interface development
- Understanding the building of a Qt application
- Creating the Qt application
These topics will allow you to dive into the basics of creating an application using Qt, whether in C++ or through QML methods. You will learn how to design your first user interface, using both the Qt form designer and Qt Quick Designer. Then, you will also learn how to make use of the basic functionalities provided by Qt, such as instantiating a message box and connecting user interface interaction with an event function, through the signals and slots mechanism.
At the end of this chapter, you'll be well equipped to decide whether your application should be written using Qt Widgets or Qt Quick and to build your application, with the help of the documentation that accompanies Qt Creator.