Jesper K. Pedersen

As a user, there is nothing more annoying than a dialog saying "192.168.0.256 is not a valid IP address". Instead of allowing your user to type in invalid data, help them instead. There are three tools in your toolbox for that, namely input masks, validators and completers.

Adding a new widget to your toolbox might be as simple as subclassing from QWidget and add two child widgets plus a layout, or it might be a multi-month job where you need to polish every single pixel. In any case there are a few things to think about, and that is exactly what we will discuss in this episode.

In this second episode on layout managers, we will discuss how to make widgets stretch, and how to get spaces into your layout. We will discuss that both when you code it in C++, and when you do it in Qt Designer.

In this first of two episodes on layout managers, we will introduce the layout manager. In addition to that we will show an example where you can NOT use a layout manager. Finally, Jesper will tell a story about ones he had to implement a motif compatible layout manager in Qt.

In this fourth episode in the tour of common widgets in Qt, we will talk about item widgets - more specifically QComboBox and QListWidget.

In this mini tour of the most common widgets in Qt, we will turn our attention to widgets organizing other widgets, namely: QGroupBox, QTabWidget, QToolBox, QStackedWidget, QScrollArea and QAbstractScrollArea.

In this episode, we will continue looking at the most common widgets in Qt, focusing our attention to QPushButton, QRadioButton, QCheckbox, QSlider, QProgressBar and QSpinBox.

In this and the next three episodes, we will look at the most common widgets in Qt, their API, how you are supposed to work with them, and most noticeable some of the hidden gems.

In this short episode, Jesper will provide you with a few links to some Qt Widgets and More episodes to watch before he returns with the next module. In addition to that, he will offer a few parting notes on when to use Qt Designer at all.

So, you are using Qt Designer to create your user interfaces? Great! But how do you get your own custom widgets in there? There are two ways, create a plugin for Qt designer or promote an existing widget. In this episode we will see both.

Making your applications work without having to use the mouse all the time, helps improve its usability quite a bit. There are two ways in Qt to help with that: accelerators and tab order. This episode will show you both.

There are three ways to connect to signals from objects in your Qt Designer UI. We've already seen the first one, which is to simply add a connect statement on the C++ side. In this episode, we will see the other two ways. One makes sense to know about for the rare cases where it is useful, the other is worth knowing about so that you don't accidentally start using it, just because you didn't think it through.

In this episode, Jesper will go through how to set up a layout in Qt Designer.

Once you have created your user interfaces in Qt Designer, then you want to hook that code up with C++. In other words, you may want to get some code executed when the user chooses save in the UI, or you may want to customize the UI say disable or hide part of it, based on data coming in over the network. In this episode, you will learn how to set that up.

Setting up a layout in C++ is rather cumbersome. Fortunately, Qt comes with a tool called Qt Designer, which allows you to create your UIs by simply drag and drop'ing it together. In this episode, Jesper will show you the basics of setting up a window with menu bars and toolbars, and configure a number of properties on the UI elements.

In this episode, Alistair Baxter and Jesper will continue their discussion on Visual Studio and focus on how well it handles Qt, more specifically, Qt macros and Qt tools like moc and Qt Designer.

A reasonable choice of IDE when developing Qt code is Qt Creator. But there are other IDEs out there! An interesting alternative on windows is Visual Studio. In this episode, Alistair Baxter will join Jesper for a show of his favorite features from Visual Studio.

This month, we began adding our Introduction to Qt Widgets series to YouTube. It's the same content regularly taught around the world by KDAB engineers. The best part? You're getting it absolutely free.

This episode introduces you to the event handling system of Qt and shows two examples of it: preventing windows from being closed when the user hits the cross; a simple paint program where you paint by dragging the mouse around

In this second episode on understanding what goes on behind the scene, Jesper will debug his way into an application using signals and slots to see the flow of information. He also introduces you to the GammaRay tool.