Qt Desktop Days - Day 5

Wrapping up Qt Desktop Days, are two final sessions that cap off five days of great sessions.

Kirigami: convergence with Desktop as first-class

Let’s say you want to develop a mobile-looking UI... hey, wait a minute! Aren’t we talking about Qt Desktop Days? Indeed we are, but as Marco Martin, a KDE employee who works on Kirigami, explains, there are many times that desktop apps need to embrace a mobile look-and-feel. Whether it’s updating the UI to be mobile-informed, developing apps that cross-pollinate design elements, or building one code base to support mobile and desktop, sometimes you need a framework that gives you mobile-looking features but will also work on desktop environments.

Kirigami is a KDE UI framework that’s built on-top of QML and Qt Quick Controls to support both mobile and desktop applications with mobile-friendly UIs. Marco explains why – despite being great solutions - neither QWidget or QML really fit the bill for this purpose. Kirigami was developed to solve those problems. Because it also provides its own design language, Kirigami is also perfect for projects with solo developers or hobby projects that need to easily construct logical and attractive screen layouts and structure without a designer. Marco provides the rationale and examples that show us the power of this open-source Qt-based UI framework so you can see if it’s perfect for your project.

Conclusion, question and answer

Wrapping everything up, our host Jesper Pedersen – who’s been with us throughout the entire event – brings Qt Desktop Days to a close by inviting several guests for an open Q&A. Kalle Dalheimer and Giuseppe D’Angelo (KDAB), Harri Porten (Froglogic), and Thiago Macieira (Intel) all join Jesper to answer audience questions:

• Will Microsoft’s .NET Maui compete with Qt?
• Why isn’t Qt dominating Android development?
• Why does Qt seem like it’s so focused on the auto industry, and is this a bad thing for those of us in embedded? (Hint – it’s not, but watch to see why)
• What’s Qt’s focus going to be in the future?
• Why is Qt being used by medical companies?
• Is voice input coming to Qt?
• Do widgets have a future? What about Qt 5?
• And much more…

Thank you for joining us on this voyage.

Visit the entire Qt Desktop Days playlist on our Youtube channel.