QtWidgets and QtQuick Controls - A Comparison

Kevin Krammer compares QtWidgets and QtQuick Controls.

Abstract:

QtWidgets has been one of Qt's selling points throughout its two decade long existence. Its ability to blend into the target platform's look&feel with little or no effort on the part of application developers is unparalleled.

The advent of powerful mobile and embedded devices, and later touch based desktop-like systems, made it necessary for Qt to extend its offerings with a technology specifically designed for dynamic and fluid UIs: QtQuick.

Even in its initial incarnation it was well suited for custom interfaces, but lack of standard components for common controls such as buttons, sliders, etc. meant that either application developers had to reinvent them whenever needed or device vendors had to create a whole set to be used by app developers on their respective platforms.

QtQuick.Controls is an ongoing effort to create a common, yet flexible component set, that can be used in both a standard desktop-like UI context as well as in a multi-touch and animation rich environment such as phones, tablets or embedded devices.

With now two official Qt modules offering overlapping functionality, developers are faced with choosing between them and/or finding ways to combine them.

This talk will try to provide at least a solid basis for making such decisions and for understanding consequences each of the available options incur.

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