A new version of Nokia’s cross-platform and UI framework, Qt 4.5, has been released. Along with it, the Finnish giant unveiled Qt Creator, a lightweight cross-platform IDE, which together with Qt 4.5 comprises the Qt SDK.
As we’ve already mentioned almost two months ago, Qt 4.5 is released under very flexible LGPL, allowing developers to add their proprietary applications on top of Qt without paying a licensing fee.
The single most important upgrade of Qt 4.5 is the overall performance improvement across the entire framework. In addition, the new version also improves integration with the WebKit web rendering engine which will “blend web and native content into a richer user experience.” This includes Netscape plugin API support, more advanced web UI effects (i.e. animations, transformations and zooming), as well as a new, faster JavaScript engine.
Also new in this release is that Qt 4.5 has been ported to Apple’s Cocoa framework. Now developers can create applications that support 32 or 64 bit, Intel or PowerPC Mac binaries from a single source.
As for Qt Creator, it’s designed to help those people that are new to the Qt framework to get up and running more quickly. In that sense, it includes such tools as an advanced C++ code editor, context sensitive help system, visual debugger, source code management, project and build management tools.
Finally, interested parties should visit Qt’s website to grab the new Qt SDK, which has everything a developer needs to begin cross-platform Qt development from a simple-to-install binary package. While there, you’ll also find tons of other documents that may be of use.