Getting Started Guides
Creating Applications Using Qt Is Easy
To help you on your way, we have created two tutorials creating two similar applications, but using different approaches.
Before starting, make sure to download either the commercial evaluation or the open source version of the Qt SDK and familiarize yourself with the development tools. The Qt SDK provides the Qt Creator IDE to make the development of Qt applications easy and efficient.
User Interface Options
In addition to intuitive, cross-platform abstractions for anything from threading and network communication to video playback and web camera access, Qt provides two separate ways of creating graphical user interfaces which favor somewhat different use cases.
The Qt Quick Module provides a declarative language for creating fluid and animated user interfaces, suited e.g. for applications which require a very distinctive look and feel and animated user interface elements, applications intended to run on small screens and applications targeted for touch input devices.
The Qt Widgets Module provides support for the more traditional desktop applications, integrating seamlessly with the target platform, whether it's Mac OS X, Windows, KDE or Gnome. It is both a robust and flexible C++-based class library with existing components for many typical user interface widgets, and which is convenient to extend with new functionality when the need arises.
Which module you choose to base your application on depends on the type of application you want to create. Since both approaches integrate with the rest of the Qt libraries, it is also possible to write much of the application logic independently. Familiarize yourself with the two options in the following tutorials before making your decision.
For more detailed information, see the User Interfaces overview.
The Tutorials
There are two separate tutorials for creating two similar applications. One implements the user interface using Qt Quick, while the other uses Qt Widgets.
Please click on one of the links below to start the ride.