Building Better Graphical User Interfaces with Qt

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Aug 08, 2017

The user interface of any product has a lasting impression on customers. It defines not only the perception of the product but also of the brand. As a designer, you know the experiences you want to deliver, through the user interface, but the approach and the tools you choose to build it can determine whether it hits the spot or misses the mark.

Graphical User Interface using QT

What is an SDK?

A Software Development Kit is effectively a toolbox consisting of documentation, libraries, examples of code and general guidelines on how to develop your software application across the specified platform.

Several graphical SDKs are available to choose from, and they take different approaches to ensure cross-platform portability. Cross-platform development is important for end users and designers. Users may have several devices, and would expect a consistent experience when using your applications on any of them. From the engineering perspective, a true cross-platform framework can streamline development and save maintaining multiple code bases. Among the SDKs suitable for developing embedded applications, Qt is gaining popularity.

What is an API?

Application Programming Interface basically allows different software to work together and deliver workable functions. This is an important part of the system build up and ensures consistent, stable and reliable coding.

Because the APIs are written in C++, user interfaces created with Qt can be responsive and fluid when running on almost any OS and hardware, as well as highly efficient in terms of CPU cycles and memory footprint. On the other hand, the development experience is fast and straightforward, and tools like Qt Quick help create state-of-the-art designs featuring fluid 2D or 3D graphics. You can define the look and feel using a tool like Photoshop, and quickly and accurately deploy it on an embedded device, but still have the flexibility to work in C++ to manage other aspects of the user interface and incorporate existing graphics from various sources. This highly effective connection between design and software development is a major strength of Qt.

Anders Display Baytrail Starter Kit

At Anders, we have accumulated a great deal of experience working with Qt. Our hardware developer kits include the latest versions of the Qt libraries and, perhaps more importantly, we have applied our in-depth knowledge of the hardware to optimise the libraries to ensure minimal memory footprint as well as fast launch time and responsive performance. We have invested the time that our customers’ teams would otherwise have to spend fine-tuning their applications, which can trim several days, or more, from any application-development timeline.

This is one way we ensure a better experience for you, so that you can deliver a better experience for your customers.

Give us a call to find out how you can take advantage of even more efficient Qt development to accelerate creation of state-of-the-art user interfaces.