Orange Wednesdays is the first of a series of 'Signature Applications' produced by Orange UK, using Qt to build for Nokia devices, and there's a fascinating interview with Mark Sage and Rafel Uddin of Orange Labs UK, talking about the app's development, about the use of Qt, the differences Symbian^3 brings to the table and the way private APIs are being replaced by the use of official, public Qt APIs.

For the media playback we use progressive download streaming.  In Symbian OS S60 - 5.0 devices, progressive download is only handled in the browser. The browser manages the stream and launches RealPlayer to play the stream. To initiate trailer playback the users click on the trailer image, it launches the browser, which launches the player. That is not a good experience because it causes delays, takes you out of the application, and returning to the application is clumsy.

We looked at several workarounds, including creation of our own HTTP streaming handler. Ultimately we decided for S60 5.0 we could live with the current out-of-application issue, mainly because we saw that with Symbian^3 and Qt the situation would be solved. Seeing the roadmap made all the difference.

On the N8 the experience is much better. Now we can launch the native video player with a link to the file, which takes care of the progressive download and playback of the file at the same time. It provides the full-screen experience we want. Even though it is a separate app being launched, once it is closed focus goes back automatically to Orange Wednesdays.

Read on in the full developer interview.