Nokia today announced the release of the Qt 1.1 SDK Technology Preview. The new SDK, based on Qt 4.7, is a merge of the Nokia Qt SDK 1.0 and the previous Qt SDK. The release gives developers an early opportunity to familiarise themselves with the next version of the SDK. A key theme of the release is to allow developers to easily get started with Qt Quick development on Symbian, Maemo 5 and the desktop. The new SDK also makes it easier for Symbian developers to use native APIs in their code.

The SDK includes:

• Qt Creator 2.1 RC, which includes the first iteration of tooling support for Qt Quick.
    
• Qt 4.7.1 for Symbian (Symbian^1 and Symbian^3), in both the tool chain and as sis packages (for installation to a device). 
    
• Qt Mobility 1.1 for Symbian (Symbian^1 and Symbian^3).
    
• N900 (Maemo) target allows development with Qt 4.7.
    
• Qt Simulator uses Qt 4.7.1 and Qt 1.1. 
     

The 1.1 release of the Qt SDK is particularly important because it marks the inclusion of Qt Quick/QML technology tooling for the first time. The Qt Quick Designer, part of the Qt Creator IDE, is a WYSIWYG editor, which allows for the rapid creation and iteration of QML based user interfaces, animations, transitions and other visual elements. 

The Qt Labs blog notes that, in response to developer feedback, support for using native Symbian APIs has been improved. It is now possible to optionally enable the use of native Symbian APIs; this can be done via the installer or the maintenance tool.

The SDK also updated the remote compiler functionality, allowing developers to use the updated version of this service with the Qt and Qt Mobility releases. The remote compiler allows developers to remotely compile their project on a remotely hosted server; this allows developers on Linux and Mac computers to more easily create applications that will run on Symbian devices. In addition, the recently announced Notifications API is now supported in experimental form.

Developers should note that, while it is possible to deploy to development devices using the SDK, it is not possible to use it for production releases as Ovi Store will not accept these applications until the SDK goes final.

The SDK is available for Microsoft Windows (XP SP2 or later), Linux (Ubuntu 8.04 or later) and Mac OS-X (10.6 or later) and can be downloaded from Forum Nokia. Bug reports can be filed on the Qt bug tracker.

More details on the release are available on the Qt Labs blog.
   

Developer competitions

Also of interest to Qt mobile developers are two recently announced competitions:

• The 'Qtest Mobile App Port' competition, which is offering a €10,000 prize for the best Qt app ported from the desktop to mobile. There are also 5 Nokia N900 phones in the prize pool. More details are available here.
    
• Forum Nokia is running a competition to celebrate the release of the new SDK and encourage developers to explore QML technology. They are asking developers to create a new Forum Nokia Project (with a Qt Quick element) or add a new article (e.g. tutorial with code) to the Forum Nokia Wiki. The winners will receive a Nokia E7-00. More details are available here.

Rafe Blandford, AAS, 20 Jan 2011