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This book is aimed at existing C++/Qt programmers and presents ideas and techniques that are too advanced or specialized (although not necessarily difficult), for a first book on Qt.
Qt has now grown to over 700 classes and well over a million words of documentation, far too much to cover in a single volume. So instead of covering everything very thinly, the book focuses on key areas of Qt technology and tries to provide more comprehensive coverage than is available elsewhere.
The book is completely practical in emphasis, with every technique illustrated by working code. The examples show Qt best practices, and have been tested on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows, using Qt 4.6 and where possible (e.g., using #if QT_VERSION), Qt 4.5. (The examples and a sample chapter can be downloaded from the book's web page. Amazon don't allow URLs so google for "qtrac" to find it.)
The book's main themes are hybrid desktop/Internet applications, threading, rich text handling, Qt's graphics/view architecture, and Qt's model/view architecture (to which four chapters are devoted), although many other topics are covered. Besides each chapter's main subject, lots of other classes, methods, and techniques are used wherever they make sense, to show as many Qt features as possible. So even the most experienced Qt programmer should discover aspects of Qt they weren't aware of, discover new techniques, and be inspired with new ideas.
Master Qt's Most Powerful APIs, Patterns, and Development Practices.
Qt has evolved into a remarkably powerful solution for cross-platform desktop, Web, and mobile development. However, even most experienced Qt programmers only use a fraction of its capabilities. Moreover, practical information about Qt's newest features has been scarce--until now.
Advanced Qt Programming shows developers exactly how to take full advantage of Qt 4.6's most valuable new APIs, application patterns, and development practices. Authored by world-renowned Qt expert Mark Summerfield, this book focuses on the techniques that offer the most power and flexibility with the least added complexity.
Summerfield focuses especially on model/view and graphics/view programming, hybrid desktop/Web applications, threading, and applications incorporating media and rich text. Throughout, he presents realistic, downloadable code examples, all thoroughly tested for Qt 4.6 and designed to anticipate future versions of Qt.
The book:
-Walks through using Qt with WebKit to create robust hybrid desktop/Internet applications
-Shows how to use the Phonon framework to build powerful media applications without managing low-level details
-Presents state-of-the-art techniques for working with model/view table and tree models, delegates, and views
-Explains how to write more effective threaded programs with QtConcurrent and QThread
-Includes detailed coverage of creating rich text editors and documents
-Thoroughly covers graphics/view programming: architecture, windows, widgets, layouts, scenes, and more
-Introduces Qt's powerful animation and state machine frameworks
“A good book on advanced Qt programming has been missing in the arsenal of Qt programmers. I’m very happy that Mark has written one. He is a fantastic technical writer with all the necessary background to write authoritatively about Qt programming. ... In other words: You are in for a treat! You are holding in your hands an excellent opportunity to expand on your knowledge of all the cool stuff you can do with Qt.”-Eirik Chambe-Eng, cocreator of Qt
