Abstract

As Qt-based applications grow in complexity, so do their graphical user interfaces (GUIs). Manually testing every piece of functionality is tedious at best. Hence, many software projects consider automating at least some of their GUI testing efforts – and rightfully so.

In this presentation, the test automation tool Squish will be used to implement a proven and capable approach to GUI test automation. In particular, attendees will learn how applying the principles of Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) to test development can be of great aid with developing and structuring test code.

Frerich Raabe

Software engineer working at froglogic since 2005, having spent most of the time since on developing the GUI test automation tool Squish. When he’s not currently building awesome Lego creations with his son, he can typically be found playing video games.

Slides

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Video

The post Behavior-Driven GUI Test Automation of Qt Applications appeared first on Qt Desktop Days.

Abstract

The Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is a tool that allows you to run your favorite command-line tools, utilities, and applications directly inside of Windows. Come join this session to learn how to have a fully-featured Linux development environment on your Windows machine using WSL and other tools like VS Code Remote.

Craig Loewen

Craig is a Program Manager working at Microsoft on the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). He joined Microsoft in 2018 to help empower users to run their favorite Linux command-line tools, utilities, and workflows all directly on a Windows machine, following graduating from the University of Waterloo with a degree in mechatronics engineering.

Avri Parker

Avri is a Program Manager at Microsoft driving Windows performance improvements and enterprise features for the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). She joined Microsoft in 2019 after graduating from the University of Southern California with a degree in computer science and business administration. Her goals are to improve the performance of developer workflows on Windows and to make WSL ready for enterprise consumption.

Slides

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Video

The post Use the Windows Subsystem for Linux to develop your Qt apps on Windows appeared first on Qt Desktop Days.

Abstract

Building complex user interfaces with widgets have been the bread and butter of Qt’s ecosystem for the past decades. While it largely involves a well-known set of tools and practices, achieving complex layouts requires experience to avoid common pitfalls which might make the code harder to maintain and impact runtime performance. For example, we will show that reducing the number of widgets and layouts in use can improve the readability of the code and the performance of the application. We will also show how views can be used to achieve the layout of multiple widgets but also how this can make styling and layout more complex, such as achieving proper alignment of multiple groups of widgets. We will also survey a number of small tips and tricks that can be utilized to solve simple UI behavior. Finally, when investigating how some layout operations affect performance, will investigate potential hotspots and available tools.

Philippe Hermite

After obtaining his Master’s degree in computer science, Philippe has been working as a software engineer at Allegorithmic since 2016. He is now an Adobe employee and works on Substance Painter. Philippe is particularly interested in C++ development and UI/UX issues.

Franck Arrecot

Software engineer at KDAB, Franck has actively developed with Qt since 2011 when he started contributing to open source projects. He has been an active KDE contributor to Zanshin: KDE task management software and more recently to the Qt3D module. He holds a Masters’s degree in Computer Science.

Slides

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Video

The post Patterns and anti-patterns for easy and fast layout of complex desktop applications appeared first on Qt Desktop Days.

Abstract

VLC is using Qt as its main GUI library since 2009 when it moved to Qt4 and QtWidgets.

Tens years later, we’re changing heavily the interface of VLC, and we’re moving to Qt5 and Qml as our main engine for the interface. The new interface, planned for VLC 4.0 will change the way people interact with VLC.

This talk will trace back our history about VLC and Qt and will explain what we will do on the new interface.

Jean-Baptiste Kempf

Jean-Baptiste Kempf is the president of the VideoLAN non-profit organization and one of the lead developers of the open-source VLC media player. Jean-Baptiste is a 37-year old French engineer and has been part of the VideoLAN community since 2005. Since then, he has worked on or lead most VideoLAN related projects, including VLC for desktop, the relicensing of libVLC, the ports to mobile operating systems, and various multimedia libraries like libdvdcss or libbluray.

He also created the legal entity of VideoLAN, a French non-profit organization, in 2008.

Jean-Baptiste has also been working in various video-related startups, and founded VideoLabs, a company focusing on open source multimedia technologies.

Slides

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Video

The post VLC and Qt: a history appeared first on Qt Desktop Days.

Abstract

The QGIS desktop mapping application is a mature, open-source desktop application that is used by millions of users and professional organisations worldwide — and it’s all built on the Qt framework! Building the application on Qt has allowed us to become one of the most well respected and full-featured tools for professional cartographic design and analysis of spatial data, thanks in a huge part to the power and ease-of-use of the Qt libraries. During this talk, I’ll be exploring exactly how QGIS uses Qt, where we think that Qt’s strengths and weaknesses lie, and some of the advice and Qt development tips that I’ve learned during my involvement with the project.

Nyall Dawson

Nyall has been a developer with the QGIS project since 2013. During this time he has contributed over 5000 additions to the project, and today is one of the most active developers on the project. Nyall’s contributions cover a wide range of areas – from improvements to the map rendering and symbology engines, enhancements to labeling and print layout functionality, right through to optimisations of the underlying spatial processing algorithms utilised by QGIS. Nyall is the proprietor of North Road Consulting, an Australian based spatial development consultancy which predominantly utilises international co-funding and crowd-funding campaigns to finance development into open source GIS applications.

Slides

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Video

The post QGIS loves Qt! Qt development experiences and advice from a massive open-source desktop application appeared first on Qt Desktop Days.

Abstract

Instituting aggressive testing can help to ensure product quality, but a blind “test more” strategy can at best result in redundancy, and at worst, result in missed critical code areas that can have cascading consequential effects. Some life-threatening – if not managed.

A structured, “test smarter” approach, using code coverage analysis as a basis, is more appropriate. With a code coverage tool, we can determine how much of our application’s source code has been hit by tests, which additional tests needs to be written, how the test coverage has changed over time, and much more.

During this talk, we’ll introduce froglogic’s cross-platform, cross-compiler toolchain “Coco” for code coverage analysis of your Qt- or QML-based (or any C/C++/C#) application.

• We’ll explore how you can use Coco to enhance your desktop Qt application’s quality and improve your testing efficiency.
• We’ll cover our unique support for garnering coverage data from automated GUI testing methods, in a streamlined, automatic manner.
• Lastly, we’ll focus on safety-critical software applications, for which code coverage takes special meaning before bringing a product to market.

Nicholas Medeiros

Nick joined froglogic Marketing in 2018, following graduate study in computational mechanics and various Application Engineering roles within the software sector. When he’s not blogging for froglogic, he enjoys testing vegan recipes, reading poetry, and modding his Subaru.

Slides

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Video

The post The “Test Smarter” Approach to Improving Product Quality Using Automated Code Coverage Analysis appeared first on Qt Desktop Days.

Abstract

Developing desktop applications in QML can be very effective – your toolbox will range from bindings to things like state transitions. Programming constructs aside, Qt Creator offers another helpful tool for developing applications in QML – the Qt Quick Designer. Similar to Qt Designer in the widgets world, it allows you to drag’n’drop UI elements and set properties. However, it can do more! You can setup bindings, preview states, and even define animations using keyframes. This can be useful if you need close collaboration with your design team. Apart from quick iterations and the ability to preview your UI, you can even pair with your team’s designer and work on the UI together. This talk will cover effective ways of using Qt Quick Designer and also common pitfalls and limitations.

Shantanu Tushar

Shantanu has been developing with Qt/C++ since 2009 when he started contributing to various KDE projects as a student. He works as a Software Engineer at KDAB and in the past has been the driving force behind the SoStronk esports desktop application. With a focus on usability, Shantanu loves using QML/Qt Quick to create elegant and enjoyable user interfaces. When not working on UI, you will find him tinkering with DIY electronics and home automation.

Slides

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Video

The post Using Qt Quick Designer for Desktop Applications appeared first on Qt Desktop Days.

Abstract

KDDockWidgets was born from my need to preserve sanity after having worked on projects that needed extensive QDockWidget customization. Ashamed from abusing
event filters to hijack mouse events, tired of using Qt private API to implement hacks that would break after a Qt version bump, I’ve decided to write a new framework
that incorporates all our learnings from hacking QDockWidget.

In this presentation, I’ll show you which features are must-haves in modern docking systems, what sets KDDW apart from QDockWidget not only in terms of functionalities but in customization capabilities and code stability too.

Finally, we’ll put KDDW’s extensibility claims to the test and talk about the QtQuick/QML support.

Sérgio Martins

Sérgio has been with KDAB for 10 years, he loves performance profiling, debugging, static-analysis and tooling. You won’t see him writing nice looking GUIs or 3D. He’d rather enjoy tackling a hard problem, frequently embracing the pain of bugs nobody wants, such as HDPI, fonts, QDockWidget and even working on Windows when needed.

Sérgio is also an opensource enthusiast, a KDE developer since 2009, having maintained
KOrganizer for several years and author of Clazy, the static-analyzer for Qt.

Slides

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Video

The post KDDockWidgets – a framework for custom tailored docking systems appeared first on Qt Desktop Days.

Abstract

This session will highlight the main pitfalls faced when migrating a classic QWidget-based desktop application and its solutions.

Using the example of our experience in transitioning the MuseScore software, I’ll describe the challenges faced when transforming a design from the 2000s to QtQuick. We’ll also discuss effective strategies for migrating from QWidgets on QML, and cover limitations faced with mixing both systems in a single app and approaches to overcome or even avoid them entirely.

Vasily Pereverzev

My name is Vasily Pereverzev, I’m the Engineering Team-Lead for the MuseScore composition software. Previously, I lead a team of more than 15 people focused on developing mobile applications and experiences using the Qt platform. For the past 6 years, I have been completely absorbed in working with Qt, becoming an especially BIG fan of QML.

Slides

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Video

The post How to breathe new QML life into a QWidget-based app from 2000s appeared first on Qt Desktop Days.

Abstract

Kirigami is a framework built on top of QML and QtControls2. It aims to make it easier for applications to implement a modern design language for both desktop and mobile systems, providing features that base QML and QtQuickControls don’t have.

Within the KDE project, our main goal (front and center) is and has always been to provide a top-notch desktop experience, even though recently we are interested in mobile as well. QWidgets is a very complete desktop UI framework, but unfortunately, it’s quite behind the times. Mostly based on software rendering and with and also outdated looking look and feel of its components. On the other hand, QML is a fully-featured modern graphics engine for 2D GUI perfect for mobile and embedded user interfaces, but still somewhat lacks in components and features that traditional desktop productivity applications need.

Kirigami aims to make the life easier for the developer to build good looking QML-based desktop (and not only) applications. This talk will go over the architecture of Kirigami, the challenges in QML that we worked around, and challenges that are still unsolved problems.

Marco Martin

Marco Martin started contributing to KDE in 2008 and has been an active contributor ever since. currently, he is the maintainer of the Kirigami framework and co-maintainer of the KDE Plasma Desktop.

He currently works for Blue Systems currently serving as CTO.

Slides

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Video

The post Kirigami: convergence with Desktop as first-class appeared first on Qt Desktop Days.