Nokia Releases Qt 4.7

Nokia launched Qt 4.7 across all compatible platforms. As MeeGo development continues to ramp up, it's no surprise that the newest version of Qt, Nokia's application framework that among other things, handles app development on the MeeGo platform, be given an app-friendly upgrade.

The cornerstone of Qt 4.7 is QML (Qt Meta-Object-Language), which describes the behavior and design interface of a program. While this will have a noticeable effect on existing implementations, QML will allow developers to work with interface and design elements through a scripting language similar to JavaScript.

Alongside QML come a series of performance enhancements, also directed toward app development. Hardware-accelerated compositing makes the QtWebkit animation rendering 31 percent faster than Qt 4.6. The QtWebkit also now features faster scrolling.

Text rendering is also faster, twice as fast, if the Nokia press release is to be believed, thanks to the new QStaticText class. Finally, QPainter makes particle systems easier to draw in OpenGL.

Improved Webkit compositing, faster scrolling, and enhanced OpenGL graphics support all lend themselves to faster, smoother applications, which seems to be exactly what Nokia had in mind.

In addition to MeeGo, existing projects based on Qt include KDE, VLC media player, and Skype.