The cross-platform story for Qt becomes more and more true. Now we’re even going to be on Maemo it seems (kde people talk: here, osnews flamewar: here). However that was not really what I was going to talk about.

I have a little video for you here basically showing the Qt Everywhere demo running on both Windows Mobile and Embedded Linux side by side. We used the latest fancypants from HTC (Windows Mobile 6.0) and ran the Qt demos side by side to a Neo (Linux). Click the image below to check it out (opens new page, click play again):

The demo is basically just a small set of some of the Qt demos and examples that we launch and interact with in a more gesture inspired way. I love flicking those screengrabs around btw Skip ahead to 02:40 if you only want to see it running on the Neo…. Skip to 04:48 if you want to see the Neo die

One thing to notice here is that this demo-set was originally developed and compiled for Embedded Linux. All that was needed to have it running out of the box for Windows CE/Mobile was to add a few deployment rules to the .pro file for the demo. Now - it goes without saying that these demos run out of the box on our desktop platforms too.

Btw. stay tuned for the Open Source Development awards. We have a winner - and we’ve got prizes!

We use a lot of tools and applications when we develop Qt and Qtopia. Strangely enough, it turns out a lot of these tools are open source We’ve always been wanting to give something back to the talented developers of these tools, be it money or just praise. These tools make our working day better, more efficient and sometimes even FUN!

So, the engineers here are at Trolltech decided it’s time to have an annual award where we vote and select the best open source development tool available out there. In other words: The Trolltech Open source Development Award.

So here are the finalists for the 2008 awards. They’ve all been nominated by at least one Troll, so there is at least one person out there that loves your tool

The price will include money AND a signed T-shirt. But regardless who wins we’d like to thank the developers of the tools below: You make our day a little bit better. THANK YOU!

	Coding requires music. Music requires a player. This is the one.
	It’s everywhere. So are we. It’s a match made in well, maybe not heaven but pretty close?
	All the other revision control systems are easier to use - but this one is more powerful.
	When we don’t code we chat. But don’t tell management. (They use Mirc)
	Good looks and doesn’t nag you for every single thing.
	Editing for oldtimers. Some people just can’t move on
	Feature packed editing for Windows developers.
	Higher quality for the same bit rate. And you don’t have to pay royalties.
	Not everybody uses MySQL
	A must have if you work on several systems at the same time. Take your KVM switch outside, and put it out of it’s misery. We mean it.
	You can spend two days debugging, or you can just run Valgrind.
	Emacs sucks!
	Possibly the most beautiful way of comparing diffs on Windows.
	Why drive a Golf when you can drive a Ferrari ;D

The Trolls have already started voting, and there are two very strong candidates who are competing for the first place. Now all votes are not in yet, so keep your fingers crossed Btw. I’ve masked using patented superfancy GIMP filters, so don’t bother guessing which two it is

Once the voting is complete we’ll publish the winner here of course

So the Qt 4.4.0 beta is finally out, and on that occation we’re also launching the port of Qt for Windows CE. The chosen launch location is Embedded World 2008 down in beautiful Nürnberg (Germany).

Download Qt for Windows CE from here:

• Commercial version
• Open source version

We´ve had lots of people over to our booth on Embedded World and there’s never been a quiet moment. People are generally impressed with the cross-platform nature of Qt, and especially that it also extends to embedded devices. As you probably know Qt is supported on Windows, Linux/Unix and Max OSX as well as embedded Linux, and now also Windows CE (including Windows Mobile).

I’d like to congratulate the creators of Qt for Windows CE with a job (almost finished now) well done:

• Thomas Hartmann
• Jörg Bornemann
• Maurice Kalinowski
• Marius Storm-Olsen (Qt3 port)

…and say that it’s a pleasure to present the fruits of our labors after over a year of focused development (I’m sure Maurice agrees). Cheers guys, and I’ll see you at the cabin trip this weekend.

So here is a small video of “live” footage from Embedded World today:

If you’re stopping by Embedded World tomorrow, I’m having a talk at 14:40 in hall 11. I’ll go through an introduction on using Qt for Windows CE.

So, thanks for now and I hope you enjoy the video AND the release. Don’t be shy. If you’ve got any feedback or problems, just subscribe to the preview list by sending a mail with subject: subscribe to qtce-preview-feedback-subscribe@trolltech.com and start asking questions.

I have a video of Qt runnin on an HTC Touch compared to Qt running on an OpenMoko NEO1973. I’ll put it up next week I promise!

Here are three good things for you while you’re all waiting for Christmas to kick in

1. We’ve released the second technology preview for Qt/WinCE, and
2. We’ve added support for Windows CE projects in our Visual Studio Integration for 2005
3. There are videos from Developer Days 2007 uploaded!

Second technology preview of Qt/WinCE

Since the last technology preview we’ve been working on moving Qt/WinCE from using Qt 4.3 to Qt 4.4. We’re basically done with that and thought this would be a good time for another package. We haven’t made a super friendly installer this time (no worries they will be back for later releases) but it’s still just the regular three-step:

1. Configure the package
2. Set your paths to your SDK
3. Build

Here is basically what’s new in the second preview called “Siesta”:

• Upgraded to Qt 4.4
• All examples and demos now compile and run for Windows CE
• The OpenGL module now supports OpenGL ES on Windows CE
• Added example for OpenGL ES
• Added support for QtConcurrent and QtXmlPatterns
• Visual Studio integration now supports Qt/WinCE
• Several improvements and bugfixes

Now if you want your dirty little hands on the package simply join the preview mailinglist for Qt/WinCE by sending a mail to:
qtce-preview-feedback-request@trolltech.com with the subject: subscribe

Of course, If you’re already on the list you already got a mail on where to get it.

Visual Studio Integration for 2005

One of the things I mentioned above, is that our Qt Visual Studio integration now also support creating Qt applications for Windows CE. This screenshot (click for a larger image) shows a Qt application designed in Qt Designer embedded in Visual Studio 2005 and then compiled and run on a Windows Mobile 5.0 emulator. If you want to try out the integration as well, just join the mailinglist as I said above - and the download info is provided to you.

Developer Days 2007 videos

Andreas tries to summarize his speech explaining the design and use of the Qt Network classes Interesting stuff here, for example towards the end he explains how easy it is to create secure connections with SSL in Qt.	A complete talk here from Girish (I guess he didn’t get the memo we were doing summaries ;D). Girish talks about how you develop using Qt with hints and tips specifically towards developing on the Windows platforms. Interested in how to make your application Vista certified? Want to hear about deploying Qt applications?	Kent has a talk here “loosely based” on his Developer Days talk about Qt Script. Puppies and kittens included!
Thierry here describes and shows the usage of the new Multimedia system coming in Qt 4.4.0. Some pretty sweet coding examples in the end showing how easy playback of audio or video, or both is.	Volker talks about how to make Qt play well with others, and how to make others play well with Qt Ever wondered if your Qt include statements should come before or after 3rd party ones?

In 1994 Eirik C. Eng and Haavard Nord established an elite company for the top one percent of the worlds coders. Its purpose was to create the greatest toolkit ever built. To ensure that the handful of coders recruited were the best the world had to offer - they initiated a hard and strenuous recruiting process. The process, if successful, would only allow the keepers of the lost art of software development to slip through the gates. It succeeded. Today, the World knows the company as Trolltech. The coders just call it: TOP CODE!

Actually, thats all just bulls#¤t. Except the thing about “1994″, and “greatest toolkit”, oh and “best the world had to offer” - yeah and the “lost art of software development” is kinda correct as well. Come to think of it - everything is true except the “TOP CODE” name.

As one of the guys doing a fair amount of recruiting for the development department in Trolltech I’ve come to see the typical pitfalls that our candidates fall into. And I was thinking, as a service to all of you thinking of applying, to give you some pointers of where you may go wrong too. BTW if I sound like an arrogant prick who thinks he is hot coder-shit, it’s because I work together with a bunch of people I KNOW are hot coder-shits, and therefore their hotness rubs off on me.

Candidate pitfall #1

The first typical mistake is that the candidate is not comfortable enough with his programming language. For the sake of argument let’s say we’re talking C++ here. It doesn’t take us long to figure out this point. We’ll ask some innocent questions about const member functions or some simple pointer juggling and the candidate will typically start to have problems. Why is this? Well - programming is a craft, and only through actually programming will you improve this craft. Normally if you’re right out of university (Norwegian ones anyways) you will not have had enough practice actually programming. Note: It’s perfectly OK if you don’t know C++ - what we’re looking for is someone with a thorough understanding of at least one programming language.

Candidate pitfall #2

The other typical mistake, is that the candidate is not comfortable around data types and algorithms. We’ll ask the candidate to compare a list and a vector, the pros and cons. We’ll ask whats the depth of a balanced binary tree, whats the run-time of bubble-sort. Then watch him fall to pieces This is something you actually do learn at the university though - so no excuses here

Candidate pitfall #3

The last typical mistake is that the candidate lacks experience doing software design. The way we typically design classes and modules in Qt is using two people and a white board. Simple as that. During our recruitment process we let the candidates do the same - and observe them. A lot of the time a candidate might avoid pitfall #1 and #2, but then #3 comes along and they dive into it. Why so? I think it’s a bit of the same here as #1. Even with a university degree in computer science you might still never have done any object oriented design, and even less object oriented design in a team.

When I look at myself and how I avoided #1 and #3 I see that I got these skills outside my university courses:

• I had part-time and full-time software jobs.
• I had friends doing coding outside of class.

So, to summarize:

1. Don’t be afraid to apply!
2. Know your programming language.
3. Know your data types and algorithms.
4. Know how to design in a team.

BTW for any recent candidates: This is NOT about you. I just woke and felt inspired to write about recruitment.

So - if you think you’ve got it, or just want a free trip to Oslo (we pay for it), don’t hesitate: apply here!

I love this application.

Ariya Hidayat has made a really neat Qt application/widget that does the “cover flow” thing we all know and love(?) from iTunes. Paul showed me the video of it running on the nice Chumby device (courtesy of Jesper) . And I thought: How would that run on my HTC Touch?, this nice little Windows Mobile phone I’ve got.

I just had to try.

And it’s freaking awesome. Have a look:

It’s really smooth and responsive. Specs for the phone:

• 200 MHz
• 240×320
• Windows Mobile 6.0

The video quality is not the best - but you get the idea.

If you want to check out the code go here.
If you want to check out the technology preview of Qt/WinCE then go here.

So the second and final installment of DevDays2007, namely DevDays 2007 II: Münich - Revenge of the Ratskeller is over. We all had a great time, and it was packed with over 500 attendees which made all of TT very happy. Here you see some of them during a lunch break:

I’m happy with all my talks (Release management, Undo/Redo and Qt/WinCE) and would like to thank you all for listening and asking questions and providing suggestions. I’ll write it all down here and let the rest of the guys in dev know about what you had to say.

As promised, I said OpenGL support was just around the corner, and as you can see from Thomas Hs blog, we already have a video of it running! Great job there.

I would like to congratulate the winners of the Nerds vs Geek competition, and I have to say I really envy the 3rd place runner for his prize. It was a USB tape-dispenser. I mean, how cool is that!

After two days of presentations and workshops, we went out to party. Only the trolls. Which is a good thing, because any impression you had of us as professional and sensible people would surely be destroyed after 10 minutes of drinking with us. I’ll just give some kewords:

• Break-dancing
• Beer-coaster throwing
• Table-lifting
• Stripping-on-table-while-table-being-lifted-almost-falling-while-giggling
• Schnaps-shots
• Headache
• Missing-the-bus

For the record, most of those keywords do not necessarily describe my behavior that night.

I’ll have you know though, that being a presenter is very fun and I’d do it again. But, and here is the but. At the end of the week, you’re gonna look like this:

DevDays 2007 in Redwood City is just over and I think I can say with confidence: it was a great success.

We released the Qt/WinCE Technology Preview among other things, and the talks, keynotes and BOFs all got good feedback from the conference participants. There were around 180-200 participants in total and they were such a nice crowd we felt really welcome.

As some of you might have noticed we talked about a “Steak house” a lot, and we weren’t lying. There really was one. About half an hour after arrival at the hotel Brad, being from Texas, felt a craving for a juicy steak, so we promptly went to the local steak house: Izzy’s Steaks and Chops. Man was it good!

I had a FILET MIGNON MEDALLIONS AU POIVRE (with cracked pepper, cream & brandy) and it was delicious.

Of other notable things that happened was:

We sang karaoke in local suburbia-pub (Abba, A-Ha etc.) while there was a gang fight in the back of the place.

Continued to an after party in two of the participants hotel room, or as we Norwegians call it: Nachspiel, until security arrived. Following that up with beer outside the hotel in pitch black, where someone comes up with the brilliant idea of going swimming in the local lake. Great times, and thanks for all the beer guys!

Haavard also turned 40, and got a cool looking cake - allthough I never had time to taste it

And to the guys who participated in the Undo/Redo talk, there is a way to invalidate the undo stack if it for some reason gets corrupt, it’s called clear. Read the docs here

Now there is a week of real work back here in Oslo, until we fly down to DevDays 2007 Münich! I’m really looking forward to that. I know Adam is looking forward to his Gebackene Schweinshaxe. I’m on the other hand looking forward to a good Weisswurst for breakfast.

Since October 2006 we’ve been porting Qt 4.x to Windows CE 5.0 and Windows Mobile 5.0 and we’re starting to get somewhere, so I thought it was time to break the news. The plan is to have a Technology Preview ready late this summer, and have a final release together with the rest of Qt 4.4.0 sometime next year.

So how far are we? We’ve ported QtCore, QtGui and QAxContainer (ActiveQt) as well as updated the buildsystem (configure.exe, qmake etc.) for supporting shadowbuilds and compiling to host and target platforms. We’ve got our QMenu stuff integrated into the native Windows Mobile menubars, and we’ve got two new styles: Windows CE and Windows Mobile. We’re also running nightly autotests of the Qt/CE branch running through the hundreds of autotests we’ve got for our different modules. Wanna have a look? Here is some obligatory screenshots:

Tetrix running on Windows Mobile 5.0. We were very quick to map the softkeys so we could pla^H^H test this application when testing packages.

Textedit demo running on Windows Mobile 5.0 (Smartphones). Notice how the menu is the actual native Windows Mobile one.

Textedit demo running on Windows CE. Here the menu is more like we’re used to in desktop apps. Also - notice the crappy style…. It’s not our fault - we’re just following the “guidelines” :).

At the moment we support these SDKs from Microsoft:

• Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC Edition (ARM)
• Windows Mobile 5.0 Smartphone Edition (ARM)
• Windows CE 5.0 Standard SDK (ARM)
• Windows CE 5.0 Standard SDK (X86)

and we already had our binaries running on Windows Mobile 6.0. Windows CE 6.0 we don’t support yet, but the moment there is an SDK available from Microsoft (if ever?) we will add support for it ASAP. We develop and test both on the emulators provided by Microsoft, but also on a Dell AXIM X51v (Pocket PC) and a Qtek 8310 (Smartphone).

Now if you want to try out the stuff, here is Tetrix statically built for Windows Mobile 5.0 (ARM). It’s around 3 megs. And if you want to get serious and get your hands on the current code to help us with suggestions and bug reports, you can do that too! Just send a mail to support and/or sales and ask them nicely about joining the Qt/CE testing program (you need to sign an NDA at the moment - and don’t worry there will be publicly available previews later).

So what is left you ask? Well, we need to make all the other Qt modules compile and work on the platform. But more importantly we also need to make sure that Qt performs well on the Windows CE devices. As you know we already support embedded Linux with Qtopia Core. Now we need to give the same love and caring to Windows CE as embedded Linux has been getting all these years. At the moment we are working on optimizing painting performance (we’re trying to make Qt/CE use 16bit colordepth internally rather than 32bit as it is at the moment) and also ways to make the size of the Qt libraries smaller. The cool thing is that we now have two embedded platforms where Qt will run, and since we’re working together it will improve them both! Is this one of the few places where I can use the word synergy? I think it is!

The Trolltech DevDays for 2006 in Munich are just over, and even though I wasn’t there for the complete three days, I have to say it seems to have been a big success.

I was there to join some customer meetings, and since that took about 3 hours in total that meant I had some spare time on my hands. So I grabbed one of the “I’m a Troll” T-shirts and helped out by answering questions, and I also went around and documented the events with my trusty camera and my new trusty field recorder, so I’ve actually got some audio snippets for you too!

It was my first time at DevDays so it was great to have the chance to go around and feel the atmosphere without too many obligations. I sneaked into most presentations and got a feel for how things were going, and I have to say I felt proud working in the company when I was listening to the guys and girls having presentations - it was high quality all the way. Here is one clip where Brad talkes about his home town (he’s from Texas) and if anyone has ever been there? The restaurant he talks about is this one. I guess he’ll have more luck with his question in San Jose

It was also good to talk to some of the partners that were there just to see what they were doing and what they could offer. And of course, it was very fun to talk to all the customers. The T-shirts we got had a big “ASK ME” printed on the backside so that really helped breaking the ice. I got some interesting technical questions and it felt good to be able to help people out with their problems.

We also had a support desk (open 8 hours each day?) that was packed all the time. I know for a fact that they solved tons of issues - and they really solved them too. And as you’ll see in the album from the days, they even smiled while doing it

One of the highlights of the DevDays was the quiz competition that was held during the dinner on Wednesday. A lot of interesting things were discovered during that quiz show, I think mostly due to Benoits excellent MC skills, but maybe also because of his excellent accent. There were two rounds, one where anyone could yell out the answer, and if you answered correctly, they could step up to the scene and take part in the second round. In the second round only the people on the scene could answer, and the last man standing was the winner. Now, the prize of the competition was pretty special, it turns out that… well, why not have a listen yourself.

Here are some highlights from the quiz:

• “Remember, multiple inhertance is a beutiful thing”
• “42″
• proof that I should have been in the final
• “BAM! Hehehehe. Did he survive?!”
• This guy is FAST!
• Ric “I’m in sales” Mommer shows what he’s made of

Now, I’ve forgotten who who won in the end. But I have heard stories they were drinking up the prize later the same night

Anyways, it was great times and I hope you guys coming to San Jose experience something of the same.