Book's Preface:

The Qt toolkit is a C++ class library and a set of tools for building multiplatform GUI programs using a "write once, compile anywhere" approach. Qt lets programmers use a single source tree for applications that will run on Windows 95 to XP, Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, and many other versions of Unix with X11. A version of Qt is also available for Embedded Linux, with the same API.

The purpose of this book is to teach readers how to write GUI programs using Qt 3. The book starts with "Hello Qt" and quickly moves on to more advanced topics, such as creating custom widgets and providing drag and drop.

The book focuses on explaining good idiomatic Qt 3 programming techniques rather than simply rehashing or summarizing Qt's extensive online documentation. And because the authors are involved in the development of Qt 4, most of what this book teaches here should still be valid and sensible for Qt 4.

The book is divided into two parts. Part I covers all the concepts and practices necessary for programming GUI applications using Qt. Knowledge of this part alone is sufficient to write useful GUI applications. Part II covers central Qt topics in more depth and provides more specialized and advanced material. The chapters of Part II can be read in any order, but they assume familiarity with the contents of Part I.

Intended Audience:

It is assumed that readers have a basic knowledge of C++. The code examples use a subset of C++, avoiding many C++ features that are rarely needed when programming Qt. In the few places where a more advanced C++ construct is unavoidable, it is explained as it is used.