Qt 5.12 LTS released!
7 December 2018
Yesterday the Qt Project formally announced the release of the latest version of the Qt toolkit: 5.12. This is a Long-Term-Support release, meaning that it will receive updates for at least 3 years.
There are a variety of reasons why it makes sense to use Qt 5.12 for your next project. Compared to previous LTS releases, Qt 5.12 includes the following major improvements:
Qt for Python provides officially-supported Python bindings
Qt for WebAssembly allows Qt applications to be built to run in modern web browsers
Qt WebGL Streaming provides great support for thin-clients accessing a Qt application running on a server
Qt Remote Objects greatly simplifies IPC for Qt processes in IoT or IVI environments
QtQuick/QML performance has been greatly improved
Some reasons why you may wish to use Qt for your next project (instead of some other framework) include:
Qt is C++, meaning that source code compiles to native machine code for maximum performance
Qt works on a wide variety of hardware, from powerful desktop machines, tablets and phones, down to tiny embedded system microcontrollers with limited RAM and no dedicated graphics chip
Qt works on a wide variety of software platforms, including Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Android, and iOS, as well as RTOS like VxWorks and INTEGRITY
Qt provides localisation and internationalisation capabilities for fully translated UIs including support for right-to-left scripts
Qt provides a wide and configurable feature set, from networking and database support, to multimedia streaming and playback, to 2D user interfaces and 3D scene rendering, and much more
Qt is used to develop products ranging from professional shrink-wrapped productivity or editing software on desktop systems, to apps on mobile phones, to embedded controls for fitness and medical devices, and everything in-between
As usual, we would recommend to our customers to target using a patch release (like Qt 5.12.1) rather than the initial (Qt 5.12.0) release for their products, but that you should begin using the initial release today for new project development and prototyping (with a view to using the patch release in your shipping software). This ensures that you can take advantage of the latest features in the Qt 5.12 series, while also taking advantage of the various stability, functionality, and performance fixes which will be released in the first patch release.
If you are interested in starting a new project and you have questions about whether Qt might be a good fit for your project, saving you money and speeding up your time-to-market, please feel free to contact us at any time!