What's New in Qt 5.3

The focus for Qt 5.3 is mainly about improving the stability, performance, and first-time user experience of the product. Qt 5.3 will also offer a good amount of new and exciting features, and a new platform: WinRT/Windows Phone.

This page is a summary of new features. For specific API changes, the List of API Changes section contains links to new and obsolete classes.

New Modules

• Enginio - A client-side library for Qt Cloud Services.
• Qt WebSockets - An add-on module that implements the WebSocket standard RFC 6455

For more information, visit the All Modules page.

New Platforms

Qt 5.3 introduces support for WinRT and Windows Phone on a beta quality level. Most features in Qt Core, GUI, Network, Widgets, QML, Quick, and Sensors are already working.

• Windows Runtime platforms: Windows 8/RT (Modern UI), Windows Phone 8.

New Features

Qt Core Module

• Logging: It is now possible to configure logging rules (for example, the message types for which categories are printed) on the filesystem or in QtProject/qtlogging.ini. You can also use qCDebug and friends in a printf-style way, in addition to the streaming operator syntax.

Qt GUI Module

• Qt's iOS plugin now implements support for input methods, spell checking and word completion.
• Embedded Linux platform specifics (plugins like eglfs and linuxfb) are now documented.

Qt Quick Module

• Introduced QQuickWidget for easy and flexibe integration of views with QWidget-based UIs.

Qt Quick Controls Module

• The Calendar control was added. Calendar allows selection of dates from a grid of days, similar to QCalendarWidget.
• MenuStyle and MenuBarStyle controls introduced.

Qt Quick Dialogs Module

• The QML implementations are now built with QtQuick.Controls (and therefore the source is moved from qtdeclarative.git to qtquickcontrols.git), which enables adding some features such as folder shortcuts (both standard locations and bookmarked locations), and comboboxes for file filters and writing systems.
• There is a new Dialog type which provides only the standard buttons, so that you can construct dialogs with arbitrary contents, such as various types of input dialogs and pickers.

Qt Network Module

• Support for the SPDY protocol (version 3.0) was added.

Qt Multimedia Module

• A new QCameraInfo class was added. It allows to get static information about cameras such as physical position and sensor orientation. In addition, the class provides a way to list available cameras on the system and deprecates QCamera::availableDevices().

Qt WebKit Module

• Support for HTML5 Video Track. Subtitles and captions for HTML5 video.
• Support for Indexed DB API. See http://www.w3.org/TR/IndexedDB/.

Qt Positioning Module

• The module has been ported to Android and iOS. Android supports position and satellite updates while iOS supports position updates only.

Qt Bluetooth Module

• The module has been ported to Android.

Qt QML Module

• Profiling support for V4, using the same event types as the QML profiler.
• Profile or debug multiple QML engines in one application with the new EngineControl debug service.

XInput2 Smooth Scrolling

• Qt's XCB plugin now listens to XInput2 scrolling events which means it will respond to high resolution smooth scrolling events on devices where they are supported. Currently this is mainly touch pads.

Qt Creator 3.1

The release of Qt Creator 3.1 coincides with the release of Qt 5.3. The release introduces new features as well as bug fixes and improvements.

For more information, visit the Qt Creator Manual.

WinRT Plugin

Qt Creator 3.1 introduces a WinRT plugin that facilitates deployment and development of applications. The plugin is still experimental but the main features that already work nicely are:

• Registration of Windows Runtime and Windows Phone Qt versions.
• Support for Windows Runtime and Windows Phone Kits.
• Building of Windows Runtime and Windows Phone applications.
• Running of applications for Windows Runtime and Windows Phone via Qt Creator’s Run button.

To enable the plugin, go to Help > About Plugins and enable WinRT in Device Support.

Editors

• Better support of multiple editors and windows.
• New Beautifier plugin for applying indentation and other coding styles.

C++

• Experimental new Clang based code model.

iOS

• Better support of multiple devices.

QML

• Better Qbs support.
• Better defaulting and import resolution.
• JavaScript profiler frontend (V4 only), integrated in QML profiler events and timeline views.

Debugger

• Improved LLDB support.
• Removed support for GDB builds without Python.

Devices

• SSH parameters now available as Qt Creator variables, for example, for use in custom run configurations.

List of API Changes

The pages below contain a list of API changes in Qt 5.3:

• New Classes and Functions in Qt 5.3
• Obsolete Classes

Additions to Other Qt 5 Releases

• What's New in Qt 5.4
• What's New in Qt 5.2
• What's New in Qt 5.1
• What's New in Qt 5.0