Cuteness 4.6
27 September 2009Seven days after the release of the Tech Preview 1, we released the latest stable Windows build of Fotowall [1] that was based on Qt 4.6. Somebody could argue that this is a bit imprudent. We did that because the benefits of the 4.6 release are worth the risk of the move!
Indirect Benefits, or ‘what you get for free’
- Improved quality and better speed in the OpenGL QPainter
- Better speed in the GraphicsView framework
Direct Benefits
- Animation Framework: this simply r0cks! I don’t know about the whole Kinetic stuff, I just mean the ability to create simple property animations.
I don’t have a video to show you but just take a look at the Fotowall’s Top-Bar, the tabs appear and disappear with a nice and smooth grow-shrink animation, that make the program look soo 2009-ish! finally! - QNetworkReply::isFinished(): thanks to this method I could implement a smart time-saver: when the user starts to drag a flickr picture, Fotowall starts downloading it. It can happen that, upon drop, the content has already been completely downloaded (so it can be placed in the canvas) or partially downloaded (so the used only needs to wait for the missing percent)
Drawbacks
- There are some graphics glitches when animating the opacity property of a QGaphicsProxyWidget (in OpenGL)
- Even by setting the QGraphicsItem::ItemSendsGeometryChanges flag, the previous behavior is not perfectly restored (we used itemChange, and the new behavior doesn’t allow Fotowall’s mirrors to sync properly to the objects)
Movie Time!
I’ve tried hard to record a screencast about the Cuteness & Performance of Qt 4.6, but in the end I had to use my camera.
[youtube width=”500″ height=”305″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVzzF_ft7uc[/youtube]
Thanks Nokia for this great release! 😉
[1] Fotowall is a creative program to mix local and online graphics content and build original work.
Wow dude, I mean wow. I want that app now :D. Especially the smoothness of OpenGL with 300 pictures (at least what said on the screenplay. I can’t wait to use Fotowall.
Lo voglio pure io!!! 🙂 veramente un ottimo lavoro!
Wow, I am impressed as well. Quality Software made with a quality toolkit, presented in a quality video!
che applicazione tamarra :p
e solo tamarra posso chiamarla! 😀
ottimo lavoro!
@all: report me bugs/wishes/suggestions, we’re really open to external feedback!
@riccardo: I’ll call the 0.9 release “marmitta cromata” in your honor 😉
Great job! Thanks for this review, I’ll try Fotowall when it reaches 1.0 🙂
Awesome! 😀
Hi Enrico! 🙂 NIce to hear from you again and, most of all, in this way!! 🙂 Great interface! I think many ideas you applied to fotowall will find a place in our daily kde desktop 🙂
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by PostRank – OS and FOSSwiki. FOSSwiki said: Enrico Ros: Cuteness 4.6 http://bit.ly/17Qwc5 #postrank #opensource http://bit.ly/1TTS5s […]
Hey! Excellent job! Congratulations!
*VERY* nice interface! I hope many kde apps take your aproach.
@dario: Thanks man 😉 Looking forward to see you soon!
@johannes: you’re right waiting for the 1.0 release, it will be really feature complete.
@dread, rodrigo: thanks. we’ll work hard to make it simpler and more usable.
I’ve just tried it with qt 4.6 and is beautiful! when I’ll have time I’ll take a look at the code 🙂
[…] http://www.enricoros.com/blog/2009/09/cuteness-4-6/ […]
[…] Cuteness 4.6 Seven days after the release of the Tech Preview 1, we released the latest stable Windows build of Fotowall [1] that was based on Qt 4.6. Somebody could argue that this is a bit imprudent. We did that because the benefits of the 4.6 release are worth the risk of the move! […]