source: trunk/doc/src/porting/qt4-designer.qdoc@ 561

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/*!
    \page qt4-designer.html

    \title The New Qt Designer

    \contentspage {What's New in Qt 4}{Home}
    \previouspage The Qt 4 Main Window Classes
    \nextpage Cross-Platform Accessibility Support in Qt 4

    \QD has been completely re-written based on our experience with
    the previous versions of the product for Qt 3. One of the main new
    ideas behind this new version is to release the application as a
    collection of interchangeable components that include the property
    editor, the widget box, and other useful tools for creating
    graphical user interfaces with Qt. These components can either be
    used together in the \QD application, or independently integrated
    into other systems.  As a result, certain features such as the
    project editor and code editor have been removed from the version
    included with this release.

    The current version of \QD is near feature complete and can be used for
    many tasks. However, it is still under continuous development. This
    document will explain what is already in place.

    See also the \l{Qt Designer Manual}.

    \tableofcontents

    \section1 The Current State of Qt Designer

    When used as a standalone application, \QD includes a number of
    components that work together to provide a flexible GUI design
    tool. Widgets and dialog windows can be composed using a
    form-based interface that fully supports drag and drop, clipboard
    operations, and an undo/redo stack.

    This version of \QD introduces a number of editing modes to make
    different types of editing more natural. Each editing mode
    displays the form in an appropriate way for that mode, and
    provides a specialized user interface for manipulating its
    contents. The current editing modes are Widget Editing, Signals
    and Slots Editing, Buddy Editing, and Tab Order Editing.

    \section2 User Interface Features

    \table
    \row \i \inlineimage designer-main-window.png
    \i \bold{Widget Box}

    The Widget Box displays a categorized list of widgets and other
    objects that can be placed on a form using drag and drop.

    When \QD is in multi-window mode, the window containing the Widget
    Box also holds the main menu and the tool bar. When in workbench
    mode, the Widget Box becomes an independent window within the \QD
    workspace.

    The contents of the Widget Box are defined in an XML file that
    holds a collection of .ui documents for standard Qt widgets. This
    file can be extended, making it possible to add custom widgets to
    the Widget Box.
    \endtable

    \table
    \row \i \bold{Property Editor}

    The Property Editor allows designers to edit most properties of
    widgets and layout objects. The property names and values are
    presented in an editable tree view that shows the properties of
    the currently selected object.

    Certain resources, such as icons, can be configured in the
    Property Editor.  Resources can be taken from any currently
    installed resource files, making it easier to design
    self-contained components.

    \i \inlineimage designer-property-editor.png
    \endtable

    \section2 Editing Features

    \QD allows form designers to work on different aspects of their forms by
    switching between specialized editing modes. Tools for editing widget
    properties, resources, and actions provide context-sensitive information
    about the forms being edited.

    \table
    \row \i \inlineimage designer-choosing-form.png
    \i \bold{Form Templates}

    Form templates provide ready-to-use forms for various types of widgets,
    such as QWidget, QDialog, and QMainWindow. Custom templates based on
    these widgets can also be created.

    Templates can contain child widgets and layouts. Designers can
    save time by creating templates for the most common user interface
    features for repeated use.
    \endtable

    \table
    \row
    \i \bold{Widget Editing Mode}

    The new \QD allows widgets to be dropped into existing layouts on
    the form. Previously, it was necessary to break layouts in order
    to add new widgets to them.

    \QD now supports more direct manipulation of widgets:
    You can clone a widget by dragging it with the \key CTRL key held down, and
    it is even possible to drag widgets between forms.

    In-place widget editors provide specialized editing facilities for
    the most-used widget properties.

    \i \inlineimage designer-editing-mode.png
    \endtable

    \table
    \row
    \i \inlineimage designer-connection-mode.png
    \i \bold{Signals and Slots Editing Mode}

    \QD now employs a "wired" approach when representing and editing
    connections between objects on a form. The Signal and Slots
    Editing mode displays all the signal and slot connections on your
    form as arrows. These arrows can be manipulated visually, and
    provide the user with an overview of the form's connection logic.

    Connections can be made between objects on a form and the form itself.
    This is particularly useful when designing dialogs.
    \endtable

    \table
    \row
    \i \bold{Buddy Editing Mode}

    Widgets that cannot accept keyboard input are often given buddy
    widgets that will take the keyboard focus on their behalf.

    In Buddy Editing mode, \QD provides a similar approach to that
    used in the Signals and Slots Editing mode to show the
    relationships between widgets and their buddies.

    \i \inlineimage designer-buddy-mode.png
    \endtable

    \table
    \row
    \i \inlineimage designer-tab-order-mode.png
    \i \bold{Tab Order Mode}

    In this mode, users can specify the order in which input widgets accept
    the keyboard focus.

    The way that the tab order is defined follows the approach taken
    in Qt 3's version of \QD; The default tab order is based on the
    order in which widgets are constructed.

    \endtable

    \table
    \row
    \i \bold{The Resource Editor}

    The new \QD fully supports The Qt Resource System, and provide the
    Resource Editor to help designers and developers manage the
    resources that are needed by their applications.

    Using the Resource Editor, resources can be associated with a
    given form, and also modified and extended throught the editor's
    file browser style interface.

    The Resource Editor uses files that are processed by various
    components of the \l{The Qt Resource System}{Qt Resource System}
    to ensure that all required resources are embedded in the
    application.

    \i \inlineimage designer-resources-editing.png
    \endtable

    \table
    \row
    \i \inlineimage designer-action-editor.png
    \i \bold{The Action Editor}

    With the release of Qt 4.1, \QD introduces the Action Editor
    simplifying the management of actions when creating main window
    applications.

    When creating a main window, you can add a menu bar and toolbars
    using \QD's context menu. Once you have the menu bar or a toolbar
    in place, you can create and add actions using the Action Editor.

    \endtable

    \section2 Plugin Support

    \table
    \row
    \i \inlineimage worldtimeclockplugin-example.png
    \i \bold{Custom Widgets}

    Plugins can be used to add new custom widgets, special editors, and
    support for widgets from the Qt 3 support library.

    Support for custom widget plugins allows user interface designers to
    use application-specific widgets in their designs as early as possible
    in the development process.

    \QD handles custom widgets in the same way as standard Qt widgets,
    and allows custom signals and slots to be connected to other objects
    from within Signals and Slots Editing mode.
    \endtable

    \table
    \row
    \i \bold{The QtDesigner Module}

    The new modular \QD is designed to be integrated into other environments
    and extended with custom components.

    The QtDesigner Module is a library that developers can use to
    write extensions and plugins for \QD, and enables \QD components
    to be embedded into Integrated Development Environments
    (IDEs).

    With the release of Qt 4.1 the QtDesigner Module is fully
    documented. The release also provides several new examples using
    the QtDesigner API to create task menu extensions and custom
    multi-page widgets (i.e. container extensions).

    \i \inlineimage designer-manual-taskmenuextension.png
    \endtable

    \section1 Run-Time Support for Forms

    With the Qt 4.1 release, the new QtUiTools module is introduced to
    provide classes handling forms created with \QD.

    Currently the module only contains the QUiLoader class.

    QUiLoader can be used by standalone applications to
    dynamically create form-based user interfaces at run-time. This
    library can be statically linked with applications and
    redistributed under the same terms as Qt.

    \table
    \row
    \i \inlineimage calculatorbuilder-example.png
    \i \bold{Dynamic Form Creation}

    The QtUiTools library lets developers dynamically construct user interfaces at
    run-time using the same techniques as \QD. Since forms can contain custom
    widget plugins, the loading mechanism can be customized to search for
    third party or application-specific plugins.
    \endtable
*/