If you are new to Qt, this chapter will have served as a general introduction to the framework. We touched on the basics of GUI application development and compared the Java approach with Qt's approach. One of the biggest pros of using Qt is its support for cross-platform development. While Java does the same, Qt goes beyond that by producing executables that are native to the platform. This makes applications written in Qt much faster compared to alternatives that incorporate virtual machines.
We also discussed Qt's signals and slots as a flexible mechanism for inter-object communication. By using this, you are able to design complex communication mechanisms in your GUI applications. Although we looked at rather simple examples in this chapter, you are free to experiment with various ways of using signals and slots. We also became familiar with common Qt widgets...