Qt 5.5 has been released with a simpler product range, performance improvements and better cross platform support. It also introduces two new modules that extend its set of 3D APIs.

Qt is a cross-platform application and UI software development framework that lets you create native apps for desktop, embedded or mobile platforms. It can also be used to create modern embedded devices with alternative screens or remote controllers running on desktop or mobile platforms.

The developers say that nearly 1500 reported bugs have been fixed during the last six months of development.

The cross platform support gives better feature parity between the platforms in areas such as Multimedia and Bluetooth. The new version is also Windows 10 ready, according to a post about the new release on the Qt blog, which said that the fact that Qt has been running on top of the new WinRT APIs on Windows 8 since Qt 5.3 has formed a good basis for being Windows 10, adding:

“we are confident that we can fully support Windows 10 as soon as it is being made available with a Qt 5.5.x patch release.”

On Linux, the packages are now being built on RedHat Enterprise Linux, providing coverage of a wider range of Linux distributions (from RHEL 6.6 up to Ubuntu 15.04) with one set of binaries.

The Mac version has also been enhanced. The new version uses Apple’s Secure Transport layer to enable SSL functionality, support Bluetooth and Bluetooth LE, and support Qt WebView. The change has also fixed many issues with Qt Multimedia.

One administrative change is a move to just three versions of Qt 5.5; a commercially priced version, Qt for Application Development with full support and the ability to create apps for all the desktop and mobile platforms that Qt supports. A second version, Qt for Device Creation, can be used for embedded devices, while Qt Open Source is the open source version that you can use under the terms of the LGPL or GPL.

In terms of new features, the Bluetooth LE API that was introduced as a Technology Preview with Qt 5.4 has been finalized with support for Android, Mac OS X and iOS in addition to the existing backends on Linux.

There are two new graphics modules extending the existing set of 3D APIs. Qt Canvas 3D is a new module that lets you directly use WebGL code from within Qt Quick. It implements a WebGL-like API for Qt Quick, and can be used either with low level WebGL code or with JavaScript frameworks such as three.js. The second new module, Qt 3D, makes it easier to integrate 3D content into Qt applications. The module comes with both C++ and QML APIs. This module is a technology preview, and the developers say it still has some rough edges. This demo of what you can do with it has been created by Qt's Terchnology partner V-Play Game Engine:

Qt 5.5 also has a technology preview of Qt Location, a module adding mapping, geocoding, routes and places support to Qt. The current version supports Nokia Here, Mapbox and Openstreetmap.

Live webinars on July 2 and July 3 introduce Qt 5.5. You can register for them at http://www.qt.io/webinar-qt5-5/. 

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