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by invaliduser 3730 days ago
I have mixed feelings about QML. It somewhat looks like a new flash engine, except for mobile devices, and it became old the day React-Native appeared. But I like the design, and the way the UI is built (descriptive ui language with javascript, integrated event management, bridged with c++).

Anyway, I starred the project and I'm very curious about the kind of traction QML can get.

4 comments

QML will never become old unless someone improves upon its UX, because React is still the same old Frankenstein of turning a document language into an application framework, you are just doing it all in Javascript.

QML is also all Javascript, but it knows better than to treat its declarative language like verbatim JS. The property system of QML is not something to underestimate, and is IMO by far the most developer friendly way to design a UI today, period. The hardware acceleration on all platforms is just a cherry on top of a usability pie.

QML is amazing for desktop apps as well. The only problem with QML on mobile is that stuff just won't look native or match native themes. Not the end of the world though.
5.7 is meant to fix that with reengineered controls that offer, among other improvements, a Material theme:

http://blog.qt.io/blog/2015/11/23/qt-quick-controls-re-engin...

They already have Holo, they just need Material for newer Android handsets, and those changes are going in 5.7 coming out in a few months.

Too late. They had since 5.0 to make it properly.

Now Xamarin is free to indies and they use native controls, not themes that look somehow like native.

It is worse than that. Up until 5.3, the common dialogs would render like on desktop OSes, just tinier, instead of being adapted to the mobile OSes concepts.

As far as I know it is still the case. One needs to reimplement the common dialogs in QML when doing mobile development with Qt.

> it became old the day React-Native appeared

Why do you think so? Could you expand on this a bit?

I'd prefer QML myself since it means I can have a single UI codebase across platforms, plus with the qml compiler the apps can be fast.

Even though I have my issues with Qt, which I addressed in other threads, no sane native developer would take React over Qt.

It supports much more OSes, a proper separation between view and businesses language at language barrier and is fully native code.