/****************************************************************************

**

** Copyright (C) 2010 Nokia Corporation and/or its subsidiary(-ies).

** All rights reserved.

** Contact: Nokia Corporation (qt-info@nokia.com)

**

** This file is part of the documentation of the Qt Toolkit.

**

** $QT_BEGIN_LICENSE:LGPL$

** No Commercial Usage

** This file contains pre-release code and may not be distributed.

** You may use this file in accordance with the terms and conditions

** contained in the Technology Preview License Agreement accompanying

** this package.

**

** GNU Lesser General Public License Usage

** Alternatively, this file may be used under the terms of the GNU Lesser

** General Public License version 2.1 as published by the Free Software

** Foundation and appearing in the file LICENSE.LGPL included in the

** packaging of this file.  Please review the following information to

** ensure the GNU Lesser General Public License version 2.1 requirements

** will be met: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/lgpl-2.1.html.

**

** In addition, as a special exception, Nokia gives you certain additional

** rights.  These rights are described in the Nokia Qt LGPL Exception

** version 1.1, included in the file LGPL_EXCEPTION.txt in this package.

**

** If you have questions regarding the use of this file, please contact

** Nokia at qt-info@nokia.com.

**

**

**

**

**

**

**

**

** $QT_END_LICENSE$

**

****************************************************************************/

/*!

    \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

*/