Qt 5 C++ GUI Development For Beginners : The Fundamentals

Important note : There is an update of this  course to Qt 6. If  you’re just starting out, that’s what you should take. Take this if you have a specific reason to target Qt 5.

This course will take you from zero to a level where you can write any Qt C++ Gui application you may want. It is aimed at complete beginners but people with varying levels of experience wishing to learn Qt C++ Gui will equally find it useful.

Qt is second to none in the field of building cross platform GUI application based on C++. It can currently be used to build software that runs on virtually any platform out there: Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, IOS and even embedded systems. You basically build your software once and all you have to do is build it for your desired platform and voila !

The course starts with a complete beginner to both C++ and Qt in mind, and we take  you through the the process of getting your environment set up on your platform of choice :

• We do a live install of Qt Creator on Windows

• We do a live install of Qt Creator on Linux

• We guide you though how you would install Qt Creator on a Mac

• We guide you through Qt Creator showing you the tools that work together to get your application built

We then take you on a tour of the C++ programming language, covering the concepts deemed important to start working with Qt to build your shinny GUI applications. You don’t need to be a C++ wizard to start writing your applications using Qt. One of the goals behind Qt itself is to be as easy to use as possible, helping you to focus on your application logic rather than the C++ complex plumbing. This does not mean that you can do with zero C++ knowledge though. That’s why we take you on a tour to cover the basic concepts of the language covering topics like:

• Running your first console application and understanding the main function

• Streams that help you write and read data from your C++ applications

• Variables and Data Types

• Basic C++ Operators and Control flow where among other things you learn about if clauses and loops

• Build an app to guess numbers and put together the concepts learned so far

• C++ Functions

• C++ classes

• Building your first Qt C++ GUI Application

• Building a GUI Version of your Number guessing game

We then visit the fascinating concept signals and slots in Qt where  you learn the most flexible way to respond to events : 

• We’ll explore lambda functions in C++ in general, we’ll need them to use their SIGNAL SLOT syntax

• We explore different ways to connect signals to slots in Qt

• We then do a concept enforcing demo for you to try them out

Next we dive in the Qt Widgets section and visit some of the most important widget classes in Qt : 

• QWiget

• QMainWindow

• QMessageBox

• QPushButton

• QLineEdit

• QTextEdit

• QLabel

• QHBoxLayout, QVBoxLayout, QGridLayout

• We visit size policies and stretches and how they help tie the knots in  your layouts

• QCheckBox and QRadioButton

• QList

• QComboBox

• QListWidget

• QTabWidget

• QMenu, QToolBar, QAction

Dialogs are explored next , we look at QDialog and how to build  your own custom dialog class from scratch , QDialogButtonBox, QMessageBox, QFontDialog, QFileDialog, QInputDialog and how they add a layer of interactivity to your Qt GUI applications.

We then go on and explore how to work with the Qt Resource System , Styling your Qt applications with QStyle, QPalette and Style Sheets, Saving your application settings with QSetting, Working with Files and Directories using QFile and QDir and we wrap up the course with a tour of the network capabilities of Qt where we : 

• See the different classes that are available to work with networks in Qt

• Build an application to download web pages in our Qt Applications

• Build an application to consume Rest APIs in your Qt Applications

This course was designed to help you succeed in becoming a Qt Gui application developer regardless of your current level of expertise. The only requirement is to bring in an open mind and a strong willingness to learn. Now, please check out some of the preview videos andl let’s get you STARTED building cross platform GUI applications using Qt.

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