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> The only Qt app I've used recently is VirtualBox, which is terrible on the Mac. The controls don't look or work right at all. On Windows, it's less bad, but s

by cpburns2009 8y ago

> The only Qt app I've used recently is VirtualBox, which is terrible on the Mac. The controls don't look or work right at all. On Windows, it's less bad, but still noticeably non-native. On Windows and Linux (primarily Ubuntu), KeePassXC, VirtualBox and VLC have been pretty good in my experience and they're Qt as far as I know. Dropbox uses Qt as well, however, it's interface is minimal. Electron doesn't even try to look or behave natively for what it's worth.

ken 8y ago
Curious. VLC on MacOS doesn't exhibit any of the weird UI glitches that other Qt apps have, and an inspection of the package shows it doesn't contain any Qt frameworks. VLC's Wiki [1] says: "Qt / Qt4 is the default, plain, graphical, interface to VLC, made using the Qt library (Linux users may need to have this installed). It is used as the default interface on the Windows and Linux versions of VLC media player from version 0.9.0 and above." [1]: https://wiki.videolan.org/Qt_Interface/ https://wiki.videolan.org/Qt_Interface/ I googled for "dropbox mac qt" and only found this page [2] from 2014 which says they were experimenting with rewriting the Dropbox UI in Qt for Linux and Windows. The linked post [3] says the Qt rewrite is for Windows and Linux only. [2]: http://www.webupd8.org/2014/07/dropbox-ui-rewritten-in-qt-for-latest.html http://www.webupd8.org/2014/07/dropbox-ui-rewritten-in-qt-fo... [3]: https://web.archive.org/web/20141015093406/https://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=118006 https://web.archive.org/web/20141015093406/https://forums.dr... I consider Qt (along with Gtk+) to be native on Linux -- there's no more-native toolkit that it's wrapping or emulating. So I find it interesting that these cross-platform applications (Wikipedia lists 9 platforms for VLC!) both use Qt for only 2 platforms, and 1 of those is where it's native, anyway. These are mature applications which have clearly put a lot of effort into both user experience and cross platform support, and they have already gone to the trouble of implementing their UI in Qt, but for most platforms they choose not to use it. What I get from this is: Qt is useful as a cross-platform GUI toolkit only for targeting Windows. Is that overly cynical?
- cpburns2009 8y ago
  It's interesting that it seems Qt is not used to target Macs. Perhaps Qt really is only good for cross-platform development on Windows and Linux.

ken 8y ago

Curious. VLC on MacOS doesn't exhibit any of the weird UI glitches that other Qt apps have, and an inspection of the package shows it doesn't contain any Qt frameworks. VLC's Wiki [1] says: "Qt / Qt4 is the default, plain, graphical, interface to VLC, made using the Qt library (Linux users may need to have this installed). It is used as the default interface on the Windows and Linux versions of VLC media player from version 0.9.0 and above." [1]: https://wiki.videolan.org/Qt_Interface/ https://wiki.videolan.org/Qt_Interface/ I googled for "dropbox mac qt" and only found this page [2] from 2014 which says they were experimenting with rewriting the Dropbox UI in Qt for Linux and Windows. The linked post [3] says the Qt rewrite is for Windows and Linux only. [2]: http://www.webupd8.org/2014/07/dropbox-ui-rewritten-in-qt-for-latest.html http://www.webupd8.org/2014/07/dropbox-ui-rewritten-in-qt-fo... [3]: https://web.archive.org/web/20141015093406/https://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=118006 https://web.archive.org/web/20141015093406/https://forums.dr... I consider Qt (along with Gtk+) to be native on Linux -- there's no more-native toolkit that it's wrapping or emulating. So I find it interesting that these cross-platform applications (Wikipedia lists 9 platforms for VLC!) both use Qt for only 2 platforms, and 1 of those is where it's native, anyway. These are mature applications which have clearly put a lot of effort into both user experience and cross platform support, and they have already gone to the trouble of implementing their UI in Qt, but for most platforms they choose not to use it. What I get from this is: Qt is useful as a cross-platform GUI toolkit only for targeting Windows. Is that overly cynical?

cpburns2009 8y ago
It's interesting that it seems Qt is not used to target Macs. Perhaps Qt really is only good for cross-platform development on Windows and Linux.