Trolltech puts Web technologies on center stage
It’s really encouraging to see a vendor of one of the most important application development frameworks for mobile devices making support for modern Web technologies a central part of that framework — and even going so far as to prominently highlight that support in their product messaging.
What I’m talking about is this: Trolltech is currently featuring news to related Webkit on their homepage, in a banner that reads, Qt WebKit Integration brings Web 2.0 services to mobile phones. The banner links to an Announcing the Qt WebKit Integration summary page that gives more details, which in turn links to a press release and a WebKit in Qt and Qtopia white paper.
Note that this is not an announcement of a new browser; instead, it’s news about how Qt provides developers with the ability to easily integrate interactive Web content — real Web content, over HTTP from remote sites — in any applications they build with Qt.
Here’s an illustration borrowed (stolen) from the Trolltech site:
This is not something totally new, because it seems (as far as I can see) very similar to the way that Mac OSX developers can use WebKit to embed web views in Max OSX applications. And I guess that that’s also something that Microsoft Windows developers have been able to do using the Trident engine (the Web engine that Microsoft Explorer uses as its back end.
But as far as I know, it’s not something we’ve seen on any mobile platforms yet. At least not with a major Web engine (major being one of WebKit, Presto, Trident, and Gecko). And at least not widely deployed. I know that there is a related vision behind Opera Platform — but that’s not an integrated application framework on the scale of Qt.
Anyway, if Trolltech is successful with this — if Qt application developers start to make good use of it — it has some potential to help alter the way that developers and users make use of Web technologies — “mobile browsing” without the browser, and more than just simple widgets. And by Web technologies I mean not just HTML and simple CSS, but also stuff like real (asynchronous) DOM scripting (Javascript/Ajax), SVG, and client-side XSLT (all of which WebKit supports). Lars Knoll describes it like this:
The Qt WebKit Integration helps developers to combine live web content with mobile and desktop applications. This erodes the boundaries between the desktop, mobile phones and the Web. It also enables graphics and Web designers to join developers in making user interfaces more advanced than ever – no matter which device or desktop application you are using.
2008-02-12 · comments (1)
