You want to build the cleanest code, the smartest code, the fastest code. You’re the alpha geek on your team, or maybe you aspire to be. You have an all-encompassing need to know. Let me introduce a new series we’re going to be running here on the KDAB blog. I’m Andy Gryc, and for the […]

The power of Qt running on the ubiquity of Android is a potent combination that can be used to great effect in a number of different applications. But are there certain apps that really shine when they’re built using this dynamic duo? Before I go any further, let me introduce myself. My name is Andy […]

Knowing what tools are at your disposal when looking to make a program faster or keep it operating smoothly is critical to your success as a programmer. We recently solved a performance problem using Linux Kernel Tracepoints so we thought we’d share the process with you so that you can see for yourself if this […]

Android Things is Google’s answer to creating an environment for IoT devices. Take a slimmed down Android build, add some sensor-specific APIs, and provide it on a number of powerful pre-integrated micro-boards and you have a ready-made platform for building a host of upcoming IoT devices. Android Things can take advantage of many existing Android […]

Functional Safety is the term used for systems designed to minimize risk to human health. But there’s a dilemma in today’s tech-driven world. We are more reliant than ever on software to control our planes, trains, cars, and boats, to operate our medical equipment, to process our food, to clean our water, and to power […]

Are you a victim of premature pessimisation? Here’s a short definition from Herb Sutter: Premature pessimization is when you write code that is slower than it needs to be, usually by asking for unnecessary extra work, when equivalently complex code would be faster and should just naturally flow out of your fingers. Despite how amazing […]

Is your code burning a lot of cycles hunting for strings? Maybe you need to find the proper charset nestled in a chunk of HTML, or look for the dimensions in an XPM image file, or locate the email attachment boundaries in a block of MIME. If you string search a lot and performance is […]

Microsoft Windows has a long history of embedded operating systems going back to 1996, branded as Windows Embedded Compact, Windows Embedded CE, Windows CE, Windows Compact, Windows Phone, Windows Runtime, and an assortment of others. One of these fine platforms might even form the basis of your embedded product. Trouble is, with the shiny new […]

What is GammaRay? For starters, it's a powerful electromagnetic wave, as well as a way to treat cancer. It’s also an under-appreciated German speed metal band. And it’s what gives Dr. Bruce Banner his big green alter ego. But Qt aficionados will know the GammaRay that we're talking about is an uber-powerful Qt debugger and […]

Holoplot UX - Example of modern user interface that could benefit from compressed textures. (KDAB designed UX, photo courtesy of Holoplot.) It’s every programmer’s worst nightmare. Your beautiful app is running at a snail’s pace, crippled by virtual memory swapping. Even worse, you’ve added one last bitmap resource, and suddenly unrelated chunks of the UX […]

If you’re already using QML in Qt, you know that it can help quickly create flexible user interfaces using little or no C++ programming. With a basic text file and some JavaScript logic, you can put together a pretty sophisticated interface like that shown in the Qt Quick Clock demo (below) with a minimum of […]

Touchscreens and modern user interfaces are migrating into every type of medical machine: ultrasound, infusion, CAT, MRI, x-ray, care monitors, surgery displays, information tablets, and even patient self-service systems. Touchscreens are also helping with hygiene requirements as they are liquid-proof and easily disinfected because the display is in a sealed enclosure. Qt is an ideal […]

In my previous blog, I talked about what characteristics made a good app for Qt in the Android environment. I'll paraphrase an insightful response from Artem Marchenko -- my blog post is really talking only about standalone apps, and not Android integrated ones. That's correct--my blog focused on "easy wins" - areas where you could […]