Qt 4.6 will bring gesture-based and multi-touch input methods to Maemo 6 and Symbian^4. Browsers will also get improved, to reduce the need for Widgets.

According to Nokia, Qt is heavily optimized for Maemo 6, and Qt 4.6 will bring a new Qt port to Symbian as well. Other operating systems that will be supported include Windows 7 and Mac OS X 10.6.

Qt 4.6 will make it possible to develop modern, advanced UIs on desktops, embedded and mobile devices. New features include:

- Advanced graphics effects like opacity, drop-shadows, glow and filtering
- A new animation framework
- Gesture-based and multi-touch input methods

With version 4.6, Qt-based applications are promised to run faster and more smoothly. We've heard Nokia talking about revolutionary changes coming down the road, and we think they confirmed our own guess of what that would be:

The Qt WebKit Integration has been extended with an API to access and modify the contents (DOM) of Web pages being browsed, as well as performance improvements and a new JavaScriptCore based backend for QtScript

We've always felt that Widgets (and a large part of the iPhone apps out there) are going in the wrong direction. Expanding the possibilities for web browsers in stead, like Nokia (and others) is now working to implement is very important.

Even more important is the fact that Nokia's own browsers as well as the Mozilla-based browsers will be Webkit-based and compliant to open-source and Web standards. It'll ensure that compatibility issues are kept to a minimum.

For more information about Qt 4.6, check out Nokia's pages here and here.

Via : infosyncworld