The Qt Company has released Design Studio 2.0. The tool is based on the Qt Creator development environment and is intended to improve collaboration between designers and developers. The new features of the second main version include so-called logic helpers for implementing simple processes. The team has also redesigned the controls for 2D effects. After all, telemetry and crash dumps are supposed to help with the further development and quality assurance of Qt Design Studio.

Superficial comfort The user interface was probably a particular focus for Design Studio 2.0. Among other things, it is now possible to lock individual items in the Navigator view to prevent changes to them. In addition, the order of the items can be reversed, which is usually the same as in the QML code (Qt Modeling Language). The reversed order corresponds more to that of Photoshop or Illustrator.

Thumbnails should help you find your own components , and when moving the mouse over a detailed view appears.

(Image: Qt)

The new rotation tool enables items to be rotated in the shape editor without the previously required Call the property editor. Designers can also create thumbnails for their own components in order to keep them recognizable in the overview. When moving the mouse over, Qt Design Studio shows a detailed preview of the component.

Logic and design So-called Logic Helpers provide code for standard tasks such as converting numbers into strings, bidirectional bindings or logical operators. This should make writing your own JavaScript code unnecessary for typical requirements. The Logic Helpers can be dragged directly into the Navigator and are only available there because they do not represent visible items, but logical links.

Logic Helpers provide code for various operations like conversions or mapping.

(Image: Qt)

The 2D effects are not implemented as Qt Quick Items as in Qt Designer 1.x, but are now child objects of the Items to which they apply. Effects can be dragged onto items from the library. However, each item can only have one effect. In order to combine several effects, designers have to stack items on top of each other for each one.

Telemetry and black box Two additions should serve the further development of Qt Designer: telemetry and crash dumps. The Telemetry plug-in records information about the use of the tool. According to the Qt Company, all data is pseudonymized and the plug-in does not transmit any personal data such as names, IP or MAC addresses, as well as project and path names. However, it probably uses information of the class QUuid , to map data to users.

The telemetry plug-in is deactivated by default, and according to the Qt Company, users get a complete overview of the transmitted information when activated. You can also control which data the tool should or may transfer.

Another new feature is the integration of Google Crashpad for storing and transmitting crash reports. Here, too, users must actively consent to the transmission, especially since the crash dump with the memory image from Qt Design Studio can potentially contain sensitive or at least clearly identifiable data such as project names.

Connection to Figma and Qt 6 Another new feature is a bridge to the team-based vector graphic editor Figma, which is previously marked as a technical preview. It works with the desktop version of Figma and works similarly to the Qt Bridge for Sketch. With it, designers can use content from Figma directly in Qt Design Studio. The connection to the freshly released cross-platform framework Qt 6 is currently still considered experimental. The implementation requires additional adjustments depending on the project.

Details can be found as well as information on other innovations in Qt Design Studio 2.0 in the post on the Qt blog.

(rme)