Book excerpt: Use Qt5 to design and build a graphical user interface that is functional, appealing, and user-friendly for your software application About This Book Learn to make use of Qt5 to design and customize the look-and-feel of your application Improve the visual quality of your application by utilizing the graphic rendering system and animation system provided by Qt5 A good balance of visual presentation and its contents will make an application appealing yet functional Who This Book Is For This book intended for those who want to develop software using Qt5. If you want to improve the visual quality and content presentation of your software application, this book is best suited to you. What You Will Learn Customize the look and feel of your application using the widget editor provided by Qt5 Change the states of the GUI elements to make them appear in a different form Animating the GUI elements using the built-in animation system provided by Qt5 Draw shapes and 2D images in your application using Qt5's powerful rendering system Draw 3D graphics in your application by implementing OpenGL, an industry-standard graphical library to your project Build a mobile app that supports touch events and export it to your device Parse and extract data from an XML file, then present it on your software's GUI Display web content on your program and interact with it by calling JavaScript functions from C++, or calling C++ functions from the web content Access to MySQL and SQLite databases to retrieve data and display it on your software's GUI In Detail With the advancement of computer technology, the software market is exploding with tons of software choices for the user, making their expectations higher in terms of functionality and the look and feel of the application. Therefore, improving the visual quality of your application is vital in order to overcome the market competition and stand out from the crowd. This book will teach you how to develop functional and appealing software using Qt5 through multiple projects that are interesting and fun. This book covers a variety of topics such as look-and-feel customization, GUI animation, graphics rendering, implementing Google Maps, and more. You will learn tons of useful information, and enjoy the process of working on the creative projects provided in this book. Style and approach This book focuses on customizing the look and feel and utilizing the graphical features provided by Qt5. It takes a step-by-step approach, providing tons of screenshots and sample code for you to follow and learn. Each topic is explained sequentially and placed in context.