Wordpress, that fabulous, free blog publishing platform, is coming to Nokia devices (both Symbian and Maemo/MeeGo) thanks to a Wordpress for Nokia app being built by Futurice.
We think having Wordpress for Nokia devices is a great thing for blog-writing Nokia users out there. Soon (or even now if they use the pre-release version) bloggers can type away and post directly from their Nokia devices, and the best thing is, they’ll be using a Qt application!
Yes, you guessed it, Wordpress for Nokia is built with Qt - written once and then deployed onto two different platforms without needing its source code rewritten.
We caught up with Janne Kalliomäki, Software Developer at Futurice and spoke to him about Wordpress and Qt.
Qt: Why did you decide to use Qt for the Nokia Wordpress client?
Janne Kalliomäki: Qt provides us the ability to use single code base with only small modifications per platform, thus saving a lot of development effort. Qt is also the future of mobile development, so this decision will pay off in the future with decreased maintenance costs.
Which particular features of Qt did you use most, and which gave the most value to your project?
The most valuable feature was extremely rich and high level library, which made previously laborious tasks, such as network access and image manipulation, easy. The GUI library is also very comprehensive, reducing the need to develop custom components.
Now that you know how easy it is to write applications for multiple platforms using Qt, how do you see Qt fitting in to your plans for future products?
Qt provides such an easy way of creating high performing and good looking applications, so I predict that a large part of our mobile applications that are targeting Nokia platforms will be implemented with it.
When do you expect the final version of Wordpress for Nokia to be released?
The final version will be ready during the summer. We are currently improving the looks and performance of the UI, and the results look already very promising.
If you had to sum up your experience using Qt for this build, how would you describe it?
In terms of productivity, the switch from S60 UI libraries to Qt was a huge leap forward. Qt ports for Symbian and Maemo are already rather mature, decreasing the risk of running into platform bugs considerably. With Qt, one can finally create good looking custom UIs with acceptable development effort.
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Read more about how the Wordpress for Nokia build is progressing at http://dev.nokia.wordpress.org/
