Qt Weekly #11: Getting started with WinRT

With Qt for WinRT in Beta status for 5.3.0, you can now get started with the new port and package your application for the Windows and Windows Phone Stores.

This tutorial video walks through opening an existing project in Qt Creator, generating a project file for Visual Studio, and deploying the application to the various WinRT targets. Finally, we cover some packaging details for the Windows marketplaces.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pTeysNkRkk

Grab your tools
To follow along with the tutorial, you'll want to install the relevant Visual Studio versions first. Pick them up at the Windows Dev Center. That's Visual Studio 2013 for Windows (for Windows Store apps) and the Windows Phone 8.0 SDK (for Windows Phone apps).

Of course, also download Qt for WinRT from Qt Account if you are a Qt Enterprise licensee or from the Qt Project Downloads site. We provide prebuilt packages for PC (x64), Windows Phone Emulator (x86), and Windows Phone (ARM).

Qt Apps in the store
Try out Quick Forecast, which -- in addition to other app stores -- is now published in the Windows stores:

Quick Forecast in the Windows Phone Store

Quick Forecast in the Windows Store

The source for Quick Forecast is available here.

A note on Windows Phone 8.1
Qt for WinRT 5.3.0 supports Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.0. As you may have noticed, Windows Phone 8.1 is on its way to all Windows Phone devices as a free upgrade, so we are already adding support for it in Qt 5.3.1. Of course, apps built with Qt 5.3.0 also work on Windows Phone 8.1 devices, but in the future you'll also be able to build apps against the new Windows Phone 8.1 SDK.

As always, we welcome your feedback via the Qt Project mailing lists, forums, and bug tracker. Happy hacking :)