Qt Quick 2 vs HTML5 for desktop touch application [closed]

Question

We are a startup based in India with an application built on Qt Quick, which is deployed in HD touch devices in retail stores. The application runs more like a web-app rather than a desktop app. But we have serious hiring problems and fear of future while using Qt Quick. Hence we need to know if to go ahead with the same or shift to a more widely adopted stack like HTML, CSS and JS.

The data is served using a locally deployed web server(syncs with cloud from time to time) which serves data using the recommendation and search engine. We use Qt Quick for both getting data using AJAX and the UI is made using QML's elements, Touch Events, Animations, State - Transitions. We are left with very basic operations in C++ which read configuration files, etc.

We had developed a prototype 2 years ago in HTML5 using Sencha and were not very happy with the performance and touch behaviour, hence we picked Qt. But because it is much harder to develop 'beautiful' looking apps in a fast development cycle on Qt, stylesheet'ing is extremely naive on Qt, I want to reconsider if to move from Qt back to HTML5 or think of another framework. You can safely assume we want to deploy across Windows and Android.

Anderton

If you can't train your workers, or can't hire people who can learn new technologies quickly, I'm afraid you have way bigger problems than Qt Quick. Your hiring process is broken, as far as I'm concerned. If you have good hires, they will pick up Qt Quick. You shouldn't need to look specifically for developers with experience in Qt Quick. Anyone worthy their salt should be up and going within a week or two, especially if there's existing code to look at. – Karykaryl

@KubaOber I am sorry for not phrasing it properly. Getting skilled developers to write QML(which is a lot for our apps) retention becomes a problem. It is like hiring a JavaScript developer for writing HTML – Anderton

Answer 1

Both tools can help developers to have high-quality graphical UI in embedded and mobile space. It all depends on your needs to choose one for developing your application. I think that QML/C++ is better in terms of fluidity, quick iterations, consistency and scalable data visualization.

HTML5 has some difficulties:

• Implementing rich UI’s with good performance
• Mixing with native technologies
• Finding developers with knowledge of HTML5 & CSS3 in resource-limited environments

You can also use HTML5 in Qt-based applications. So i think having hybrid applications leveraging the best of native and Web depending on the use case seems a good idea.

Screeching

Actually for us finding developers in Qt Quick is much much harder than HTML5, CSS3 – Anderton

Yeah general HTML5, CSS3 developers are more than Qt Quick developers. But the ones who can deal with resource constraints in embedded environments are rare. – Screeching