Developing cross-platform UI applications has always been tricky and challenging. Despite Qt has great support for development on all modern operating systems, we decided to use embedded web browser to show UI using modern web frameworks like React, while having all business logic in C++.

In this talk I would like to present architecture of JetBrains Toolbox application.

We created initial version of JetBrains Toolbox application during 48-hours Hackathon. Given such tight time constraints we needed UI framework that would be easy to develop and improve. At that moment we already had a number of rich web applications based on UI library speaking our design language. It was a natural choice to adapt this interface for desktop application.

We combined the best of both worlds: core business logic written in C++ works stable and fast, UI in HTML/JS gives aesthetic pleasure. And Qt Framework not only provides lots of useful primitives for C++ coding, but also effectively glues both parts together.

However, it requires a responsible team to achieve high quality level and smooth experience on all operating systems.

I will show how we develop, build, maintain and support this application and discuss pros and cons of chosen approach. I will share best practices we use to release fast and error free.

Info

Day: 2016-09-02
Start time: 11:30
Duration: 00:10
Track: Web

Links

• JetBrains
• App Preview
• Video

Files

• Slides

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