You can use the integrated Qt Designer to design and build graphical user interfaces (GUIs) from Qt widgets. You can compose and customize your widgets or dialogs and test them using different styles and resolutions.

Widgets and forms created with Qt Designer are integrated seamlessly with programmed code, using the Qt signals and slots mechanism, that lets you easily assign behavior to graphical elements. All properties set in Qt Designer can be changed dynamically within the code. Furthermore, features like widget promotion and custom plugins allow you to use your own widgets with Qt Designer.

UIs that use widgets are clearly structured and enforce a platform look and feel, which makes them useful for traditional applications. However, they are static, and do not fully make use of the large high-resolution screens, touch input, and significant graphics power that are becoming common in portable consumer devices, such as mobile phones, media players, set-top boxes, and netbooks.

You can easily develop animations by using a declarative programming language called QML. In QML, a user interface is specified as a tree of objects with properties. You can edit QML code in the code editor. You can use Qt or JavaScript to implement the application logic.

The integration includes project management and code completion.

Using Qt Designer

Qt Creator automatically opens all .ui files in Qt Designer.

To change the layout of Qt Designer user interface elements:

1. Select Tools > Form Editor > Views > Locked.

   When this option is unchecked, you can change the layout.

2. Click the header of an element and drag the element to a new position.

To change Qt Designer properties, select Tools > Options... > Designer.

• Set the class properties and code generation preferences in Class Generation.
• Set an additional folder for saving templates in Template Paths.
• Set the grid settings and preview preferences in Forms. To preview your form with skins, enable Print/Preview Configuration and select your skin. Otherwise default preview settings are used.

  To preview the settings, select Tools > Form Editor > Preview, or press Ctrl+Alt+R.

• To specify embedded device profiles, such as style, font, and screen resolution, select Embedded Design.

For more information on Qt Designer, see Qt Designer Manual.