Trolltech Presents Qt-Based Version of Nestcape Navigator 5.0

(April 6, 1998) Trolltech today released the QtScape demonstration program to the public. A team of seven programmers have in five days ported to Qt the newly released Netscape Navigator web browser source code. Qt is Trolltech's multi-platform Graphical User Interface (GUI) toolkit. The free QtScape is released as a "proof of concept" that Qt as a platform provides all the functionality required for making state-of-the-art GUI applications, as well as allowing rapid application development.

"When Netscape Communications Corporation earlier this year announced that it would release the source code of Communicator 5.0, we decided that this was the perfect opportunity to show the world the flexibility and effectiveness of our GUI toolkit" said Eirik Eng, CEO of Trolltech. "By giving a team of seven programmers only five days - a "mythical man-month" - to achieve a functioning Qt port of Netscape Navigator, we wanted to demonstrate the ease and speed of developing graphical user interfaces with Qt."

The QtScape development team consisted of five Trolltech senior engineers as well as two programmers volunteering from the free software community. Netscape released the Communicator source code March 31, and the team came together the day after to face an immense task: to replace the 500 000 lines of C and C++ code in the X-Windows/Motif and Microsoft Windows specific parts of Communicator. Nonetheless, QtScape implements almost all the main web browser functionality of Netscape Navigator. In some areas, the port improves on the original: The pages are drawn noticeably faster, and the color handling on 256-color screens is better.

"We were confident that we would achieve a satisfactory result, although the Communicator source code was not easily penetrated" said Haavard Nord, president of Trolltech. "This represents definite evidence of the power and flexibility of Qt, as well as a demonstration of the skills of our programmers. I am very satisfied."

QtScape is available at http://www.trolltech.com/qtmozilla/ It is presented as a Qt demonstration program only, not a Trolltech product. The full source code is released under the Netscape Public License, which allows free distribution and modification. Further information about the release of Netscape Communicator is available at http://www.mozilla.org/

One of the freeware developers, Kalle Dalheimer, is also available for Qt-related contract work. He can be contacted at kalle@dalheimer.hh.eunet.de.

Trolltech AS is a computer software company specializing in multi-platform C++ libraries for graphical user interfaces. Its flagship product Qt is used as a basis for successful commercial applications world wide. Trolltech is located in Oslo, Norway. Further information is available at http://www.trolltech.com/

Netscape, Navigator and Communicator are trademarks of Netscape Communications Corporation. Qt is a trademark of Trolltech AS.