Widgets and Layouts

Widgets

Widgets are the primary elements for creating user interfaces in Qt. Widgets can display data and status information, receive user input, and provide a container for other widgets that should be grouped together. A widget that is not embedded in a parent widget is called a window.

The QWidget class provides the basic capability to render to the screen, and to handle user input events. All UI elements that Qt provides are either subclasses of QWidget, or are used in connection with a QWidget subclass. Creating custom widgets is done by subclassing QWidget or a suitable subclass and reimplementing the virtual event handlers.

Layouts

Layouts are an elegant and flexible way to automatically arrange child widgets within their container. Each widget reports its size requirements to the layout through the sizeHint and sizePolicy properties, and the layout distributes the available space accordingly.

Qt Designer is a powerful tool for interactively creating and arranging widgets in layouts.

Widget Styles

Styles draw on behalf of widgets and encapsulate the look and feel of a GUI. Qt's built-in widgets use the QStyle class to perform nearly all of their drawing, ensuring that they look exactly like the equivalent native widgets.

Qt Style Sheets are a powerful mechanism that allows you to customize the appearance of widgets, in addition to what is already possible by subclassing QStyle.

The Widget Classes

The following sections list the widget classes. See the Qt Widget Gallery for some examples.

Basic Widgets

These basic widgets (controls), e.g. buttons, comboboxes and scroll bars, are designed for direct use.

QCheckBox	Checkbox with a text label
QComboBox	Combined button and popup list
QCommandLinkButton	Vista style command link button
QDateEdit	Widget for editing dates based on the QDateTimeEdit widget
QDateTimeEdit	Widget for editing dates and times
QDial	Rounded range control (like a speedometer or potentiometer)
QDoubleSpinBox	Spin box widget that takes doubles
QFocusFrame	Focus frame which can be outside of a widget's normal paintable area
QFontComboBox	Combobox that lets the user select a font family
QLCDNumber	Displays a number with LCD-like digits
QLabel	Text or image display
QLineEdit	One-line text editor
QMenu	Menu widget for use in menu bars, context menus, and other popup menus
QProgressBar	Horizontal or vertical progress bar
QPushButton	Command button
QRadioButton	Radio button with a text label
QScrollArea	Scrolling view onto another widget
QScrollBar	Vertical or horizontal scroll bar
QSizeGrip	Resize handle for resizing top-level windows
QSlider	Vertical or horizontal slider
QSpinBox	Spin box widget
QTabBar	Tab bar, e.g. for use in tabbed dialogs
QTabWidget	Stack of tabbed widgets
QTimeEdit	Widget for editing times based on the QDateTimeEdit widget
QToolBox	Column of tabbed widget items
QToolButton	Quick-access button to commands or options, usually used inside a QToolBar
QWidget	The base class of all user interface objects

Advanced Widgets

Advanced GUI widgets, e.g. tab widgets and progress bars, provide more complex user interface controls.

QCalendarWidget	Monthly based calendar widget allowing the user to select a date
QColumnView	Model/view implementation of a column view
QDataWidgetMapper	Mapping between a section of a data model to widgets
QDesktopWidget	Access to screen information on multi-head systems
QListView	List or icon view onto a model
QMacCocoaViewContainer	Widget for Mac OS X that can be used to wrap arbitrary Cocoa views (i.e., NSView subclasses) and insert them into Qt hierarchies
QMacNativeWidget	Widget for Mac OS X that provides a way to put Qt widgets into Carbon or Cocoa hierarchies depending on how Qt was configured
QTableView	Default model/view implementation of a table view
QTreeView	Default model/view implementation of a tree view
QUndoView	Displays the contents of a QUndoStack
QWSEmbedWidget	Enables embedded top-level widgets in Qt for Embedded Linux
QWebView	Widget that is used to view and edit web documents
QX11EmbedContainer	XEmbed container widget
QX11EmbedWidget	XEmbed client widget
Phonon::VideoWidget	Widget that is used to display video

Organizer Widgets

Classes like splitters, tab bars, button groups, etc are used for organizing and grouping GUI primitives into more complex applications and dialogs.

QButtonGroup	Container to organize groups of button widgets
QGroupBox	Group box frame with a title
QSplitter	Implements a splitter widget
QSplitterHandle	Handle functionality of the splitter
QStackedWidget	Stack of widgets where only one widget is visible at a time
QTabWidget	Stack of tabbed widgets

Abstract Widget Classes

The abstract widget classes are base classes. They are not usable as standalone classes but provide functionality when they are subclassed.

QAbstractButton	The abstract base class of button widgets, providing functionality common to buttons
QAbstractScrollArea	Scrolling area with on-demand scroll bars
QAbstractSlider	Integer value within a range
QAbstractSpinBox	Spinbox and a line edit to display values
QDialog	The base class of dialog windows
QFrame	The base class of widgets that can have a frame