Customizable GUI

Requirements

Complete user interface layout, colors, widget (buttons, windows, dialogs, splitters, scrollbars etc.) shape and design should be customizable with very little effort, without recompilation, by any graphics designer for any Qt application. Only a set of bitmap image containing pictures of all widgets for all states and a xml file containing picture coordinates for every widget should be enough to change the skin of application.

System Overview

Freedom to design user interface of any Qt application even after deployment and ability to distribute the same application with different colors and layouts for various customers as per their needs/choice is the main motive of this software component. Complete window layout arrangement using configurable docking windows, tabbed widgets, splitters to have re-sizable layout, possibility of having two designs for one widget and more flexibility then Qt's style sheets were important goals of the project.

Implementation

1. XML design
2. Implementing Qt style class to use bitmap and XML for drawing
3. Drawing each window part with customized color and at random size including scroll bars, splitters and dock windows.
4. Simplifying the skinning so that any naive graphical designer can play and modify the same.

Tools   

1. Visual Studio 9, Xcode and Qt Creator
2. Qt for cross platform development.
3. XML Editor
4. Image designer