The Qt developers at Digia are moving at a pace – just over a month after releasing the Qt 5.1 alpha, they have announced the first beta of Qt 5.1. Mostly, the beta continues to deliver the features of the alpha – Qt Quick Controls, Qt Quick Layouts, a serial port module for hardware and virtual serial posts, an updated Qt Creator, support for static Qt builds, and official support for the Qt sensors module. The Android (Qt Quick 1 and 2) and iOS (Qt Quick 1 only) support has been refined in the beta release, though it is still at the level of a technology preview.

According to the developers, the biggest change in the beta is in the binary installer support, which is now included with the beta. The installers allow developers to begin coding without building Qt themselves. The announcement also notes that Windows Embedded Compact 7 support will be added back in the final release of Qt 5.1.

Open source users can download the beta1 release from download.qt-project.org. The developers hope to be able to release the final version of Qt 5.1 over the summer and, depending on feedback regarding the beta, will go to either a release candidate or second beta in a few weeks' time. Bugs should be reported to the Qt Bug Tracker.

(djwm)