Intended audience

This article is intended for C++ developers who are familiar with Graphical User Interface development. No specific knowledge of QNX is required. However, some knowledge of the Zinzala SDK will be useful, so check out the updated version of Introducing Zinzala.

The latest version of the Zinzala SDK can be downloaded from the hexaZen web site. In the demo folder of this release, there is a ready to build version of the application described in this article. Feel free to play with the demo after reading this article.

1. Overview

Over the past few years, QNX has been making strong in-roads into the automotive market. Cars manufactured by Audi, DaimlerChrysler and Saab are currently being shipped with infotainment systems built on top of the RTOS made by QNX Software Systems (QSS). The recent purchase of QSS by Harman International Industries can be seen as proof of the pioneering position taken by QNX over the recent years. This endorsement by Harman is a sign of the quality of this embedded Operating System.

Like many other embedded systems, an infotainment system relies on a custom Graphical User Interface (GUI); most often built on top of an existing GUI framework. For example, in the smartphone world, the Symbian OS provides Uikon, which is a basic framework that each licensee can use to build their own set of widgets or customize the existing ones. In this very competitive market, differentiating your products from the concurrent ones is an absolute priority. Through different UI styles and attractive application offerings, each Symbian licensee will try to inforce its own branding. This also applies to the automotive industry as well. However, the look of the infotainment may not be at the top of the buyer's list of considerations during a car purchase.

In this article, we are going to explore the creation of a custom widget for QNX using the basic components provided by the Zinzala SDK. Here is a screenshot of what we will build:

This widget is only one element of a multimedia console, much like the one we would expect to find in any kind of multimedia player. However, its implementation will offer us an interesting ground to explore in this article.

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