Newbie to QtDesigner, have doubts regarding proper usage

Hi

I hope this is the proper place to post this question. I am not a beginner to Qt but I am a complete newbie when it comes to Qt Designer. So I hope somebody can point me in the right direction.

1. What exactly is the Designer used for? Is it a tool just to create the ui ?

2. Can you write an entire application using just the designer ? By this I mean : Can you program the signals and slots and access every member of a Qt class using just the designer ?

3. Say I wanted a class derived from QListWidgetItem and another widget to provide context menus, can I do this through the designer or is writing a plugin a better way to do it?

4. And lastly (for now), I have noticed a few posts from people complaining about the integrated designer in Qt Creator. So is it better to stick to the stand alone Qt Designer ?

I hope somebody provide some info. Breaking layouts is driving me nuts!

1. The designer is mainly a tool for creating the Ui. You can do it in code instead if you prefer. Each person has there own preference.

2. It's possible, depending on the widgets you use, but for most applications your going to need at least some code. You may want to checkout the web browser example on Youtube created within 5 minutes.

3. The best way would be to subclass an existing widget that does most of what you want and just tweak the functionality to your needs. Designer can help here as it can give you access to the untweaked component in the designer, create the component, and then you need to modify to suit.

4. Again, depends on personal preference. For me, the QtCreator builtin ui designer is too small and not flexible enough so I prefer the seperate application to get more screen space. You loose some functions (eg. jump to slot) as designer has no access to your source code, but I'm happy with that.