QML vs HTML

The following is a small snippet based on the 2022 QML > HTML blog post TODO. Please checkout that post if your interested in a more detailed comparision between QML & HTML.

This aim of this page is really just to introduce the big picture differences between the two.

It is hard to introduce QML without comparing it HTML.

Even if you have never used HTML or QML it is worth taking a moment to think about the big picture difference between the two technologies:

  • HTML describes how to structure text documents and links on the web. Over time it was extended with JS and CSS to let you do much more but at its core it is a text document rendering technology.
  • QML was designed to describe how 2D and 3D spatial elements relate and interact with each other. It can still render text but that is not its focus. QML is much more concerned with creating a user experience rather than presenting textual information.

This difference is subtle but as you learn QML you will see how this leads to a simpler, easier to understand language that allows you to do everything and more than HTML could ever offer.

If you are at all up to date with the current state of the web you will know that the real comparision is really not between QML and HTML but between QML and the huge ever changing ecosystem of javascript based frameworks that have been built for HTML over the years. Many of these are great but the fact that we currently have to resort to 3rd party frameworks to turn HTML into something capable of creating the modern UI experiences that we expect today should begin to show you why QML is worth learning.