I’m working on a instant messaging client and i am looking for a way to display the contacts like Pigdin or Yahoo Messenger does.
I was looking at a Tree Widget, but is there a way to customize the items?
I would like them to look something like this:

It might be better to use QTreeView instead of QTreeWidget. Then you can use the Qt’s model/view system and create a new item delegate class to handle the painting.
And read also this question: QListView/QListWidget with custom items and custom item widgets