Anders' Analog Clock app ported to Delphi for iOS

My FireMonkey Clock app has been ported using a beta version of Delphi for iOS.

[caption id="attachment_39423" align="alignnone" width="225" caption=" "][/caption]

Above you can see a screen shot of the app as it starts up. By default it uses "normal drive" - the second hand moves once per second and the minute hand moves once per minute.

The app is a Universal app (supports iPhone and iPad). The main clock screen uses a TScaledLayout to ensure proper scaling down to the iPhone (the app was designed for the iPad).

If you hit the Info button it will take you to the setup tab, where you can select "Flame" (or FireMonkey second hand) as well as "Smooth drive" - the second and minute hands move smoothly.

[caption id="attachment_39422" align="alignnone" width="225" caption=" "][/caption]

The setup screen uses a combination of items that scale and items that don't scale. For instance, the toolbar, the back button, and the listbox with its items are not supposed to scale, but still be aligned properly. The clock faces, however, do scale inside of a TScaledLayout.

[caption id="attachment_39425" align="alignnone" width="225" caption=" "][/caption]

Above you can see what the FireMonkey second hand looks like.

Below is a screen shot of my Structure Pane where you can see how I designed the app:

[caption id="attachment_39424" align="alignnone" width="127" caption=" "][/caption]

I also wanted to mention performance. The previous version of the app was created in XE2 where I got about 2-3 frames per second in smooth mode - not very smooth. However, this version created with our upcoming product gets a blazing 60 frames per second on the iPad 3 using iOS 6.1.3 and almost the same fps rate on iPhone 4 (iOS 5.1) and iPad 2 (iOS 6.1) at about 55+ frames per second.

Enjoy!

PS: The screen shots above are actually from the *next* update I will be pushing soon... The current one looks almost the same, except for a few changes in layout.

MVP Nuggets #14 and #15 - New MVPs!

First off, congrats to the following new MVPs since my last announcement:

Jennifer Kuiper
Volker Hillman
Dmitrii Kuzmenko

This installation of the "MVP Nuggets" covers the period Feb 23-Mar 8.

Francois Piette

High speed generic queue class
Operator overloading for records

Ricardo Boaro

Delphi XE3 pointers on how to use VCL and FireMonkey (Portuguese)
Dynamically Loading Packages in Delphi XE3 (Portuguese)
Installing FireDAC into RAD Studio XE3 (Portuguese translation of Marco's blog)

Radek Cervinka

Export PDF/A in Fast Report - Czech - English
FireDAC - monitoring the implementation of SQL - Czech - English

Primoz Gabrijelcic

Embarcadero Academy: The Power of XE3

Germán Estévez Ruiz

Persistence of a class structure - Spanish - English

Enjoy!

MVP Nuggets #12 and #13

This installation of the "MVP Nuggets" covers the period Feb 9-22.

Francois Piette:

Using Universal Plug And Play (UPnP) with Delphi

Marcos Antonio Moreira:

Introduction to Metropolis in Delphi XE3 - Portuguese - English
Zarko Gajic:

Have Hints For Some Delphi Controls Stay Longer – Control Specific Hint Hide Timeout Values
Radek Cervinka:

Synapse for Delphi POSIX (OSX and future Linux, iOS, Android) - Czech - English
Jens Fudge:

Mobile Preview Webinar Summary
Felix Colibri:

Mobile Preview Webinar Summary
Primoz Gabrijelcic:

Workshop: Multithreaded Programming 1.1
Cary Jensen:

Delphi Developer Days 2013 Cities and Dates
Delphi Editor Key Combination Table Updated
Robert Love:

Legacy Code: Scoping
Legacy Code: Abstract to Interface
Nick Hodges:

Review of the Mobile Preview Webinar
Delphi and the Factory Pattern: Simple Factory
Luis Felipe González Torres:

C++Builder XE3. DataSnap (64bits, C++11 auto y lambda) FireMonkey LiveBinding Designer. Mobile Connector (Android, iOS) - Spanish


Enjoy!

Mobile Preview Webinar: Last show at 5pm PST today!

Amazing attendance today! We browned out GotoWebinar! We're sorry if you were among the ones that where turned away when we hit the ceiling.

Fantastic response. Thanks for all of your questions and comments!

We've had 3,000+ folks register for this webinar.

Thanks all for watching!

The last live webinar will be at 5pm today - REGISTER NOW!

If you miss this one, the replays will be up within the next two weeks.

Enjoy!

Save the Date: Mobile Preview Webinar on February 21!

Don't miss our Mobile Preview Webinar on February 21! Register now. Space is limited and this webinar is filling up FAST!

Thursday, February 21, 2013
6:00AM PST / 9:00AM EST / 14:00 UTC
11:00AM PST / 2:00PM EST / 19:00 UTC
5:00PM PST / 8:00PM EST /
12:00PM 22-Feb Australia EDT

The new Delphi and RAD Studio development solution for iOS is coming soon. Now is a great time to get started on the path toward multi-device application development across Windows, Mac, iOS and then Android. Join us for this informative webinar to learn why mobile development is becoming increasingly important and the Delphi solution for mobile development.

• 
  
  Mobile opportunities for Delphi and RAD Studio developers


• 
  
  Developing iOS apps with Delphi from IDE to simulator to device


• 
  
  Delphi mobile UI and style tips


• 
  
  Data connectivity options with InterBase and SQLite for your mobile apps

MVP Nuggets #11

Jose Castillo Reyes:

Workshop: Developing Apps for Windows 8 With Delphi XE3

Alexander Alexeev:

"Friendliness" in Delphi - Russian - English

Robert Love:
AnyDAC - worries with some real excitement

Nick Hodges:

Delphi and the Decorator Pattern
Enjoy!

MVP Nuggets #10

Francois Piette:

Microsoft Word or Excel calls a Delphi application
Internet Explorer Automation Part 1
Internet Explorer Automation Part 2

Adriano Santos:

Adriano has announced a workshop on Developing Mobile Applications Using FireMonkey and HTML5Builder - Portuguese - English

Ricardo Boaro:

Developing Apps for Windows and Mac (Portuguese)
LiveBindings and new edit support (Portuguese)
Working with Packages Using VCL in Delphi XE3 (Portuguese)
Working with Packages Using FireMonkey and VCL in Delphi XE3 (Portuguese)

Zarko Gajic:

The (Open) Case Of Dangling Pointers (Invalid Object References) In Delphi

Felix Colibri:

VCL Styles in Delphi
English
French

Nick Hodges:

Delphi and the Observer Pattern
Enjoy!

Embarcadero Acquires AnyDAC From DA-SOFT

SAN FRANCISCO – Feb. 5, 2013 – Embarcadero Technologies, a leading provider of software solutions for application and database development, today announced it has acquired AnyDAC from DA-SOFT Technologies. AnyDAC is a powerful, yet easy-to-use software development library for Enterprise-class data access. AnyDAC is known for its high performance, rich developer feature-set, and ease of use. Embarcadero plans to incorporate AnyDAC based technology into its multi-device app development tools which include Delphi, C++Builder, and RAD Studio. Embarcadero developer tools roadmap includes single source native deployment to Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android devices in 2013.

Full Press Release

MVP Nuggets #9

This week was video week in MVP land! Some awesome content here. Most of it in the speakers native tongue.

Ricardo Boaro:

Using the Windows 8 Style in VCL and FireMonkey apps
Using LiveBindings in VCL and FireMonkey DataSnap clients
Working with TFlowLayout and TGridLayout in RAD Studio XE3
Working with Visual LiveBindings

Victory Fernandes:

Standard Gestures in C++Builder XE3

Alister Christie:

OnCreateItemClass

Luis Felipe González Torres :

Introduction to DataSnap using C++Builder XE3
Using RTTI with Delphi XE3
Enjoy!

Coming soon: Delphi for iOS

Develop iOS applications with Delphi

Click the link above for many more details!

Enjoy!

Update 2 for C++Builder XE3, Delphi XE3 and RAD Studio XE3

Update 2 for C++Builder XE3, Delphi XE3 and RAD Studio XE3 is now available.

Download Update 2

ISO

Readme

Fix list

Enjoy!

MVP Nuggets #8

Francois Piette:

Using a custom attribute for data persistence

Adriano Santos:

Published a report from the Delphi Conference in Active Delphi

Samuel "Muka" David:

Published "Delphi and Google Maps" in Active Delphi

Adriano Santos and Marcos Moreira:

Published "Getting Started with FireMonkey" in Active Delphi

Victory Fernandes:

Delphi Custom Gestures

Felix Colibri:

Visual LiveBindings in Delphi (French)
Visual LiveBindings in Delphi (English)

Alister Christie:

Delphi Programming Tutorial #87 - Command Line Parameters
Mike Sutton:

A FireMonkey Grid Column for any Control

Enjoy!

RAD Studio wins Top Innovation Award

DeveloperWeek has awarded RAD Studio with the Top Innovator award in the Developer Tools category!

Enjoy!

MVP Nuggets #7

Francois Piette:

Make sure a form is visible on an existing monitor

Victory Fernandes:

Victory was interviewed by TVE-Bahia (a TV channel) about Start-Up Companies and Entrepreneurship

Bruno Fierens and Filip Lagrou:

Be-Delphi and TMS Software are organizing a TMS Day

Xavier Martinez:

Using the Diagnostics unit in Delphi (Spanish)
Using the Diagnostics unit in Delphi (English)
Mike Sutton:

A Clickable HotLink/URLLabel for FireMonkey
Enjoy!

MVP Nuggets #4 #5 and #6

Also known as the MVP Nuggets Holiday Digest... ;)

Happy New Year to all!!!

This MVP Nugget post covers the last three weeks (12/15-1/4).

Francois Piette:

"TIntegerList property and property editor" - Blog post - Full article (PDF)
"Writing an iterator for a container"
"Why I am using Delphi for all my development"

Zarko Gajic:

"Clipboard Delphi Spy with Custom Clipboard Formats"
"Reverse Engineering (Decompiling) Delphi Applications"
"Delphi Programming Almanacs: 1998. - 2012. Something for Every Delphi Developer: Beginner or a Guru!"

Alexander Alexeev:

Webinar on "Error handling in Delphi" - Russian - English
"Programming WinAPI, Part 1 - Where to Look" - Russian - English

Mike Sutton:

"How do you Change the Color of a Panel in FireMonkey?"
"Adding Images to a FireMonkey TreeView"

Alan Fletcher:

"Having fun with FireMonkey 2 multimedia components"

Enjoy!

MVP Nuggets #3

Alan Fletcher did a write-up on "Cross-platform development the FireMonkey way"

Zarko Gajic wrote several articles, including:
"Have a Delphi Function Return Multiple Results / Values"
"Intercepting Keyboard Input with Delphi - Implementing a Keyboard Hook"

Juan Antonio Castillo wrote an article on "7-zip and Delphi" - Spanish - English (Google)

Vladislav Bajenov wrote an article "Working with IMAP in Synapse" - Russian - English (Google)

Brian Long compiled a list of resources and links from the Developer Direct webinars

He also summarized a lot of "Embarcadero's C++ stories"

Enjoy!

C++Builder XE3 64-bit and Update 1 for Delphi, C++Builder and RAD Studio XE3 released!

Yesterday we released the 64-bit compiler for C++Builder XE3.

At the same time, we also released Update 1 for Delphi, C++Builder and RAD Studio XE3. More details in Tim's post here.

Specific links: Delphi XE3 Update 1 C++Builder XE3 Update 1 RAD Studio XE3 Update 1

Fix List for Update 1

Enjoy!

MVP Nuggets #2

Primoz Gabrijelcic led a workshop on Visual LiveBindings last week

Danny Wind wrotes an article "Why I Like FireMonkey"

Salvador Jover wrote a recap of the XE3 Tour that Danysoft hosted - Spanish - English (Google Translate)

I'd like to celebrate Salvador Jover in particular - he re-blogs and re-tweets just about anything that is Delphi related in the blogosphere! Thank you so much Salvador!

Zarko Gajic wrote about "Understanding Owner Drawing in Delphi"

He also wrote about "Understanding and Processing Keyboard events in Delphi"

He also wrote about "Understanding and Using Windows Callback Functions in Delphi"

Enjoy!

Components vs Children in FireMonkey

You have probably iterated through the Components array many many times as a Delphi developer.

Consider this simple application:



It's probably no surprise that listing the Components of the form like this...

procedure TForm2.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
var
  i: Integer;
begin
  Memo2.Lines.Clear;
  for i := 0 to ComponentCount-1 do
    Memo1.Lines.Add(Components[i].ClassName+' (Name = "'+Components[i].Name+'")')
end;

...gives you the following output, which is very similar to the Structure View in the IDE, except that it doesn't show the relationships between the components.



Listing the children, and the children of all children (recursively) is simply done by using this procedure:

procedure TForm2.ListChildren(Obj : TFMXObject; Level : Integer);
var
  i: Integer;
begin
  for i := 0 to Obj.ChildrenCount-1 do begin
    Memo2.Lines.Add(StringOfChar(' ',2*Level)+
                    Obj.Children[i].ClassName+
                    ' (Name = "'+
                    Obj.Children[i].Name+
                    '")');
    ListChildren(Obj.Children[i],Level+1);
  end;
end;

procedure TForm2.Button2Click(Sender: TObject);
begin
  Memo2.Lines.Clear;
  ListChildren(Self,0);
end;

The above code will give us a tree output with indentation to show us the children, grandchildren, etc, like this:



The list of children is much longer than you would possibly except at first. We see for instance that in FireMonkey a TButton consists of a TLayout, a TSubImage and a TText. The TSubImage and the TText in turn have 4 animations each to handle hover-in/hover-out and pressing/releasing. Likewise the TMemo holds scrollbars, a popup context menu, and much more.

The entire output from ListChildren follows below:

TSubImage (Name = "")
TButton (Name = "Button1")
  TLayout (Name = "")
    TSubImage (Name = "")
      TRectAnimation (Name = "")
      TRectAnimation (Name = "")
      TRectAnimation (Name = "")
      TRectAnimation (Name = "")
    TText (Name = "")
      TColorAnimation (Name = "")
      TColorAnimation (Name = "")
      TColorAnimation (Name = "")
      TColorAnimation (Name = "")
TMemo (Name = "Memo1")
  TLayout (Name = "")
    TSubImage (Name = "")
      TRectAnimation (Name = "")
      TLayout (Name = "")
      TSmallScrollBar (Name = "")
      TSmallScrollBar (Name = "")
      TScrollBar (Name = "")
      TScrollBar (Name = "")
    TBrushObject (Name = "")
    TBrushObject (Name = "")
    TFontObject (Name = "")
  TScrollContent (Name = "")
    TPopupMenu (Name = "")
      TPopupMenuContent (Name = "")
        TMenuItem (Name = "")
          TMenuItemContent (Name = "")
        TMenuItem (Name = "")
          TMenuItemContent (Name = "")
        TMenuItem (Name = "")
          TMenuItemContent (Name = "")
        TMenuItem (Name = "")
          TMenuItemContent (Name = "")
        TMenuItem (Name = "")
          TMenuItemContent (Name = "")
        TMenuItem (Name = "")
          TMenuItemContent (Name = "")
TEdit (Name = "Edit2")
  TLayout (Name = "")
    TSubImage (Name = "")
      TRectAnimation (Name = "")
    TLayout (Name = "")
    TLayout (Name = "")
    TBrushObject (Name = "")
    TBrushObject (Name = "")
    TFontObject (Name = "")
  TPopupMenu (Name = "")
    TPopupMenuContent (Name = "")
      TMenuItem (Name = "")
        TMenuItemContent (Name = "")
      TMenuItem (Name = "")
        TMenuItemContent (Name = "")
      TMenuItem (Name = "")
        TMenuItemContent (Name = "")
      TMenuItem (Name = "")
        TMenuItemContent (Name = "")
      TMenuItem (Name = "")
        TMenuItemContent (Name = "")
      TMenuItem (Name = "")
        TMenuItemContent (Name = "")
  TContentEdit (Name = "")
    TClearEditButton (Name = "ClearEditButton1")
      TLayout (Name = "")
        TSubImage (Name = "")
          TRectAnimation (Name = "")
          TRectAnimation (Name = "")
          TRectAnimation (Name = "")
          TSubImage (Name = "")
            TRectAnimation (Name = "")
            TRectAnimation (Name = "")
            TRectAnimation (Name = "")
TButton (Name = "Button2")
  TLayout (Name = "")
    TSubImage (Name = "")
      TRectAnimation (Name = "")
      TRectAnimation (Name = "")
      TRectAnimation (Name = "")
      TRectAnimation (Name = "")
    TText (Name = "")
      TColorAnimation (Name = "")
      TColorAnimation (Name = "")
      TColorAnimation (Name = "")
      TColorAnimation (Name = "")
TViewport3D (Name = "Viewport3D1")
  TDummy (Name = "")
    TDummy (Name = "")
      TCamera (Name = "")
  TSphere (Name = "Sphere1")
  TCube (Name = "Cube1")
TTextureMaterialSource (Name = "TextureMaterialSource1")

Enjoy!

MVP Nuggets #1

In "MVP Nuggets" I will be highlighting things that some of our MVPs have done in the last week or so.

Luciano Pimento wrote a tips and tricks article about improving performance and maintenance of your client/server applications.

Marcos Antonio Moreira did a Delphi multi-platform lecture at a university. He also did a University TV interview ahead of his talk. He blogs about it here.

Pedro Bento published an article "Introduction to Generics in Delphi" in Active Delphi (print magazine). His blog post.

Zarko Gajic wrote an article on "Creating, Parsing and Manipulating XML Documents with Delphi"

Juan Antonio Castillo wrote an article "Creating stylish applications in Delphi"

Alexander Bozhko celebrates the 3 year anniversary of DelphiFeeds.RU

Vladislav Bajenov writes about how to work with email attachements in Delphi

Nick Hodges writes about "Why You Should Choose Delphi"

Thanks to all active MVPs, and I look forward to highlighting more next time!