Book Image

Delphi GUI Programming with FireMonkey

By : Andrea Magni
4 (1)
Book Image

Delphi GUI Programming with FireMonkey

4 (1)
By: Andrea Magni

Overview of this book

FireMonkey (FMX) is a cross-platform application framework that allows developers to create exciting user interfaces and deliver applications on multiple operating systems (OS). This book will help you learn visual programming with Delphi and FMX. Starting with an overview of the FMX framework, including a general discussion of the underlying philosophy and approach, you’ll then move on to the fundamentals and architectural details of FMX. You’ll also cover a significant comparison between Delphi and the Visual Component Library (VCL). Next, you’ll focus on the main FMX components, data access/data binding, and style concepts, in addition to understanding how to deliver visually responsive UIs. To address modern application development, the book takes you through topics such as animations and effects, and provides you with a general introduction to parallel programming, specifically targeting UI-related aspects, including application responsiveness. Later, you’ll explore the most important cross-platform services in the FMX framework, which are essential for delivering your application on multiple platforms while retaining the single codebase approach. Finally, you’ll learn about FMX’s built-in 3D functionalities. By the end of this book, you’ll be familiar with the FMX framework and be able to build effective cross-platform apps.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
1
Section 1: Delphi GUI Programming Frameworks
4
Section 2: The FMX Framework in Depth
13
Section 3: Pushing to The Top: Advanced Topics

Understanding the TOrderDetailsFrame frame

The last frame of our basic demo is TOrderDetailsFrame. It will be used to expose more detailed data about a single order.

The structure is minimal but flexiblea TToolBar component with a title to state which specific order is being shown and a TListBox instance. Multiple items can be added to the list, allowing a lot of order-related data to be available through a single component and each item can be customized to properly handle the specific nature of each piece of information (text, graphic, and more). Using a list component means having the opportunity to take advantage of its intrinsic vertical scrolling capabilities (a must, especially on phone devices).

The following screenshot shows the OrderDetailsFrame structure and appearance in the form designer:

Figure 8.9

LiveBindings technology is used to fill UI elements in the listbox with data from the OrdersTable dataset. As was done for the TOrdersFrame case...