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

Looking beyond the UI

Even though many current prototyping tools tend to see an application as a bunch of views, we all know that a real application is not made only of a set of mere visual assets.

While building a cross-platform application, you obviously wish your visual application framework (FMX in the case) to deal with visual aspects but at the same time, to provide actual functionalities. This is because you will end up needing some level of interaction with the platform your application is running on.

Modern applications have to provide advanced functionalities, including some that are really basic (not always trivial, though), such as (multi-)touch support, and interaction with the system clipboard or with the filesystem. There are some possibly more specific topics, such as sensor integration (camera and positioning, for example), or other device-/platform-specifics such as notification systems, voice recognition, text-to-speech, and other advanced capabilities.

What I am trying...