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 RTL for everyone

When we use the name Delphi, we often tend to mix the language (Delphi or Object Pascal, as you prefer) with the IDE (including all related tools). Sometimes, this gets extended to the libraries that come alongside the (main) product.

Moreover, it is not so unusual to push the concept even further and consider everything included, even third-party libraries (open source and commercial libraries from vendors).

This happens because we identify Delphi as a toolset to build applications and not merely just a language. This is true, to some extent. You are not going to execute a SQL query using the Delphi language; you'll use a Data Access Components (DAC) library for Delphi. This library will provide you, through the Delphi language and IDE (that is, providing convenient components to be used in the IDE), with the ability to execute SQL statements while returning some Delphi-compatible data structure (that is, a TDataSet descendant or equivalent...