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 shapes

In this section, we will learn about shapes. The shapes that are provided represent basic geometrical figures and can be used as building blocks for more complex compositions. We will also look at the properties that are available for these components since they are introduced by a common ancestor: the TShape class.

Shapes are the primitives of FMX components. They are not provided with a style object and they are the building blocks for many visual parts of FMX's UIs. They are listed on the Shapes page of the Component palette, as shown in the following screenshot:

Figure 3.6

In the preceding screenshot, you can easily spot TLine, TRectangle, TRoundRect, TEllipse, TCircle, TArc, TText, TImage, and TGlyph. Your use of them may vary but in my experience, TRectangle/TCircle and TImage/TGlyph are the most commonly used in FMX applications.

They are all descendants of TShape, which itself is a descendant of TControl (the FMX.Objects unit). You can...