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

Exploring ResourceOptions properties

The ResourceOptions property has the following sub-properties:

  • CmdExecMode and CmdExecTimeout: A very common issue I have seen developers asking about on forums is about how to avoid the application from freezing while performing a time-consuming SQL operation (opening a large table or executing a not-so-fast query). Around the same topic, there is a second question, how do you cancel a long SQL operation from the client side?

Both questions deal with the command execution mode and the fact that most data access libraries are blocking and single-threaded. We'll learn about parallel programming in Chapter 11Building Responsive Applications, and how to achieve responsiveness in blocking scenarios, but there is a very handy feature that FireDAC has. Through CmdExecModeyou can choose among some built-in implementation that may help you avoid UI blocking and at the same time give you a chance to cancel a long...