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

Summary

In this chapter, we learned about FMX Style, a central and fundamental piece of technology for the whole visual application framework. Even though you may simplify styling to the extent of skinning (applying patches to the UI, as was popular in the software of the 1990s, such as WinAmp, to name an example), there are some very sophisticated concepts behind it.

Building multi-platform applications is a task where the developer will face problems such as handling a multi-resolution scenario, different visual conventions across platforms and even OS versions, and integration with the underlying OS as well. Through the use of FMX Style, FMX behavioral services, and platform-native controls, you can really build stunning multi-platform applications with a sustainable level of effort.

In the next chapter, we'll continue our journey through technologies and strategies to build user-friendly and responsive multi-platform, multi-device applications. The focus will be on modularizing...