Book Image

Fearless Cross-Platform Development with Delphi

By : David Cornelius
Book Image

Fearless Cross-Platform Development with Delphi

By: David Cornelius

Overview of this book

Delphi is a strongly typed, event-driven programming language with a rich ecosystem of frameworks and support tools. It comes with an extensive set of web and database libraries for rapid application development on desktop, mobile, and internet-enabled devices. This book will help you keep up with the latest IDE features and provide a sound foundation of project management and recent language enhancements to take your productivity to the next level. You’ll discover how simple it is to support popular mobile device features such as sensors, cameras, and GPS. The book will help you feel comfortable working with FireMonkey and styles and incorporating 3D user interfaces in new ways. As you advance, you’ll be able to build cross-platform solutions that not only look native but also take advantage of a wide array of device capabilities. You’ll also learn how to use embedded databases, such as SQLite and InterBase ToGo, synchronizing them with your own custom backend servers or modules using the powerful RAD Server engine. The book concludes by sharing tips for testing and deploying your end-to-end application suite for a smooth user experience. By the end of this book, you’ll be able to deliver modern enterprise applications using Delphi confidently.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
1
Section 1: Programming Power
5
Section 2: Cross-Platform Power
11
Section 3: Mobile Power
15
Section 4: Server Power

Getting started with 3D in Delphi

Building a FireMonkey application with 3D capabilities requires a TViewPort3D component container for holding 3D objects. Starting a new 3D application gives you a form unit based on TForm3D that conveniently bundles the TViewPort3D container in for you. If you have an existing 2D FireMonkey application, you can add a TViewPort3D container onto it, in which you can put 3D objects.

There's no better way to learn than to dive in and start playing in this new arena. I would suggest creating a new multi-device application, selecting the 3D Application template, and placing a few controls from the 3D Shapes section of the palette onto the form. As you place each one, you'll notice the objects have four handles with which to resize and rotate the object in 3D space. Most also have a default color of red.

Another thing you'll notice is that all 3D controls are initially placed in the center of the viewport. ViewPort3D is measured in...