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

Establishing a base

Not every mobile device supports every service and some people don't update their devices, meaning they could have an old version of the application programming interface (API) that doesn't support a new service you'd like to use.

You need to be aware of the various versions of devices your users will have and pick a minimum-supported API. You may recall reading in Chapter 4, Multiple Platforms, One Code Base, the minimum versions supported by Delphi for each platform. There are a lot of smartphones out there and while some people are constantly upgrading to the latest and greatest, a larger percentage hang on to their devices for several years. Additionally, not all devices support all features.

Instead of building a long list of devices and versions and which ones have which capabilities, there's a far simpler way to figure out what you can do on a device: just ask it! The FireMonkey platform has done all the hard work for you and provides...