Tutorials and articles on using Delphi Visual Component Library (VCL) controls and components more efficiently at design and run time.
One of the neateast new properties (in Delphi versions 2006 and up) you can find in the Object Inspector are the Margins, Padding and AllignWithMargins. For me, there's no user interface like the one you can set up using just a few panels, their Align property and now with the help of Margins and Padding the UI gets even better.
ViewOnly property is a mix of Enabled and ReadOnly where the control with ViewOnly set to true will not be grayed, will be read only but a user will not be able to set the input focus to the control. Class helper to add the ViewOnly property to all TWinControl descendants.
In Delphi, descedants of the TCustomEdit type, like TEdit, TMemo and TRichEdit, expose two properties you can use to make the editor not-editable: ReadOnly and Enabled. How about a ViewOnly property that would be a mix or Enabled and ReadOnly where the control with ViewOnly set to true will not be grayed, will be read only but a user will not be able to set the input focus to the control?
When an edit box or a label is placed on a panel, in a Delphi application, if the Enabled property for the panel is set to False, the label and the edit box will *not* appear grayed - as you would expect! Here's a quick fix.
Configuration forms often have a cancel button used to revert any edits to the edit controls back to original (initial) values. Here's how to implement such a mechanism in Delphi applications.
Owner Drawing - an excellent way to improve the look and feel of your Delphi application by changing the control's standard appearance.
The main difficulty in testing visual Delphi components is simulating mouse and keyboard events and testing the appearance of the components. This article described a method to automate the mouse and keyboard and to compare screen-captures of the components with previous versions that are believed to be correct.
Make your application user interface cool with Delphi's TCoolbar component. It's like a toolbar, except that you can place *anything* you want on it.
Stop. This is the one and only solution to file searching. Use Delphi to find any file in any directory and/or subdirectory that match a certain mask. Start searching.
The Win 3.1 Delphi components palette group includes several components that enable us to build our own custom File Open or File Save dialog box. The components are TFileListBox, TDirectoryListBox, TDriveComboBox, and TFilterComboBox. Let's see how we can build a simple File Navigating dialog box with these components and just a few lines of code.
Components are essential elements of the Delphi environment. It's crucial for every Delphi beginner to understand what VCL (Visual Component Library) has to offer.
Generic solution to changing the background color (and other properties) of the focused (selected for input) Delphi control. Learn how to exploit the powers of the RTTI, OnEnter and OnExit events of a Delphi control along with the TScreen's OnActiveControlChange event to provide a more user friendly application interface.
Coding the TScreen object, obtainer of all information about the current state of the screen in a Delphi application.
Learn how to access a group of design-time created components - by storing the components in an array.
Working with the Windows Clipboard from a Delphi application - basic operations: Cut, Copy and Paste.
A sample Delphi application that demonstrates how you can make your menu items take on the new look of the Office 2007 - doing rich menus using owner drawing techniques.
Delphi makes it easy to program dragging & dropping into our applications. We can even drag and drop from one form to another or from Windows Explorer to our application, or from-to what ever we want, as you will see.
More sophisticated Mouse techniques. Is mouse Present? Handling OnMouseEnter, OnMouseLeave. Restrict movement, Set Position, Faking clicks, etc.
Is the mouse over a component? Was a mouse button pressed? Which button was it? Did the user release a button, which one? Exactly where inside the form is the mouse? Did the user move the mouse out of the form into another form?
Pressing the Tab key moves the input focus to next control and Shift-Tab to previous in the tab order of the form. When working with Windows applications, most users intuitively expect the Enter key to behave like a Tab key.
Installing custom component package(s) in Borland Delphi 2005 / Delphi for Win32 personality. Adding custom components to the Tool Palette.
Installing custom components in Delphi 2005 / Delphi for Win32 personality. If you need to install a third-party (or your own) Delphi component, and you only have the .PAS source file(s), follow this step-by-step tutorial and learn how to create a package to host your components.
In Delphi 2005 custom components are installed in the IDE as packages (BPL files). If you need to install custom component(s), and you have source files (units containing the components), with Delphi 2005 (for Win32) you need to create a package to host the components prior to installing the components in the Tool Palette. Here's how...
If you need to install a third-party Delphi component, and you only have a .PAS source file(s), follow this step-by-step tutorial and learn how to add the component into an existing package. This tutorial covers installing components in Delphi for Win32 (Delphi 7).
How a simple text file can beat Registry in storing a few pieces of application specific configuration data. The TIniFile class explained!
Creating custom file-selection and directory-navigation forms (dialogs) with file system components.
Owner Drawing - an excellent way to improve the look and feel of your Delphi application by changing the control's standard appearance. Creating a graphical (popup) menu.
How to create a reasonable Delphi facsimile of the Windows explorer, all without writing a single line of code.
How to move a TImage object in a ScrollBox with the mouse, like a Drag and Drop operation - without the scroll bars.
Extensive tutorial on printing with Quick Report components and Delphi.
A stream is what its name suggests: a flowing "river of data". A stream has a beginning, an end, and you're always somewhere in between of these two points. Learn about using the TStream class in Delphi: how to use stream objects to read from, write to, or copy information stored in a particular medium.
With an ActionList, we can group and manage "actions" (event handling code) between different components and even re-use them among different applications!
Collections are used for managing lists of items. However, unlike the TList or the TStringList classes, collections manage items that are of the same type. Two common examples of collections are the Panels property of TStatusBar and the Columns property of TDBGrid.
Using components is easy. This article helps understanding Delphi controls deeper.
Using TFrames, interfaces and inheritance, you can overcome the limitations of using TTabSheets in your application
The TList class is most often used when you need an array whose size can change at run time.
How to. An easy description of customizing the standard combobox.
Delphi 7 has included Rave Reports as the default reporting solution, replacing Quick Reports. This is a introduction to Rave Reports. Part I describes how to work with Code Base reports
Part III describes how to create Data Aware Reports using Driver Data Views.
Lists, strings, and string lists are among the most commonly used Delphi data structures, so obtaining some extra speed from them can benefit most applications. This presentation also helps you figure out how to port similar code to Delphi for the Microsoft .NET Framework
Part II describes how to work with the Visual Designer.
"Can I resize the drop-down list of a TComboBox so that I can see the complete text of its items?"
How to add syntax highlighting capabilities to the RichEdit control.
These tutorials provide a good starting point for those wishing to become proficient in ModelMaker, the UML/CASE tool included in Delphi 7 Enterprise and Delphi 7 Architect. Topics include basic: Importing Existing Code; intermediate: Creating Classes within Diagrams and Advanced: Creating plugins with the ModelMaker OpenTools API.
Delphi 3,4,5 TCollection Performance Issues and Solutions
How to give a new (XP) look and feel to your Delphi 7 applications using the ActionManager.
Part IV shows how to create Master/Detail reports using Direct Data Views
How do I save data entered in a list box at run time without resorting to a text file or having to deal with the overhead of a table?
See how easy is to add user customisable key bindings to your Delphi projects.
A frame is a container class that permits you to visually design compound components. In addition, the design understands the relationship between a frame and the components it contains, permit you to override the properties and event handlers of objects that appear in frame instances.
