dxRAM - Richard Morris' DevExpress blog

October 2009 - Posts

• Borlands latest product is pure genius!

  No not THAT Borland ... Oh no no no , I mean THIS one. I give you Borlands Australia - purveyors of Macadamia Shortbread on a Chocolate base.  What a stroke of genius to combine the 2nd great gift of the Scots, with the great Aussie "bush tucker" Nut, and dip it in Chocolate.  Now if only they produced a low-sugar version for Diabetics .... well I can dream can't I. Speaking of Dream Products, as you may know I've been a Delphi 7 hold-out for some time.  Full disclosure: CodeGear are pro-active at making sure all 3rd parties have a license of the latest products, those go straight to our VCL Dev team which is how we can be so quick to release compatible updates when CodeGear ships a new release.  Personally I still use D7 for Native Development, although I did use D2009 recently to do the CodeRage presentations and it really did feel like a better Delphi 7.  Lately I've been trialing Delphi 2010 and that to me feels like a better Delphi 2009. We have probably all heard of the "Even numbered Delphi" myth, and from most reviews it's clear that Delphi went through a tough patch earlier this decade, but it seems to me that all the releases since Borland sold CodeGear to Embarcadero have shown significant incremental quality improvements.  I can't say that I need Touch or Gestures but with Win 7's release this week they are certainly timely, Plenty of minor usability features in the IDE like IDE insight are a whole bunch of "nice to have" and I'd personally like to start seeing what I can do with the new RTTI. Of course Developer Express will continue to make components for whichever versions of Delphi most of our customers use (currently 6,7,2005,2006,2007,2009,2010 for Build 47 ), but I'm personally going to get with the times (although I will miss CodeRush). BTW: If you think that CodeGear are adding features to Delphi that aren't relevant to you, let them know by spending 30 mins on their Delphi 2010 Survey. Personally I put a vote toward Native cross-compilation for the IPhone, even if that may not specifically be an opportunity for DX, I reckon that would be a must upgrade feature for me personally and I was glad to see it on the Poll rather than having to write it in.  Disagree with me?  Go vote on the poll for what features you want CodeGear to spend their limited resources on. Posted Oct 26 2009, 01:08 AM by Richard Morris (DevExpress) with 11 comment(s)

• More new VCL controls - v47 and a new ExpressLayout Control

  We're in the final stages of preparing our latest VCL Component Suites v47 for release, including a brand new major release of ExpressLayout Control v2, minor updates to ExpressSkins library, ExpressQuantumTreeList and ExpressBars, a new beta of the upcoming major update to the ExpressPrinting library v4 (including new PDF features), and of course we've fixed many bugs and implemented minor features suggested by customers..  Active VCL Subscribers as always will get the first look - we are planning to make available a release candidate today (Friday) with a view to publish a release version of the entire subscription next week assuming no show stoppers.  Active Subscribers will also be first to get the release edition in their Client Center accounts as soon as it is released.  Shortly after we expect to have ExpressLayout Control v2 available for independent purchase. So what is this ExpressLayout thingy then? Well it is a container for applying consistent UI rules, enabling run-time customization, and automating the creation of clean crisp resolution independent UIs.  I've spoken before about just how important Run-time customization can be.  But the feature that everyone loves is the ability to automatically layout UIs with consistent rules, and have the application just look good no matter how your form is re-sized. ExpressLayout Control v2 includes a bunch of new features including sizing handles on individual controls.  If you re-size an individual control every container it is in and all it's linked controls (like labels) automatically adjust. The ExpressLayout Control works with many regular Delphi controls, but works best with our own ExpressEditors so we plan to include all the Editors from the ExpressEditors library into the ExpressLayout Control v2.  We also have added auxiliary layout items like custom empty spaces, splitters, labels, and separators that you can add to your application using the Customization form. You can drop an empty space between two other controls.   Select it ... Re-size it ... and you will have padding now between your controls that is honored no matter how you re-size your application. A Separator is a visual UI element that you can place between two elements ...     and it shows up as a vertical or horizontal line. A Splitter control takes that one step further to allow your end users to re-size layout elements. Just drop it between two adjacent elements. ... and your form will get a splitter control that your end users can use to re-size layout elements with the layout control making sure that all controls respect your consistent UI rules. Finally we have a Label Item which is a visual control that works as a separator that you can put some text on to give your UI additional sign-posting. Just drop it on your form between layout elements, give it some text in the Customization Form. Put it all together and you have a tweaked UI that follows all the consistency rules with re-sizability, sign-posting, and custom white space. Finally we have added the ability to optionally collapse layout groups using a + and - button in the top right corner.  We've also exposed the ability to add your own custom buttons (such as the Orange Close button in this example) so you can add your own custom actions for groups. The ExpressLayout Control v2 due for release next week, should hopefully be a very powerful addition to your toolbox. Posted Oct 16 2009, 03:25 PM by Richard Morris (DevExpress) with 23 comment(s)

• Grids - Center of the data universe?

  Here at Developer Express we have a lot to thank the humble Grid for.  As you probably know the QuantumGrid was our first really popular Component Suite, and we have been able to extend that with a broad range of embeddable editors, and ultimately take the grid concept in many different directions from the 90 degree transform of the Vertical Grid, the hierarchical TreeList, to the "Slice-n-Dice" of the Pivot Grid, and even the sparse form of the Spreadsheet.  From our start with VCL and ActiveX we've brought many of these to new platforms like Winforms, ASP.NET, WPF and soon Silverlight.   The QuantumGrid these days has almost as many lines of code as the VCL itself, has undergone over a decade of refinement, and offers drop in functionality that is I reckon unequaled by any other Component suite on the market. In some ways we probably have a grid oriented view on development.  Sure we have other popular suites like Reporting and Menu Bars and of course CodeRush, but the grid lies at the core of many of the applications our customers tell us they build.  Rather than trying to work out what data a user may want to see, the QuantumGrid allows a developer to offer up all the data and let the customer sort/group/filter using familiar UIs (from Access, Excel and Outlook) into whatever shape they need, and then with one line of code use the PrintingSystem to turn it into a custom report.  It's pretty powerful stuff.   I remember the first time I used a Devexpress suite, 3 years before I was to join the company, I was working on tools for analyzing Risk.  We had to show a lot of data from thousands of individual financial instruments.  We used the QuantumGrid because it gave our customers the ability to sort/group/filter that large amount of data.  Sure we could have built a custom grid from scratch, and added new ways to show the data as customers were able to identify their requirements and iterate through many request-implement-deliver cycles ... or we could just embed the QuantumGrid and focus on the math. So what is your QuantumGrid story?  Are Grids that important to your development? Posted Oct 05 2009, 02:43 PM by Richard Morris (DevExpress) with 6 comment(s)