{"id":6008,"date":"2012-07-11T09:04:05","date_gmt":"2012-07-11T08:04:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/?p=6008"},"modified":"2012-07-11T09:04:05","modified_gmt":"2012-07-11T08:04:05","slug":"devexpress-offering-metro-inspired-tile-control-for-delphi-vcl-plans-to-drop-support-for-delphi-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/6008-devexpress-offering-metro-inspired-tile-control-for-delphi-vcl-plans-to-drop-support-for-delphi-7.html","title":{"rendered":"DevExpress offering Metro-inspired Tile control for Delphi VCL, plans to drop support for Delphi 7"},"content":{"rendered":"

DevExpress has released an update to its VCL component suite<\/a>, version 12.1, which includes a Metro-inspired tile control. That is, it looks like a Windows 8  Metro-style application, but in reality it runs as a desktop application. The VCL components support Embarcardero\u2019s Delphi and C++ Builder, but not the FireMonkey library that runs cross-platform.<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The new release also adds a \u201cServer Mode\u201d for  the ExpressQuantumGrid grid control, which retrieves only those rows needed to populate the current view. <\/p>\n

DevExpress CTO Julian Bucknall has posted<\/a> about the update. He says it is time to drop support for Delphi 7 (though this is supported in 12.1):<\/p>\n

\n

12.1 will be the last version to support Delphi and C++Builder 2010. I will sound a further note of caution: it\u2019s likely that in 2013 we shall drop support for Delphi 7 and Delphi 2007 (what you might call the \u201cASCII IDEs\u201d), so that we can concentrate on the latest run-times and environments.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Delphi 7 is significant because it was the last version to use its own dedicated IDE built with Delphi itself, and by today\u2019s standards is delightfully small and fast.<\/p>\n

Bucknall has reservations about Embarcadero\u2019s move to Clang and LVVM for 64-bit C++ Builder and eventually for the other languages too:<\/p>\n

\n

I\u2019m going to say we shall treat it with kid gloves. Re-engineering a compiler so fundamentally says \u201cbreaking changes\u201d to me, especially given the necessary extensions that are present in the current C++Builder to interface with Delphi. So, fair warning: if the changes are too severe, we shall not support 64-bit C++Builder in 12.2. It took us long enough to support 64-bit Delphi across our entire product line, and this year we don\u2019t have the resources. That doesn\u2019t mean we won\u2019t ever do this (after all, Embarcadero are saying that they\u2019ll switch completely to Clang\/LVVM at some point), just that we won\u2019t this year.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Returning to the Tile Control: it will be fascinating to see if this sort of approach, mimicking Metro with a desktop app, becomes popular. Microsoft is promising some of the same with Office 15, though we have not seen much of this officially yet. The advantage is that you can make desktop apps just as touch-friendly as Metro apps. The disadvantage is that you do not get Windows Store support, Contracts, app isolation, or other benefits of the Windows Runtime which underlies the Metro side. Users may be confused.<\/p>\n

I doubt Microsoft will mind though. It all helps to promote the Metro style which is the distinctive feature of Windows 8.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DevExpress has released an update to its VCL component suite, version 12.1, which includes a Metro-inspired tile control. That is, it looks like a Windows 8  Metro-style application, but in reality it runs as a desktop application. The VCL components support Embarcardero\u2019s Delphi and C++ Builder, but not the FireMonkey library that runs cross-platform. The … Continue reading DevExpress offering Metro-inspired Tile control for Delphi VCL, plans to drop support for Delphi 7<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,26,31,80,97],"tags":[318,363,392,941,999],"class_list":["post-6008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-delphi","category-development","category-embarcadero","category-software-development","category-windows","tag-delphi","tag-embarcadero","tag-firemonkey","tag-vcl","tag-windows-8"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6008\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}