While browsing through Embarcadero tweets, I just came across the word ‘Firemonkey’. I had heard about Firefox, and Seamonkey, but whats this FireMonkey all about?? I was curious…
‘FireMonkey’ -The Next Generation Business Application Platform. Imagine a next generation platform that helps you build visually spectacular business applications that are faster, more visually stunning, and more connected – all with native performance on Windows, Mac and iOS…Wow!! Can we do these miracles with DELPHI?? You’re Joking??
I thought of giving myself a break from usual work and explore this Monkey!!
The Videos uploaded on youtube by Embarcaderotech were mindblowing. They just made me feel, I have the Delphi knowledge, andEmbarcadero has given a such a fabulous platform, why don’t I take the advantage of this and do Miracles in Business/ Graphical/ Mobile world. Delphi as a language had lots of ups and downs over the years; But for sure FireMonkey has made Delphi stronger today.
I have worked with .Net Silverlight and WPF earlier, always liked the rich interfaces you could develop with them. But I always had a fascination towards Delphi Language. I am sure once I start my work with FireMonkey, I will never walk towards the Silverlight, if given a choice of technology.
I downloaded the Trial Version, and following is my review:
FireMonkey is going to be a whole new world of possibilities for Delphi and C++Builder developers. The platform itself is flexible, customizable and multi-platform; all components behave the same on Windows and Mac.
Key Features of the Delphi XE2:
1) FireMonkey Application Platform for cross-platform applications that run on Windows (both 32- and 64-bit), Mac OS X, and iOS.
2) VCL supports 64-bit Windows and 32-bit Windows
3) The Delphi RTL now supports Mac OS X and both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows
4) Cross-platform application development
The XE2 release supports cross-platform application development for the following platforms:
Mac OS X platform (both Delphi and C++)
Win64 (Delphi only)
The native Win32 platform is also supported by both Delphi and C++Builder in XE2.
- Compilers
Three compilers are provided for cross-platform application development:
- DCC64.EXE, the Delphi Cross Compiler for Win64
- DCCOSX.EXE, the Delphi Cross Compiler for OS X
- BCCOSX, the C++ Cross Compiler for OS X
- Libraries and Platforms
The XE2 release supports three major libraries and three platforms. The following table lists the target platforms supported by the libraries in XE2:
- FMXis FireMonkey
- RTL(run-time library) contains the convenience and utility functions and types (found in System.SysUtils and System.IOUtils, among others) that support both VCL and FMX.
- VCLis the longstanding Visual Component Library.
5) LiveBindings in RAD Studio
LiveBindings is based on relational expressions, called binding expressions, that can be either unidirectional or bidirectional. LiveBindings is also about control objects and source objects. For example, you can bind a TEdit control to a TLabel so that, when the text changes in the edit box, the caption of the label is automatically adjusted to the value evaluated by your binding expression. Another example is binding a tracker control to a progress bar so that the progress rises or lowers as you move the track bar.
I look forward to using the new versions of Delphi !