Delphi offers a modern, robust & enterprise-grade UI developer environment with Visual Component Library (VCL) for Windows only and FireMonkey (FMX) for cross-platform development. Delphi VCL offers the latest features and modern UI controls for your Windows app development.
Moreover, you can enjoy native performance in your Delphi app, and accessing hardware and the latest features of Windows is quick with Windows UI Toolkit: Delphi.
In this article, we try to point out five main ways to modernize your apps for Windows 11.
Table of Contents
1. Have you created an inclusive design?
Users love when they can easily find what information the app is gathering and easy-to-understand privacy-policy notices. So, informing about all this and giving access to enable or disable telemetry settings is always welcome.
The comprehensive design forms a more reliable product and environment for everyone. For instance, if your app is consists of lots of text content, it is more salutary to add an assistive screen reader that is also satisfactory for people with disabilities.
Describe the UI controls or menus with beautiful and simple animations. Make your app scalable and responsive as much as you can. Provide font size changing option. Because you never know how your app represents in different sized screens.
If your app welcome screen shows different information with several frames, make sure to give the option to redesign the frames.
On Windows 11, you can see most of the icons are updated with shiny and coherent icons. Besides, the new UI font called Segoe UI Variable makes the typography of your app more readable and softer.
2. Are you using modern UI controls?
Delphi VCL provides modern Windows UI controls with native performance.
By bringing beautiful and modern UI controls, your app looks shiny and up-to-date with Windows 11. Since Windows 11 itself has so many UI innovations, your app needs compatible with it!
In addition to that, using lightweight and scalable animation in your app can increase user experience. Because everyone loves beautiful things. One of the popular ways of adding animations to the applications is using Lottie animation files.
Do you know how to add Lottie animation files to your Delphi app?
Well, it is easy because of community contribution to the Delphi development ecosystem! Skia4Delphi is a cross-platform 2D graphics API for Delphi platforms based on Google’s Skia Graphics Library. Here you can watch the Desktop First session about Lottie and SVG in Delphi by Jim McKeeth
3. Are you using modern visual effects in your apps?
Windows 11 introduced a wide array of UI elements and rounded corners to the desktop operating system. The usual sharp edges are now rounded and smooth corners which gives another feeling about desktop apps.
As you utilize Windows 11, the rounded corners on every UI control look great in both dark and light modes.
Here you can learn how to controls Windows 11 rounded corners with code:
Delphi VCL has exceptional options to make your app look modern with VCL Styles. With dozens of different and unique styles, you can create modern-looking Windows apps in seconds by just applying styles.
How to design Fluent apps in Delphi – Acrylic material design?
If you want to build your app by applying the Fluent design system, you can easily achieve it with the StyleControls VCL package. StyleControls VCL package uses classic drawing, system themes, GDI+, and VCL styles to make unique user interfaces.
4. Does you app make use of modern hardware and function modalities?
In recent years, we can see that some apps are designed for touchscreen mode also. For instance, when I use my 2-in-1 laptops, you need bigger UI controls or better positioning.
Moreover, I have seen many applications that do not utilize best practices like notifications or share dialog. Utilizing these features in your app makes your application efficient and you can just use the APIs to do that. But with Delphi VCL or FMX, you can just drag and drop the needed system component to do this job! Here is a Windows 10 Notification sample you can try.
Besides, if you want to distribute your app on Windows Store, be sure to utilize the power of MSIX. The store lets you bring all of your Windows apps with no change. Here you can learn how to distribute your Delphi app with MSIX packaging.
Furthermore, Delphi offers system sensor components. Sensor components measure the physical quantity and convert it into a signal that can be read by an application. Here are some of the sensor components:
Where can I learn more about using sensor components in my apps?
Here you can watch a webinar that shows most of the sensor components in action:
5. Do you watch and learn from industry leaders about modernizing Windows Apps and keep up with trends in development?
The webinars by Embarcadero called modernize are one of the best resources to learn about Windows app development. You can learn about the newest desktop UI/UX patterns, integration with WinAPI, COM & ShellAPI, WinRT, and more:
- Distribution to the Microsoft Store
- FireDAC for universal database access
- Windows High DPI
- Working with Windows Runtime
Likewise, the latest Desktop First UX Summit has been held online. Several industry leaders and software engineers have given great workshops and real-world cases on software development. The webinars are about design processes, design systems, AI, visual design, information architecture, and more.
Head over to the Desktop First UX Summit web page!
Supercharge your apps and bring them right up to date to work on the latest versions of desktop and mobile systems with RAD Studio Delph. Download a free trial today and try it for yourself.
Design. Code. Compile. Deploy.
Start Free Trial Upgrade Today
Free Delphi Community Edition Free C++Builder Community Edition
