Continuing the series of blog on new features coming in the next release of Delphi, C++Builder and RAD Studio, I’d like to highlight some of the work we have done in the Visual Component Library (VCL), which is today the most comprehensive component/class library for building native Windows desktop applications, wrapping the core platforms APIs.
RAD Studio Florence adds VCL TitleBar Styling in the VCL
The TitleBarPanel component was introduced a few releases ago, offering the ability to customize a VCL form’s native title bar similar to Google Chrome and many other modern Windows applications. In 13.0, Embarcadero is adding support for VCL styles for this UI control, a feature requested since the TitleBar was introduced in the VCL library. You can see an example here:
The new versions adds support for drawing styled controls in the title bar area and it offers a new TTitleBar.StyleColors property to enable automatic use of the VCL Styles colors for the background and the buttons on the title bar. The support includes using the following controls (non-styled and styled) on the TTitleBarPanel:
TButtonTSpeedButtonTCheckBoxTRadioButtonTToolBarTEditTComboBoxTFormTabsBarTActionToolBarTActionMainMenuBar.
In addition, this release improves the use of the TitleBar in MDI applications and adds support for Hint for customer buttons on the TitleBar.
You can now have Scrollable ActionMenus in your VCL apps
Another much requested VCL feature Embarcadero is introducing in this coming release, is the ability to add scrolling support to the TActionMainMenuBar and TActionPopupMenu controls. These custom menu controls (for the main menu of an application or a local menu) are part of the VCL ActionManager architecture and they were limited in height to the actual screen size. Now they automatically enable a scrolling behavior, similar to the Windows platform menus, when the vertical height exceeds the screen height.
As you move the mouse over the bottom arrow line, additional menu items scroll into view. This works with both native UI and styled applications and supports BiDi mode. To better understand how this feature works, you can check the video below, which actually covers both features discussed in this blog post.
There are more VCL Changes and a preview webinar for RAD Studio Florence
There are many other changes, new small features and quality improvements in the VCL for the coming release. Here I wanted to highlight two features we received many requests for over time, possibly the two VCL related request with the highest rating.
Stay tuned for more information by the time we officially launch the new release. Embarcadero is keeping a significant focus on Windows development and the VCL library, to help our customers to keep updating and modernizing their desktop applications, and make sure everyone is ready to go fully on board on Windows 11, now that Windows 10 is less than two months from End-Of-Live (EOL).
This blog post is based on a pre-release version of the RAD Studio software. No feature is committed until the product’s GA release.
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I think the customers would rather see bugfixes than new features.
Of course, and we absolutely know that. The two things are not mutually exclusive. This release is *enormous* and contains a substantial number of new features, components, and functionality but – more importantly – it also contains hundreds of resolved issues, new feature requests, general quality, and quality of life improvements, both raised by users and also those found internally during QA and activities by staff and automated testing. Often people feel like “if you are creating new features, you can’t be fixing bugs” but, in fact, it’s mostly not the same teams doing that and both things go on in parallel.
We often drop potential new features or adjust our plans during alpha and beta testing to make sure that we’re going to deliver improved quality PLUS new features and modernizations that are attainable; and not at the expense of addressing issues or introducing new ones.
Hello Ian,
thanks for your reply. I really appreciate that!
All the things you’ve said might be true (from the external point of view that I have) and I’m the last one who accuses you or any of your team members of lying. But one look into the quality portal says more than a thousand words: The issues keep piling up. Tickets are “WIP” for months or even more than a year. Some are there since day 1 and still “ready for validation”. No progress whatsoever.
I won’t deny that you’re all dedicated and hardworking to make the product better. But in my opinion you have to do something about the issues. Fast. Eventually people will turn away and towards a competitor. The huge huge aces up your sleeves are the VCL and the form editor. They are both unprecedented and awesome! And I really mean that! But they are dwarfed by too many issues and those _HAVE_ to be fixed!
The scrolling menus in actionmenus is effectively a bugfix. It always worked fine in normal menus and so was missing functionality. We also noticed this functionality loss when we moved to using Styles.
Unfortunately we use TMainMenu which does not scroll with Styles turned on! Please fix this too!
That is my opinion too, absolutely.
+1
Keeping focus on Windows and VCL is right, go ahead!
Please note:
Windows 11 comes in two flavors: an x64 version and an Arm64 version.
So native support for ARM with VCL should be on the roadmap…
I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get this updated version. My subscription is about to expire soon. A week ago I filled the form to renew it, but no reply.
Please bring ARM64 support for Windows
This is definitely something we want, and we’ve been working with Microsoft to make sure that anything we might provide meets the needs of ARM Windows appropriately.
It should be noted that our tests and feedback from customers show that even current apps written for Intel/AMD type Windows work well with very few, if any, issues. This is due to the compatibility work that Microsoft have put into Windows ARM (since it’s obviously in their interests to make the majority of the huge Windows software oeuvre keep working with Windows ARM). I personally can tell you that RAD Studio Florence is working fine on Windows 11 ARM Pro running under Parallels on my MacBook Air M4 using an ARM processor. All that is missing, currently, of course, are native ARM apps which are definitely an intended target for RAD Studio but, right now, we can’t give a firm timescale when that will happen – as soon as we are able is always our current estimate. Nothing can be guaranteed for proposed features, for a number of reasons, but Windows ARM is definitely something Embarcadero and Microsoft would like to see happen.
Yes, paradoxically Microsoft failed to provide a proper machine with Qualcomm ARM processor, so we must go virtual with Apple instead.
In my case it’s a MacBook Air M2 (first 15 inch model), also running Windows 11 ARM Pro under Parallels. It works very well.
Thanks Marco. Keep up the good work everyone!