Dimensional Data

Have you ever accessed a website on your mobile device and found that it was formatted for desktop and nearly unreadable on a 5″ screen?  Similar problems occur for users running high-DPI screens. As 4K screens proliferate and the consumer pressure for 8K grows, it’s important to adjust user interfaces to prevent forms and controls from becoming unreadably small on high-resolution monitors.  RAD Studio 10.3 Rio and Rio Update 2 introduced enhanced controls for high-DPI applications to remedy this problem and Ray Konopka of Raize Software, Inc. is here to teach us how to maximize their advantages. Just seven days away, Leveraging High DPI in VCL Applications is a must-see talk for all developers, hobbyists, and RAD Studio enthusiasts looking to gain new techniques to stay relevant in our changing software landscape. DelphiCon 2020 offers ten talks and four expert panels by Embarcadero tech partners and Most Valuable Professionals spanning the range of software from education to industrial database access. Come for the High-DPI knowledge and leave with a greater understanding of Delphi web applications. The conference is free and open to the public. Sign up now by clicking the “Save my seat” button at delphicon.embarcadero.com!

C++ got lots of additions throughout C++11, C++14 and C++17. Currently, C++ is a completely different language than it use to be. This Modern C++ post explains how to use the Standard Template Library and the most important features of the C++17 that will greatly help you write readable, maintainable, and expressive code! One of the new features of C++11 was lambda expressions. Throughout C++11, C++14, and C++17, the lambda expressions got some new additions that made lambda expression even more powerful.  If you do not know what lambda expression is, here is the answer: Lambda expressions or lambda functions construct closures. A closure is a very generic term for unnamed (temporary) objects that can be called like functions and can capture variables in scope. Lambda expressions are a great way to help to make code generic and tidy. Lambda expressions can be used as parameters for real generic algorithms to specialize in what those achieve when processing specific user-defined types.  With lambda expressions, we can encapsulate code to call it later, and that also might be somewhere else because we can copy them around.  Or we can also encapsulate code to call it multiple times with different parameters. Let’s have a real example: #ifdef _WIN32 #include #else typedef char _TCHAR; #define _tmain main #endif #include #include using namespace std; int _tmain(int argc, _TCHAR* argv[]) { string hello = “C++”; string world = “17”; auto add_things = [](auto a, auto b) { return a + b; }; auto i = add_things(1, 2); auto s = add_things(hello, world); cout 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 #ifdef _WIN32 #include #else typedef char _TCHAR; #define _tmain main #endif   #include #include   using namespace std;   int _tmain(int argc, _TCHAR* argv[]) {     string hello = “C++”;     string world = “17”;       auto add_things = [](auto a, auto b) { return a + b; };       auto i = add_things(1, 2);     auto s = add_things(hello, world);   cout i endl; cout s endl;   cout [](auto a, auto b){ return a + b; }(2, 2) ‘n’;       system(“pause”);       return 0; } Pay attention to this line: auto add_things = [](auto a, auto b) { return a + b; }; auto add_things = [](auto a, auto b) { return a + b; }; This is easy to use, just like any other binary function. As we defined its parameters to be of the auto type, it will work with anything that defines the plus operator (+), just as strings do. And here we are using the lambda expression and printing the output to the console: auto i = add_things(1, 2); auto s = add_things(hello, world); cout auto i = add_things(1, 2); auto s = add_things(hello, world);   cout i endl; cout s endl; We do not need to store a lambda expression in a variable to utilize it. We can also define it in place and then write the parameters in parentheses just behind it (2, 2): cout cout [](auto a, auto b){ return a + b; }(2, 2) ‘n’; As you can see this is the syntax for lambda expressions. The shortest lambda expression possible is []{}, it just accepts no […]

DevOps is a term I’m hearing more and more during customer conversation, and I am often sharing the different ways that Delphi, C++Builder and RAD Studio programming supports DevOps. (Keep reading – free infographic below) The term DevOps originates back to around 2008/9 when the two worlds of Development and Operations were traditionally stereotypes as Dev V Ops, with typical exchanges like “It’s not my machines, it’s your code!” – “No, it’s not my code it’s your machines!”. These stereotypes were built from friction found in the key business requirement for almost any system – making changes! The ability to rapidly make changes is important if you want to stay ahead of the competition. RAD developers are used to Agile development and being able to create changes quickly, however, getting them deployed needs Operations. To the Operations team, making changes brings a high-risk of an outage, but this prevents innovations from being pushed in a timely manner. This conflict is something that DevOps acknowledges and tries to breakdown through new ways of working that bring both sides closer together. Over the years, the two worlds of Dev and Ops have had to start thinking more like each other, including, how to get feedback from live environments to find issues that appear in the code. Agile, and DevOps like to re-use and expand, so rather than giving a full-blown commentary on how RAD Studio supports Delphi and C++ Builder developers today, let me keep it simple and say that the libraries, components, toolchains (and more) found in RAD Studio, and our wider partner ecosystem, provide broad support to both Developers and Operations teams who need to communicate and share what is happening in the field. The component-based architecture and cross-platform libraries that work across multiple systems are the perfect foundation stone for rapid agile development, that can be supported simply. But finally, a picture paints a thousand words. This is just a snapshot of the RAD eco-system, there is too much to put everything on here, but I hope this gives a flavor of just the tip of the iceberg, and how the RAD Studio IDE, and the Delphi and C++Builder languages and libraries are enabling development teams the world over to support DevOps today. RAD Studio DevOps InfoGraphic Download Infographic PDF

Animation, Effects and Transition are the words applied mostly to the Film Industry and those days were gone. But these become the basic expectation from the customer for any Mobile, Desktop, Web Applications. A simple meme requires animations to convey a message more creatively. Will you miss to provide such a feature in your Delphi/C++ Application to wow your customers? This post will provide a quick overview of animation, Image Effects, Transition, and Direct how to do the same in FireMonkey Applications. Animation: Animations modify property values over time. They can be started automatically or manually, both with an optional delay. After the animation has run its course over the defined time period, it can stop, start over, or do the same but in reverse. Kinds of Animation : The provided subclasses of TAnimation fall into three categories: Interpolations from a start value to an end value: TIntAnimation changes any property that is an integer. TFloatAnimation changes any property that is a real number, like position (X, Y, and Z axes must be done separately), rotation, and opacity. TRectAnimation changes the location of the four edges of a TBounds property. TColorAnimation changes any string or integer property that contains a color, including those of type TAlphaColor (which is actually a Cardinal number), by modifying the red, green, blue, and alpha values of the color. TGradientAnimation changes a gradient (type TGradient) by modifying the colors of each point that defines the gradient. TBitmapAnimation transitions from a starting bitmap image to another by drawing the final image (type TBitmap) with increasing opacity, causing it to fade into view. Interpolating through a series of values, not just two: from the first to the second, from the second to the third, and so on: Stepping through a list without interpolation: TBitmapListAnimation works like a timed slideshow, with all images combined horizontally into a single bitmap. With a fast frame rate (short duration and/or many images), it looks like a movie. Animation Type Controls how Interpolations is applied(Start and End). Image Effects: The FireMonkey built-in ImageFX engine provides over 50 GPU-powered effects. These effects are nonvisual components that can be found in the Effects category on the Tool Palette. All the provided effects can be simply enabled or disabled by setting the Enabled flag from the Form Designer, or programmatically. To know More about the Kinds of effects Check here Transition Effects: FireMonkey includes over twenty image transition effects, in which source pixels are progressively transformed into a target bitmap image, from simple fades to fancy banded swirls. The progress of the transformation is deterministic and can be set to an arbitrary percentage. This percentage can be animated to transition over time. To animate the progress of the transformation, see Apply an Animation Effect to a Property of an Image Effect. I guess, You might got rough idea on Animation, Effects, Transition Effects. Watch this Video, Delphi Skill Sprint – Using Effects, Animations and Transitions on FireMonkey shown below for Demonstration. Check this video for more demonstration on the same topic which covers FMX TTabControl Transitions as well.