I was just experimenting with the same example application which Corinna Black demonstrated in this Video (around ~21:40). She created sample data in Blend and bound it to the Grid of the Panorama Item as an ListBox. This is the only option Blend will provide me when I dragndrop the collection to the Designer.
Starting with Windows Phone 8, the ListBox was replaced by the LongListSelector of the Windows Phone Toolkit. My question is now: How is it possible, that Blend can use the ListBox while I'm not able to use the ListBox in Visual Studio 2012 although I have created a Windows Phone 8 only project? If I try to replace ListBox with LongListSelector in the XAML code, Blend will complain with this error:
The name "LongListSelector" does not exist in the namespace "http://schemas.microsoft.com/client/2007"
I thought that the usage of ListBox is deprecated because of better scrolling performance in LongListSelector. So why is Blend using the older ListBox instead of the supposed better LongListSelector? And how can I use the sample data creation with LongListSelector for Windows Phone 8 apps?
Thank you!
I've found the answer to my problem: The LongListSelector is not part of the normal libraries. It is part of the Windows Phone Toolkit library, which must be added beforehand with NuGet.
Add to your xaml the new namespace:
xmlns:toolkit="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Phone.Controls;assembly=Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Toolkit"
Now you can access the LongListSelector with
<phone:LongListSelector/>
You can then assign an ItemsSource and can work with it even from blend with design data.
The longlistselector is now part of the core SDK libraries. I would recommend using it instead of the toolkit's LLS.
The core lib LLS is made to replace seamlessly your WP7 listbox, you will have to make some customization if you want to use the toolkit's one.
Related
I am using RAD Studio xe6 and I have a simple Firemonkey form, what I want to do is get all Images that are in a folder and display them in a list for the user to see, is this possible, and if yes how.
Delphi already ships with a sample program which does similar thing that you seek. The sample program is called FireFlow. If you haven't installed sample programs while installing Delphi you can get the sample program from:
http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/CodeExamples/XE6/en/FMX.FireFlow_Sample
But othervise what you want to do is first search the specific directory for supported image files. To do this use FindFirst, FindNext.
Then you need to decide how are you going to display these images. Now if you intend to display them inside the listbox controll do check the CustomListBox sample which you can also get from web here:
http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/CodeExamples/XE6/en/FMX.CustomListBox_Sample
I have a really solid computer program that was written for Windows XP. The program still works great and I would like to update the look and feel of the user interface.
At this time, I would like to give the buttons etc. a more sleek, contemporary look. Much better would be to allow functionality of touch and swipe etc. for tablets and such.
Can anyone tell me what tools in Delphi are used to accomplish this? For instance, do I need to change every button and object manually through object inspector or can I update/modify all objects objects within a project using a single set of commands?
You can start by enabling Windows themes, using Project->Options->Appearance from the IDE's main menu. It's on by default since D2007, but won't be on because your app is coming from Delphi 5. (New projects have it turned on by default, but the IDE can't know if you want it enabled or not when importing older projects.)
You can then start looking at adding gesture support by looking into the documentation for TGestureManager and TGesture. There's a TGestureManager for both VCL and FireMonkey (FMX) applications.
Note that for cross-platform support (Android, iOS, and OS X) you'll need to port your application from the VCL to FMX.
Ok, so I downloaded a .zip file of all different kinds of examples from embarcadero... the way the buttons look and among other things are completely different from when I just create an application within my Delphi 7. I believe these examples were made for or made at a new time... because the button look way different from the way the button when I put them on my application. the buttons from the example look very modern and sleek and have mouse over effects (This applies for all the examples..its not a custom component ) I was wondering I can get this effect in my own applications within Delphi 7.. I can do this by opening one of the examples and just erasing all the code... but that's not what im trying to do..im wondering how I can accomplish these styles.. how come the examples have these nice looking buttons and such..but when I make an app within D7 its much older looking and such..
I apologize if my question is hard to understand.. and I appreciate any help on this.
Thank you in advance.. I appreciate it.
If I understand your question correctly, you're asking about the native control appearance changes that were added by the addition of Windows Themes in Windows XP.
Delphi 7 supported themes by use of the XPManifest component, which does nothing but add a manifest to your application which tells Windows your app is theme-aware and therefore it should load a more recent version of the common controls library. You can find the XPManifest component in the VCL component palette on the Win32 tab, or simply add the XPMan.pas unit to your uses clause. Note that the themed drawing does not work for all controls (grids, for instance, are not drawn using themes, and IIRC neither is TSpeedButton - it's been a long time since I used D7, so I'm not sure exactly what is and isn't supported, but the support is limited).
Starting with Delphi 2007, there is built-in support for Windows Themes, which is available by default in new projects. It can also be enabled in older projects using a checkbox in the Project->Options->Application dialog.
(Of course the real answer is that if you want your app to have the features included in modern versions of Windows, you should upgrade from your Windows-95 era version of Delphi to one that is more recent.)
I'm using Delphi XE and would like to add "recent items" in the Windows 7 taskbar jump list for my application, like when right-clicking on Microsoft Word brings up recently opened documents.
I've found information on how to set the progress but nothing on jump-list items. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
This will happen automatically if, for instance, you only use the standard Windows file dialogs. At least my text editor, Rejbrand Text Editor, has got such a MRU list by Windows. It lists all files I have recently edited using Rejbrand Text Editor, even though I have not written any code at all for it.
I think that Windows observes the files you
open and save in your application by means of standard Windows file dialogs
open in your application by starting yourapp.exe <file name>, for instance by double-clicking a file that opens in your application
and automatically display these in the list.
If you want to control the task bar button and menu programmatically, you can use the Windows API. Delphi-specific examples are found in this blog post.
In my opinion the best way to do this is to make the following simple API call:
SHAddToRecentDocs(SHARD_PATH, PChar(FileName));
This not only deals with Windows 7 jump lists but also adds your file into the system's list of recently used documents which has an effect on early versions of Windows too.
Call the function whenever you open or save a file.
For your convenience, a link to the documentation of SHAddToRecentDocs().
Here are some resources that I have found useful when making my programs vista ready
http://code.google.com/p/theunknownones/wiki/TaskbarListComponents
http://www.installationexcellence.com/articles/VistaWithDelphi/Index.html
http://www.theabsolute.net/sware/delphivista.html
I'm looking for a simple, transparent checkbox component that properly supports XP/Vista/7 theming.
It should also work with Delphi 7.
I've found a component on Torry's that's not working properly, and I know that Raize components has a transparent checkbox - but I'm obviously not going to pay $300 for the entire package just to get this single component.
I've also found many other solutions, but none of them support theming.
The main problem is that TCustomCheckBox is a TWinControl descendant, and in order to implement transparency, you need to make a new TGraphic descendant control from ground up.
Any ideas?
LMD-Tools SE is free, works great on Delphi 7 and has a checkbox component that has a transparency property. I've recently used TLMDCheckbox with its transparency property enabled with Delphi 7.
http://www.lmdinnovative.com/download/index.php#LMD
Download file: setupse10d7.zip. Sorry, I can't post the whole path (url) since I don't have enough juice yet.
This should fix you up :).
ShawnH.
Raize Components is overkill for just this component, but much more capable and supports transparency in a whole load more components. Once you have it, you'll appreciate the other items greatly. I'd say it is the solution you are looking for.
If you can accept an alternative control there is JvXPCheckCtrls.pas with its TJvXPCheckbox component in the JVCL library. http://jvcl.delphi-jedi.org
I think (if I remember correct) it is transparent when themes are used.
It's quite a large package which will add to vcl with the installation of Jvcl. And it doesn't cost you a cent.
But remember, the TJvXPCheckbox component is part of their XP-controls package and you cannot simply lift out the component as a standalone. You will need the installation of Jedi and to get the core code and necessary theme handling to use it.
- Its Mozilla Public Licence ("MPL") version 1.1.
I use AlphaControls for some of my programs - all of their components are skinnable and have reasonably powerful graphics handling options. A lot of the components also have more features than their corresponding Delphi standard components - some I just use for those functions alone. There's a free Lite version available at www.alphaskins.com - it may just be what you're after. It's not Vista/7 theme-aware, mind you. We use Delphi 2010 and vista/7 theme awareness is built into the standard VCL there, although that's probably not the solution you were hoping for.
Not sure if this will help, but I ran into what I think is the same problem when working with the TMSSmooth controls: the label of a checkbox place on a form looked terrible because it was not transparent.
Their demo/example programs had nice looking checkboxes so I took a look at their sample code.
Turns out they reduced the width of the checkbox component to 13 so that only the box itself and no caption shows. Then they added a TLabel for the caption.
Seemed like a clever workaround to me.
Hope this helps.