I wish to skin my aplication and have noticed that there appears to be no obvious way to do this.
I am used to skinning files for java and wondered if there was any way of changing the appearance of the "standard" delphi7 application.
Edit:(taggs)
Have you looked at SpTBXLib?
http://www.silverpointdevelopment.com/sptbxlib/index.htm
I use the Developer Express Skins library. This works well for standard components, and their own. You can create custom skins, or use their standard ones which include nicely designed haloween and winter ones. They also have a ribbon control to make your app Office 2007 look.
I've seen positive comments about AppFace, but I have not tried it.
Looks like there are some relevant links in this forum thread
Appface looks promising with the extreem looks and the need for just 2 lines of code. but thats a lot of money to make four buttons and a editbox look nice.
linkrank does the same thing but does not look as good and costs even more this time about 180.
Again both seem to boast that you only need 2 lines of source code and theme file.
the link to given forum did not seem to yeild any results apart from these two.
Would be br8 to find a free version even if i have to put in more work myself.
Edit: "suipack" is yet another tool for the same job
Re-Edit: VCL seems to be the basis of what is needed here some copenents listed on
http://www.vclcomponents.com/catalog/Delphi_Skin
Re-Edit-2: found a freeware version here
Re-Edit-3: added coponent but not only is there no help file with this it seems to be incomplete as throws a cannot find "skins.pas" exception
http://www.vclcomponents.com/Delphi/Form_Enhancement/VclSkin-info.html
gone evaluate it and post results back up.
After spending hours installing it or not,, as the case was,, installed the unicodecontroler and the toolbar2000 but the toolbar200 seemed to have a issue with the library path and after i fixed it it would not alow me to reinstall, i had to do this as SpTBXLibDsgn_*.dpk would not install due to not finding reference of tb2kdsgn_d7.dpk..
this results in me going ARRRRRGGGHHHHHH and bashing my head on the wall, the only method for creating skins for free in delphi7 comes as 7 manual installs(as a noob this was hard)
and thenn when i make a boo boo it wont let be uninstall,,, ouch
looks like there will be no styles for me....
Edit: if anyone wants to go for styles i seriously suggest the multiinstaller that i didnt see untill i had currupted my tbk2000 package :(
Another skinning component set for Delphi is AlmediaDev
AFAIK, there are two Delphi components available to skin your application without requiring any code, but both are not free
VCLSkin
SuiSkin
Related
Hello I just finally buy the newest Delphi after many years using older version or free pascal. Everything seem to work as expected except when I look the help I can't find winapi or opengl topics like i could in old version.
Do I need to install something special so I can press f1 over for example "messagebox" or "sleep" or "glcolor" or whatever because I install delphi xe7 3 times now but there is only "Install Help" option during install and no other help option I can see.
A while ago I had tried to fix this annoying change from how it was to limited success. What I had done was:
- install the documentation part of "Windows 7 SDK with .net 3.5" (won't work with any later SDK installs since they changed help format)
- install a program from helpware called FAR
- in program FAR, choose H2 UTILS, then select "embarcadero.rs_xe7", then click register
- go to plugins and add WIN7SDKCOM
That was it, with that done both the table of contents and index of delphi help contained the whole windows 7 documentation. HOWEVER! There was a problem, and it was that many (most?) winapi F1 context sensitive help didn't work, it still took me to the standard delphi help page that said to go to MSDN even though if i went to the index i would immediately find the topic.
So, imperfect answer that I'm relaying from memory since I reinstalled that computer and didn't add the win7sdk this time. Hopefully it helps, I know I was happy to have easier offline access to the documentation. Maybe someone can figure out the extra step to make F1 help also work completely.
I have tried changing the background color of toolbar in notepad++. I am not been successful so far. Frankly speaking I am not so liking the toolbar color and would like to have a dark background to the toolbar. Is there anyway I can do the same? Thanks in advance
Take a look at this question on Superuser. I haven't tested it, but I think it can help.
below there's the hack (as explained in the link):
The themes, as you guessed, can't do this (they only handle what's in
the text editing window). To change the colors you'll have to make
some very simple changes (since it's only changing color values) to
the source code (download from the site or GitHub).
Extract the file Find the elements whose color you'd like to change,
and change them. All colors I've seen are denoted RGB(xx,xx,xx)
Rebuild (see /readmeFirst.txt once you've extracted) I've just glanced
at these files, but I'm definitely going to work at this a little
tomorrow and I don't mind giving you my results once I've solved it.
Anyway, what I've seen at a glance is that you'll want to look in
/PowerEditor/src/ScitillaComponent/DocTabView (I think)
/PowerEditor/src/WinControls/TabBar
/PowerEditor/src/WinControls/ToolBar That's all I noticed that might
be of interest so far, but again, I'll look at it more tomorrow and
get back to you.
Edit: the official makefile will give some errors, because
/PowerEditor/src/Parameters.h references files incorrectly. Here are
the two I fixed so far:
#include "TinyXml/tinyXmlA/tinyxmlA.h" (line 33)
#include "TinyXml/tinyxml.h" (line 37)
Change those lines in Parameters.h to what I've written to deal with
them. Don't worry about the warnings ("extra tokens after #endif") -
they're just comments.
Edit 2: I'm using VS2012, in which the build process results in
numerous errors. I won't post them here unless someone eventually asks
about them, in which case I'm happy to do so. I should have a working
build up soon!
Edit 3: It seems Notepad++'s provided VS project file was created with
an earlier version of Visual Studio, and in updating the files, Visual
Studio 2012 creates many problems, so if you go that route, use
VS2010.
Edit 4: I didn't make it obvious in Edit 3, but I gave up after
realizing just how difficult it was going to be to get around the VS
errors. I imagine the code has changed significantly since I wrote
this answer as well; unfortunately I didn't note the version, but I'm
sure it was the latest available at time of writing this answer,
which, according to "All versions", was probably either 6.4.1 or
6.4.2. However, I hope this is a useful starting point for anyone else who reads (this answer has received consistent attention since
writing).
As far as I see into details of creation of the user interface elements (buttons, toolbars etc.), the answer is that toolbar color cannot be changed until developer explicitly built such a feature into the application. And N++ has no such a feature if you check its settings.
You can achieve changing of toolbar color by standard way: override toolbar painting routine after you grabbed N++ sources. Then compile custom Notepad++.exe which reflects your change.
If you feel toolbar coloring would be useful not only for you, but for number of users, consider registering a feature request for Notepad++ as many people (including me :)) already did for various features of N++.
Go to Settings> Preferences
Then select Enable dark mode.
Then you have the option to pick colors for the dark mode and can even set custom colors
I need components to integrate my app to Windows 7. I'm talking about the taskbar's ability to have progressbar, buttons, text and so on.
What is the best you know?
I don't know about components, but I've seen a few blog posts that explain how to implement this yourself. Check out http://www.drbob42.com/examines/examinC5.htm and http://alex.ciobanu.org/?p=215, for example.
Daniel Wischnewski is developing some Windows 7 components for Delphi.
This video on his blog, demonstrates some of the features.
There's a package of Windows 7 components, free with source, at delphi.fsprolabs.com. The best I can say is that the components perform as expected, when you work out how to use them: the implementation is not very elegant and I found it hard to get started with them. Mason Wheeler's link to DrBob's post will get you to about the same point but you will gain useful knowledge along the way.
There is also a project hosted on goolge code from The unknownones with a component set
called TaskbarListComponents.
It looks to be a very nice and a complete implementation.
You can see them in action here.
http://www.vimeo.com/14291783 TTaskbarListThumbButtons and TTaskbarListOverlayIcon
http://www.vimeo.com/14354328 TTaskbarListProgress
http://www.vimeo.com/14356627 TTaskbarlistFormTab and TTaskbarlistControlTab
For a school project i need to write or use a online programming editor. It is a part of a bigger project. I thought of a java application, php/html/javascript or flash.
I have a couple of things i could do:
Find a good working application and edit it so it works with the rest of the project
Find good parts for a editor and make it working my self (syntax highlighter, auto-indent, autocompletion, etc.)
Combination of those two
Does anybody know a good editor or have tips for this project or a editor?
Thanks for reading,
Leon
For the syntax highlighting and basic editing part, check out my recent question Textarea that can do syntax highlighting on the fly?
Solutions presented there:
CodeMirror
Bespin (Mozilla only, but great)
For the rest - autocompletion etc. - ... Check out the Wikipedia article Comparison of JavaScript-based source code editors
Interested to see what other suggestions come up.
Bespin comes to mind. Though it might be too bleeding edge, depending on how the rest of the project is built/meant to be used (but hey, programmers love bleeding edge).
If you decide to use PHP/HTML/CSS/JavaScript, see GeSHi for syntax highlighting.
I have a side project developed with ACE.
It connects to your server through SFTP and allows you to create new files,read and edit all from your browser with your file tree at sidebar.
Demo at TePe
Code at Github Repo
I found Cobalah Editor it's also built on CodeMirror but with some customization. There are some themes available we can set, increase or decrease font size.
I'm using TJvPluginManager in the JVCL to create and load BPL-based plugins for my program. Problem is, one of the plugins isn't loading properly, and I can't debug it. Every time I try to trace into the loading sequence, it gets as far as the LoadLibrary API call, and then the debugger seems to forget what it's there for. It completely loses the ability to associate program code with source lines, give meaningful data in a call stack, or display local variables. It will still stop at breakpoints, but it breaks to the CPU window, with all the inline source code stripped out.
This happens on Delphi 2007 and 2009, and it's driving me nuts. Does anyone know how to load a plugin without it breaking the debugger? Does anyone even know why it's breaking it in the first place?
NOTE: I'm not looking for alternative methods of debugging. I know all about tracing and logging and all the rest. What I want is to understand what's going wrong and how to fix it. Surely I'm not the only person who's ever used TJvPluginManager?
Not quite the answer to your question: Have you tried to debug the package project, by setting the host application and putting a breakpoint into the package's startup code?
I've found Ray Kanopka's (Raize) CodeSite to be invaluable for debugging in situations where the integrated debugger is acting up. Thinking about the things I want to monitor using CodeSite actually helps me focus on what's important - it enforces good habits.
Another alternative to Codesite is Overseer which is part of the nexus project, but stands alone so does not require you to use their framework. Codesite is by far the better option, but in a pinch Overseer would work just as well.
I found that using packages for plugins can be problematic and many years ago switched to a completely COM based implementation for plugins and never had any problems. The other advantage to COM based plugins, they don't require Delphi to write, do not need to be recompiled when the main app switches to a new version of the compiler (my plugins compiled with Delphi 5 still run fine against the main application compiled in Delphi 2009!) and they are easier to write test applications to assist in debugging.
The only side effect I notice, is that shared code ends up in both executables and the plugins require registration into the registry.
Hmmmm... This is a stupid question, but I have to ask: the initialization function have the EXACT declaration syntax like the other plugins that work ?(from your question, I deducted you made some others that work)
Check your dependencies. Make sure each unit is compiled into one package only. Whenever a package needs to reference a unit from another package, use the requires clause to do so. Watch for compiler warnings about implicitly linked units.