I've been starting to use the new inbuilt Ribbon controls in Delphi 2009 and use the custom frame so the Application button and Mini-toolbar slide up onto the Window Frame, but I'm wondering if on Vista it should use the glass effect like Office 2007 does, and if so how I would enable this setting.
Thanks for any help.
Unfortunately it doesn't appear that that CodeGear implementation of the Ribbon control is compatible with the glass frame. Something about the way it draws disables it.
You can try this http://www.bilsen.com/windowsribbon/index.shtml
It interfaces the Native Ribbon Framework and works beautifully.
Related
Standard Delphi controls (panels, buttons etc.) all have this bevel effect (white line on top and on the left) that gives them a 3D feel but today it makes them look old fashioned.
Is there a way to remove this "3D look" at least in Delphi 7?
Some controls have a Ctl3D property that you can turn off.
For a TPanel, you can also turn off its Bevel... properties.
What you really should do instead is enable Visual Styles in your app so it has a themed look on Windows XP and later. Delphi 7 did not natively support Visual Styles, but you can use Mike Lischke's XP Theme Manager component to handle that (it was incorporated directly into later VCL versions).
I have a form filled with a TImage. I put over this a TGridPanel. If themes are enabled in Windows 7 the TGirdPanel appears with transparency. If themes are disabled (no visual styles) the TGridPanel loses transparency and hides the part it ocupies. I use Delphi XE2
Is there any workaround for this?
That's a basic fact of life for panels. It's not special to the TGridPanel, you will see the same effect for any control derived from TCustomPanel. The transparency is only supported when the application is themed.
The grid panel is just a convenient way to layout your controls. If you want to support running unthemed then the simplest solution is to remove the TGridPanel and layout your controls manually. That's pretty much trivial to do. Handle the OnResize event of the control that currently contains the panel, and position your controls as desired.
I would like to create preview window with whole floor view, where user can change zoom and pan.
I was trying to use this example for Firemonkey, but on XE3 and it doesn't work. Has anybody already used this? There is very little documentation about this on internet.
http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/CodeExamples/XE2/en/FMXTBrushGrab_(Delphi)
I tried the example on both XE2 and XE3 and can confirm it works fine on XE2 and does not work on XE3. The second window remains blank. On Windows 8.
I've noticed that when I use TRibbon control that comes with Delphi 2010, it works flawlessly on my Windows 7 system. However, the application has some weird painting issues on a Windows XP system with the "classic theme" (I haven't tried the playschool theme).
I know there are other Ribbon components available from DevExpress and TMS Software, however purchasing a 3rd party control is not an option for this project.
Has anyone had this issue, or know of a solution?
Most likely because Windows 7 uses "Desktop Compositing", which essentially means that a component is drawn to an off-screen bitmap and then copied onto the display. In XP, a component typically draws directly onto the display (which can cause flicker if the component first erases what's there and draws over the "clean slate").
Delphi supports double-buffering, which accomplishes the same thing. If you set the ribbon's DoubleBuffered property to True (in code, since it's not published) then that should avoid the flicker (at the cost of extra memory allocated and moved around when drawing)--I should say, however, that I haven't actually tried it with TRibbon.
Note that there is no additional overhead when running on Windows 7 (or Vista, for that matter) if you set DoubleBuffered to True. The VCL has code the skips the off-screen bitmap business when running on a version of Windows that does desktop compositing.
Most likely this is a bug in the TRibbon code, the Microsoft ribbon renders perfect in both XP and Win7.
If you change your XP theme does the Minimise button shown in the image change to reflect your theme change? If this is the case the Ribbon code has probably been optimised for Vista and 7 and not been developed to run perfectly under XP.
You cant really resolve it unless you can modify the TRibbon code.
At the top of the Delphi IDE is a toolbar with buttons grouped together on little movable trays. I'm trying to implement something like that, but not having much success. I've found TToolbar, but I can't figure out how to set up the movable trays. Does anyone know where I could find a simple demo app that shows how it's done?
I believe the webbrows.dpr located in the cool stuff demo directory (and included in all installs of Delphi since around Delphi 6 or so) contains just the demo you are looking for. This gives you the effect your looking for using only CodeGear supplied components. You add multiple bands and set the fixed size to false for the bands you want to allow to be movable.
You can try the Toolbar2000 Component from Jordan Russell or the TBX package wich is an extension for Toolbar2000 components.
Toolbar2000 is a set of components for CodeGear Delphi and C++Builder designed to mimic the Office 2000 look and behavior. It includes draggable and dockable toolbars and menus.
alt text http://www.indasoftware.com/_files/img/fordev/office2003/small_classic.png
you can see these links.
Office2003 Theme for TBX
Mac OSX Theme for TBX
TBX themes
Bye.
You can put your toolbars in a standard VCL TCoolBar or TControlBar. AFAIR this can get a bit messy sometimes. For an example, have a look at the CoolStuff demo, as skamradt suggested.