Friday, August 21, 2009

Delphi 2009 Ribbon Interface - flick, flick, flick?

Downloaded the Delphi 2009 trial.

Compiled the Ribbon Demo. Wow. I thought I could get to use new Office 2007 interface...

NOT !

The first problem is it's based on TActions, and not directly applied. Does anyone remember those annoying TAction problems that were never fixed? erm...

The next problem was the impressive amount of flickering this Ribbon demo has. Goodness!

Also, the look and feel doesn't feel like Office 2007 style.
Just another Ribbon-wanna-be.

an update -
in Delphi 2010, they fixed this, but not without paying upgrade fees...

It took CodeGear 1 year to fix it. phew.


Update 2013 March.
Article contains outdated information as this bug is fixed.

3 comments:

Pickled said...

Why do your most recent missives appear as they are posted in September, are you... Gasp

...the new Doctor ?

In any case, and not related to this post, I wondered about Delphi's business model and wonder if it is flawed ? Yeah I know its an old subject, but treading old ground is fun when you are on a netbook and on the loo.

Is this flogging a dead horse ?

The basics. You want to write apps for Windows.

(Sorry L**ix guys and apple fans but you are not in the target audience of most app makers - they sell to business and others who use Windows - don't blame the developer, blame the OS maker...)

You could buy Delphi. You could then install it and realise you need more stuff (or indeed stuff that works - WSDL for example - Grrr), so you spend on components to replace the standard stuff. And you come to rely on them.

You could then get updates as and when the developer and Codegear decide. Which is always, kind of, slightly, ooops, no... always behind the curve. In fact, is that really curved ? But it does mean you buy a new version as only that one is supported and gets bug fixes. If you don't well, you didn't upgrade so you suck.

Or you could embrace .NET.

Assuming you manage to pass the initial "gag" phase you get to have access to loads of free tools - as in free, 0USD, 0GBP, from Microsoft.

Anyone using Visual Studio 6 vs Delphi 7 will say the latter is so much better. And rightly so. Anyone using VC# Express 2008 against Delphi 2007 will wonder. C# Express is pretty cool, actually.

I was challenged by someone recently to come up with a good client app written in .NET, their idea being its just too slow and bloaty. I replied with Paint.net. Try it, you may even like it. And its free (but contribute if you can, they deserve it).

But the killer here is that updates and bug fixes come automatically too for free from Microsoft via online updates. Even for the framework. They even fixed VS 2005 after 2008 had been released.

And its not just those fascists at MS too. There are free things you can download. Ruby, even a version of PHP for desktop apps. And thats before you face the open expanse of the open-source - aka "commie" - world of, er, open source. Eclipse anyone, please ?

All of these are viable options. I kind of wonder if Delphi has reached the point where the only new Delphi apps are those which are replacing existing ones. Is anyone doing something new from the ground up in Delphi ? Most of the blogs I read are in that replacement / upgrade stage.

Is it time to call it a day with 2009 ?

I am at this crossroads. My company has Delphi and has used it and its father (Turbo Pascal) for ages. I have a new project to start and after the basic functionality and customer environment have been considered, I'm wondering - Delph or VS 2008 ?

I have previous on this too - I used to like (with good reason, although its no Delphi) Visual Foxpro - still faster than Access after all these years - but MS killed it - they just didn't need it any more. Its in a kind of undead state at the moment - bug fixes but if you expect it to work with the latest features of Windows 7 then forget it.

I kind of feel Delphi is in that state just now unless you can afford to keep on upgrading.

So why do anything new with it ?

At some point the old dead horse has to be abandoned.

Delphi Haters said...

hi Pickled,

There was an error, the date was wrong. The QC for the Delphi bug was marked fixed for Delphi 2010...

I need to write an article called "Delphi Economics"...

Peter said...

I am not a Delphi hater, I must agree that Ribbon in D2009 was a job half done and I've spent ages working around the problems. But having a Ribbon component in Delphi is definitely a plus and if they fixed it in D2010 I'm more than satisfied. Not everyone gets the things spectacularly right the first time, as the original author(s) of VCL did.

But I'm confused about your action bashing. For my money, actions are the single most useful feature of Delphi and if anything, I would like to see them expanded to cover not only buttons but more complex controls as well.

What don't you like about actions ?

Peter