All language subtitles for EmbarcaderoTechnology Partner Spotlight - DevExpress VCL Controls

hello i'm julian Bucknall the chief

technology officer for DevExpress and

i'm here today to show what we offer to

rad studio XE 7 VCL developers be they

Delphi or C+ verse builder oriented

given that we have so many controls

frameworks and libraries with so much

functionality

this presentation will of necessity be a

rather whirlwind tour but we will have a

Q&A session afterwards so please do

stick around now I thought we'd start

off with a brief overview of who we are

and where we've been I'm sure many of

you know us and are already customers in

which case I thank you on behalf of our

company for your support over the years

but it doesn't hurt to quickly go over

some basic background developer Express

or DevExpress as we go by these days was

formed in November 1998 just over 16

years ago with a grid control for

Borland Delphi for this grid is still

the foundational control of our vcl

subscription although it has changed a

great deal since those early days that

following year we added other control

suites such as Xpress bars and updated

the grid suite regularly our Delphi and

then C+ was milder offerings increased

in number rapidly until we had quite the

breadth of controls for our board

customers in those days you could even

purchase individual control suites as

was the norm in the market within a

couple of years though we had expanded

into the new and much wider market for

dotnet controls both WinForms and

asp.net again with a grid control for

each you could say that grids are our

lifeblood as well as our passion in the

present day DevExpress has a wide range

of user interface products from VCL to

WinForms to metro to html5 and

javascript from desktop to mobile all

our UI products are sold with full

source code on annual subscriptions for

our VCL customers we offer four packages

first of all and most importantly

there's the full VCL subscription

containing everything we provide for

and C++ builder developers we support

all modern Embarcadero IDs with the

subscription including rad studio xe7

for both delphi and c++ builder in both

32-bit and 64-bit flavors for historical

reasons essentially to support

long-established customers who were able

to purchase individual controls back in

a day we provide three smaller packages

Express grid pack includes all of the

grid controls including the pivot grid

the tree list and property editor

together with layout support skinning

and all the data editors then we have

the express quantum pack which removes

the specialized grid controls finally

there's the express navigation pack that

contains the various toolbars or menus

of ribbon navigation bars and so on as I

mentioned before we offer annual

subscription licenses for all our

products purchasing an annual

subscription gives you full access to

all updates and upgrades we provide for

the year that's two major releases in

June and December and several minor

releases which tend to come out every

month or so given that our host

Embarcadero have released rad studio in

the spring and in the fall for the past

couple of years this means that we will

provide all required and needed updates

to support the new IDE versions as part

of your subscription for free we offer a

trial version for you to try out as well

as a 60 day no questions asked money

back guarantee should you not be

satisfied with your purchase all

subscriptions come with full source code

no royalties and full technical support

with a response within a business day

but enough for the background you are

here to get a quick overview of our

controls in action using rad studio xe7

so that's what I'm going to do I'm going

to be using our latest version which is

version 14.2 I'll start with a brief

look at our mail client demo app this

shows an outlook style mail application

built with DevExpress controls along the

top of the window you can see our ribbon

control providing app why

options and commands next are the grid

controlled and the rich text editor

displaying a list of messages and a

preview of the selected one the

navigation bar on the Left

hosts a tree list control and provides

access to specific application modules

I'll select the calendar module this is

the DevExpress scheduler control it has

multiple views for browsing and managing

scheduled events and appointments and

now selects the contacts module again we

have an instance of the grid control

with a preview pane we could see

additional presentation options such as

images and rich text formatting another

featured view of the grid control here

is the car view where each record

previously shown as a row is now shown

as a card at this moment I'll point out

that our controls are fully skinnable we

ship our VCR packages with a full

skinning or theming library and this

provides some 40 custom-designed and

polished themes to help you provide a

professional look and feel to your

applications with minimal work now let

me switch to our realtor world demo this

demo shows how if DevExpress vcl can

provide a Windows 8 inspired interface

to your application we provide a tile

control that shows grouped tiles that

are fully customizable that can contain

text or images that are animated that

respond to touch as well as mouse

activating a tile navigates to secondary

detail pages and in this demo we show

how controls such as the grid charts

pivot grid and various editors can act

and look in this kind of metro style

application precompiled demos are all

very well but I'm sure you want to see

how easy it is to build them I'm going

to show you this to you right now by

creating the realtor world demo you just

saw well at least the main part of it

using the magic of camtasia's video

editor i'll judiciously skip some of the

repetitive and boring bits otherwise

we'll be here

all day so I'll start with a new vcr

forms application project and add the

TDX tile control component to my form

first i'll specify the size of the tile

items the primary elements of the tile

controls main page I'll switch to the

object inspector to adjust the

corresponding properties and switch back

to resize the form and add tile items

with required sizes

having added the tiles I'll now maximize

the form size and hide the form borders

I'll specify the title for the tile

control and center its content I'll add

a previously created data module with

information on houses sales etc to my

project searching back to the main form

I'll add a skin controller and select

and apply a dark skin to my application

now to add a button to the Thar controls

action bar to close the app I'll assign

an image from the DevExpress icon

library to the button and make it close

the application on a click event what

I'll do now is to make the largest tile

item display house photos with the

sliding animation I'll assign the first

image to it and then add a further four

frames with other images

ditto for a tile item to display photos

of realtor agents with a similar

animation again I'll assign an image to

it and add a further five frames with

images I'll select all the other tile

items to specify their common image and

text alignment settings

then our Lincoln image list stored in my

data module to the selected tile items

and consecutively assign images from

this list to corresponding tile items

now that's done it's time to specify the

tile item captions and now let's color

the tile items it's time to run the

application and see what we've done so

far in action as you can see that images

we specified for the house and agent

tiles automatically slide in with a nice

animation cool it works so let's handle

some tile clicks and add some detail

pages I'll specify titles for the detail

pages of the agents and listing tile

items I'll add a new VCR frame to my

project to serve as a container for the

agents detail page this frame will store

another tile control this time aligned

to the frames left edge I'll set the

size of its tile items and change their

layout to vertical time to add six large

tile items to this tile control and

assign the photos of realtor agents to

them

don't now I'll add a grid control next

to the tile control to display the

details on the houses being sold

filtered by agent I'll save the frame

and add a reference to my data module

now I'll link the grids data where table

view to the corresponding data source

the grid is automatically populated with

columns bound to data source fields I'll

make visible only some of them I'll move

the photo column and set it to display

images I'll select the address column to

display multi-line text let's rename two

other columns now to switch back to the

main form and add a reference to the

recently saved agents frame I'll handle

the agent style items click event to

create this frame on tile activation I

must make sure the grid view displays

only data related to the currently

selected agent I'll do this by filtering

the dataset bound to the view time for

another trial run to see how the agent

style and it's corresponding detail page

work okay I see I got a tweak a couple

of grid properties to improve the

appearance of cell contents

looks good

that's nice time for the research page

I'll add another VCR frame for the

research detail page to display the

dashboard data I'll add a group box to

the frame and place a new grid control

into it

this grid control will display a line

chart so I'll replace the data where

tableview created by default with the

chart view and set it to display the

line diagram I'll save the frame add a

reference to the data module and Link

the chart view to the corresponding data

source now to invoke the grids design

time editor to customize the chart view

I'll add full series to the chart note

that the series were bound automatically

to corresponding datasource fields by

the grid control at the previous step

then I'll define to date groups

controlling the level of detail in my

chart and adjust the chart settings

specific to the line diagram

now I'll add a data where pivot grid to

the frame and link this pivot grid to

the data source containing the data on

house sales this automatically adds

pivot grid fields that are bound to data

source fields I'll simply move them to

the required positions using

drag-and-drop I'll hide filter fields

and adjust the display of the totals

I'll set the date field bound to a

date/time data source field to group

data by years then I'll add another

field called month and bind it to the

same date time field but set it to group

data by months I'll set the filtering of

moving capabilities that are common to

all of the created pivot grid fields

then I'll add a splitter control to the

frame between the pivot grid and the

group box and save my changes I'm going

to switch over to the code editor now to

override to the frame constructor with

the initialization code for the pivot

grid and grid control

then I'll switch to the main form to

handle the researched aisle items event

to create this frame on tile activation

just as I did with the agent tile items

event handler

time to run the application again to see

how it's all working both the research

and agents detail pages now display

relevant data and I can use the pivot

grid and grid controls to analyze it as

required of course as I said at the

start this is only part of the

functionality implemented in our realtor

world demo and here it is again

but I hope that I've shown you enough in

this whirlwind let's create a demo app

to assure you that with the DevExpress

VCO controls you can create modern

applications with a beautiful and

functional user interface thank you for

listening and watching this presentation

I do hope that it has been informative

and it gave you some feel for what we

are passionate about in the VCL ui space

will now have a question-and-answer

session but remember if you want to get

a hold of me to ask a question or

provide some feedback there's my email

address I've also provided my twitter

handle for conversations in 140

character tongues should you prefer is

there a way can people create their own

custom themes and skins as well or is

that the ones you deliver they're just

the ones we deliver we will help you so

let's go back a little easy astray to

create a theme is to basically take an

existing theme and then modify it we'll

help you do that so if you have for

example a particular color scheme for

your for your application for your

company and you like a particular theme

that we have already then we'll help you

you know change that change the colors

for example all the fonts to suit your

particular application and your

particular internal you know

company-wide look and feel ok and the

reason I asked that because of my first

question about that you do your own

custom painting and you've done it long

before we did our work in the VCL

manager but what it means that if

someone wants to use some of our themes

and the controls they could they can

create a theme on our side that matches

a theme that you already have and and if

they like something we're delivering

they could work with you to create you

know the theme that that looks that same

for example suddenly yes yep yeah so and

then

do you I you know I don't know how many

themes are I have to go back and go look

at the at the list of something like 14

yeah some of them some of them are kind

of peculiar so you know Valentine's Day

theme which to be honest you know you're

in a urine egg a company and you're in

their back office and you know you're

given this application this Delphi

application and that's what you use the

fact that we have a fun theme for those

special days actually make sure you know

job a little bit more fun if you like

yeah yeah but no normally they're just

basically you know Microsoft this type

themes especially these days with the

the flatter look and all that kinda

stuff

okay and and the I used to be calling

it's the metro look the the what is it

orange and the green you have those yes

yes so then if somebody wanted to choose

those we also have those in the Delphi

vcl theme manager side the same those

same choices of the the Metro style or

whatever I think we still use that name

as part of the file name so so there's

some commonality there to get you know

so it's not jarring as you're mixing and

matching components that are better VCL

theme versus DevExpress things great

okay so enough of me hogging the

conversation and the questions let's go

to the log and you've already put some

of the answers in I guess it's Ian and

also Antonio there's sort of two

variations of the question that I knew

would come up do you currently have any

grids for fire monkey oh and and you

answered that and you can expand if you

want and and then Antonia was saying do

you have any plans to support my mother

so we have plans to support farm monkey

we've been yet monitoring what fire

monkey does and how far monkey works I

will point out to everybody I'm sure

everybody knows you know VCL is not far

monkey or far monkeys not vzl it's it's

not like we can there are exactly the

same API is in both and we've been

monitoring fire monkey ever since

very early days was a tough AFC I can't

remember now this is my ex he too was

the AC who was a subset using free

Pascal I really think of X III is the

first one that brought windows and n

Macintosh for what we would call fire

monkey but go ahead sorry so we we we

look at fire monkey in two different

ways first of all is the desktop fire

monkey if you like and then there's the

mobile fire monkey let me first of all

talk about the fur the mobile fire

monkey we have no plans at present to

support fire monkey on mobile devices

and the reason for that is we have our

own products for mobile and I would go

into them here but you go to DevExpress

comm you can find out about them so we

have our own path if you like into the

mobile world and we're supporting other

technologies for mobile now for farm

monkey on the desktop we've been doing

every every release of rad studio we we

do more experiments on you know creating

some of the controls that we have in far

monkey a to test the if you like the

underlying API at the runtime and B to

test the the performance and I have to

say that you know our last experiment

with xe7

way back in September led us to believe

that things are getting to the point

where we could support farm monkey with

on the desktop so Windows and the Mac

then we get into the problem of you know

resource allocation we have a huge VCL

library the video showed if you like

just get part of that in the by looking

at a particular demo and but you know

the video didn't talk about things like

you know the spreadsheet control that

we've just had released in the past six

months you know things like gauges for

that

that map control for VCL and so on so

forth we have a great deal of

functionality still left if you like to

write and to implement for vcl and we

don't have the resources to be able to

essentially take the T divide it into

two and say okay guys you're working off

our market you're working on VCO

so at the moment I think we're you might

say we're resource constrained a little

bit to support fire monkey with a a

control set and you gotta realize you

know if we suddenly say okay we're going

to do a farm monkey control or farm like

you sweet people are going to jump all

over us saying well I need the grid I

need the spreadsheet I need the whatever

it may be the tree list you know we're

going to have to have a pretty full

suite to begin with so again it talks

about resource constraints so I'd have

to say at the moment don't expect any

farm like it controls from us if we do

do some will certainly be announcing it

and we'll do it peacefully ill I would

have to say and let's see Sherman's

saying the best component library for

Delphi or without a doubt thanks for

this presentation and then there's

question is the mail application one of

the demos that comes with it right yes

yes it is the demos that you saw the

mail mail app right at the beginning

plus the realtor world out there demos

with the subscription you get full

source code you can you know plow

through it and and see how we did things

I mean obviously with the realtor world

demo we were basically trying to shadow

how little code you have to write to be

able to get a great UI but obviously

yeah we didn't show any of the data

access or anything like that so yeah you

get all source code you can see how we

did it we can you can see how you know

to implement that into your own

applications or maybe even take you know

something like the mail then

application and make that as a template

for your own application and then since

you have data bound controls through

data sets and data sources and so on

right then if somebody's using DB

Express so they're using fire dag or

something else there there there oh

right we we support that I would you

know point out that with the grid in

particular we have a server node for the

grid so that you can point the grid at a

multi million row database table and it

will still work extremely quickly we

have no special code in there which we

call server mode to only download to

your to your device to your PC those

records which can get displayed yep and

then and oh I had one other question if

someone goes to they have expressed will

they find video demos or they just

download the trial they find different

demos that or videos to help them

understand the different controls videos

were slowly adding videos with the new

controls and the new functionality we

produce as part of our releases but

you'll be able to download the trial run

one of my guys and the team has just

pointed out we have the demos that I

demonstrated are available as

executables so you can download those

basically get a DevExpress comm / VCL

and you'll be able to get everything you

need excellent there was an off topic

question about VoIP and and Jose just

searched Delphi in VoIP in you'll find

all sorts of components or libraries or

voice over IP unless there's something

in the DevExpress TCL controls for a

voice over IP truly know

no no yeah back in the day with turbo

power whatever with each other we'd have

stuff like that but no yeah though

that's how far back Julian goes and

unfortunately I go I guess is mean

originally when I first joined in Berlin

in 85 and and during that time in the

few years after that a turbo power was

right across the street here in Scotts

Valley with Kim Conan and and the guy

and we used to meet up at Malone's it's

over

it's a local you read right along Scotts

Valley Drive as well we used to meet up

there just walk across the street but in

a site that's really off topic that's

more for you all right we have February

9 through 13

alex is asking and you mentioned C++

builder support do all the components

work in C++ are there any limitations no

limitations they'll work with C++

builder in both 32-bit and 64-bit and

the same with Delphi 32-bit 64-bit

terminating saying in the demos of the

product there are two skins for Metro

interface white and black are there the

other ones and I mentioned what there's

like the green and the blue orange

I could have to ask the team what what

we have I don't have the demo here so I

can't quickly so I have to ask the team

best bet German is to email me at that

email address you see on the screen

Julian be at DevExpress calm and I'll

get you some more information and and

you know excellent VCO components we've

we've been very happy with all the work

and we still are happy don't I don't

want to say it in the wrong way Express

is doing it seriously cuz well I mean

we've been together for a long long time

so absolutely yeah absolutely and

there's so much Windows specific and VCO

work to be done moving

forward I mean the metropolis stuff came

in eighth now we're we're all involved

in the Windows 10 kind of preview world

without him ability and where we've got

it I've got it in a VM we've got it all

over Rd so we're you know we're working

to make sure that vcl continues to be

supportive and enhanced and work with

with the next major release I guess it's

it's the last I always get confused in

their announcement it's in a sense the

last release of Windows because they're

just gonna continuously update it for

the rest of us right like that's right

so it's OS and an iOS right yeah so it's

just gonna be Windows 10 and as far as

we understand as well there'll be no

windows 11 it'll just be a release a

minor release update here update there

and so and so forth which is why they're

you know planning to give it away for

the first year to encourage everybody to

go to Windows 10 and once that happens

you know all your new PCs will that

Windows 10 and you'll pay for it

favorite then but yeah yes we're exactly

the same position as you

yeah we're gonna be supporting it we're

going to be making sure all of our

products included the VCL subscription

works within those ten and taking

advantage of hey if there's some new UI

paradigms or other functionality in

Windows platform we know the windows in

our world native code Intel processor

platforms and then we'll see what

happens about Windows on other chips and

so on in the future but there's plenty

of work to be done and plenty of use of

all the skills everyone has in delphi

and c++ builder for the VCL for years to

come it at the same time there's as you

see in julienne in the QA there's more

people cheering you on about fire monkey

as well but as Julian knows my job and

our job here as part of developer

relations is just to make everything

available and brief all the partners on

what we're doing with releases and

getting them on the betas and

encouraging them but it's not our

business decision to make as as Julian

clearly outlined everyone

each of our technology partners make

their own investment solutions for their

companies for their businesses and for

their customers yes agreed agreed

totally yep and I've gone I I guess was

last year I went to a DevExpress event

at Microsoft Office in San Francisco on

is it I always called it the extreme or

extreme I don't know what the term is so

cool job html5 stuffs really me yeah we

we started off by calling it D extreme

and we renamed it after a year or so to

dev extreme okay I mean since yeah it's

it's essentially the same thing it's an

application framework for creating

mobile apps with html5 and JavaScript

and we target ios and android and yet

now the time moves on so faster probably

was a couple years when I went up and

because I got a little bag and brochure

and it was DX 3 and that that'll time it

that was what it was called then

whenever that was but it was great it

was great just to sit in on a DevExpress

session live in an office so it was

pretty much Julian as always it's great

to hear your voice I guess we just don't

see each other in airport lobbies that

often or hotel lobbies or yeah but thank

you thank you very much for having us

here or me here and allow me to talk

about them express thank you thank

excellent