jed-software.com

Recently the following QC report was created:

Report No: 102419 (RAID: 289385)          Status: Open
RibbonStyleActnCtrls: No dropdown arrows of Actiontoolbar buttons
http://qc.embarcadero.com/wc/qcmain.aspx?d=102419

I noticed it and included the changes necessary to make it work. Since the ribbon functionality uses additional properties on TActionClientItem, these can be set for normal menu items to get the desired outcome. These additional properties are ignored by existing styles.

An alternate solution is a source code change that is also documented on the report. This source code change is not interface breaking, so you just need to copy the modified file into your applications folder.

As noted on the report, a ribbon style won’t work if the user selects the option in the ActionManager to use “large” images. This is due to the large button size on the ribbon being three times the height of a small button, instead of two that the ActionManager expects.

A new release of XE Plus Pack is now available to download.

For Delphi XE – http://www.jed-software.com/files/XEPlusPackTrial.zip

For Delphi XE2 – http://www.jed-software.com/files/XE2PlusPackTrial.zip

NOTE: Update 3 must be installed for the Delphi XE2 version.

XE Plus Pack is a collection of IDE Experts, component editors and property editors available for either Delphi XE or Delphi XE2.

Currently XE Plus Pack consists of eight experts:

1. Visual Forms (previously available as a separate product)
2. Activate Project
3. File Actions
4. Remember IDE Tree Options
5. Find Bar Alignment
6. New Code Template
7. Bookmark Guide (new in Release 6)
8. Resolution Selector (new in Release 6)

The registered version costs 40 Euro (for one year and 20 Euro each year after that).

The XE trial lasts for 15 days, the XE2 trial lasts for 30 days.

The Bookmark Guide is a replacement for the existing bookmark system.

Resolution Selector adds resolution guidelines to the form designer. Also added is a combobox to the toolbar to allow switching the currently designed form between different resolutions.

A new version of JSDialog Pack is now available to registered users with valid maintenance. If you haven’t received an email with the latest version – please contact me.

This version addresses a couple of issues and also adds support for dialog sheets. Dialog sheets are dialogs that drop down from the title bar (or monitor) to display information. Implemented because I needed a way to notify users of non-critical information, which is why the wrapper methods in this version allow a timeout period to be specified.

Short video showing dialog sheets in action (same as in previous post): Dialog Sheets. For further examples and videos download and install the updated JSDialog Pack Demos.

Updated Demos

The available demos have been updated with seven new demo applications. There has also been four videos added to show the demos running. All demo applications are code signed.

December 2011

- New TJSDialogSheet component

- Added ability to customise the appearance of command link buttons

- Make sure clicking on a button in a Radio Group calls theOnControlClick event handler

- Make sure common buttons expand in width for long captions

- Updated documentation

Fun Fact – today is exactly five years since the first version was released.

Incase you missed the tweet from last week.

Something new coming in december:

10 secs of video. http://bit.ly/vbVhJ7

Work has almost been completed for the “Christmas Release” of JSDialog Pack. When I say almost completed there is still some testing to come and a couple of the new features are shaping nicely.

The new version will be released mid-december but I’ll go further into that when the release is closer.

One thing I’ve been concentrating on the past couple of days is updating the documentation. Unfortunately as a developer, I really like to write code, not write documentation. It is always good to have a good tool to complete this task efficiently and capable of producing a quality output (in multiple formats) in the end.

For my documentation I currently use Doc-O-Matic Professional version 6 (would like to upgrade to version 7, so you folks need to purchase some components ).

The single most important feature of this product I find is the QA View. It allows me to pin point exactly what properties, methods, classes and units are yet to be documented. It is always a relief to see no red boxes (or red boxes bordered by gray – not exported content). I’ve just finished getting all of the new items documented, as well as catching up on items that were not documented when first introduced.

A good habit I got into was creating the documentation while doing the coding. This is easy to do with Doc-O-Matic supporting a number of source documenting formats. Once I update the Doc-O-Matic project with the latest source version, I then make adjustments to the documentation in the inbuilt editor. It generally works very well and cuts down on the very important requirement to have the code documented for customers.

Some useless stats

Topic Count: 2510

Number of topics without content: should be zero

Web Help

Build Time: 2 minutes 12 seconds

Size of content: ~22MB

Time to upload to website: couple of hours (2682 files)

PDF Help

Build Time: 1 minute 55 seconds

Size of content: 7.56MB

Page count: 716

Html Help

Build Time: 2 minutes 38 seconds

Size of content: 3.45MB

While the PDF and Html Help formats are available to download from the website, I recommend using the online help since it can be updated and doesn’t require an additional download or change notification.

I finally got around to upgrading the QC Plus code base from Delphi 2007 to XE2. Since I’ve done that I thought I’d make a little UI adjustment.

Probably not to the liking of some users…

Comments?

As you can see, it is still incomplete…

A new feature in the next release of JSDialog Pack will be the ability to customise the colors used for command link buttons. Since the introduction of VCL Styles in XE2, dialogs can undertake a radial change in colors. While currently dialogs cater for this new feature, the next release will allow greater influence over the colors used for the dialog.

You can download a preview of the editor used to create, modify and save a color scheme. While the UI of this editor will most likely change – the file format shouldn’t need changes. So you can safely save any schemes you come up with for use when the feature is released.

http://www.jed-software.com/files/CommandLinkColorEditor.zip

When it rains, it pours…

A minor update to fix a few extreme corner case issues plus make the installation more customisable. Also remove a “ShowMessage” that shouldn’t have been displayed (stupid large fonts debugging) and some layout in the options dialog (love live the buggy as hell TGridPanel in delphi 2007).

http://www.jed-software.com/qc_download.htm

Never say never I guess

I’ve updated QC Plus to version 1.2.

• Added Change History page
• Make sure the Save Detail button when entering project details in the new (edit) report wizard is enabled
• Fixed refresh issue where retrieving newest reports initially failed
• Updated MadExcept usage to latest
• When using the Edit Area context menu command for an opened report, the select area dialog wasn’t laid out correctly.
• Fix tab order in Select Area dialog
• Improvements to the nntp ui
• Fix some minor ui placement issues under vista
• Update location to retrieve indy ssl libraries
• Installer and executable are now code signed

Following a request, if you would like to support further QC Plus development – you now can:

Download

Information

I was creating an app for FireMonkey and needed to be able to select a directory, currently there is no method (that I could see) to do this. Here is what I used:

function SelectDirectory(const ATitle: string; var ADir: string): Boolean;
var
  LOpenDir: NSOpenPanel;
  LInitialDir: NSURL;
  LDlgResult: NSInteger;
begin
  Result := False;
  LOpenDir := TNSOpenPanel.Wrap(TNSOpenPanel.OCClass.openPanel);
  LOpenDir.setAllowsMultipleSelection(False);
  LOpenDir.setCanChooseFiles(False);
  LOpenDir.setCanChooseDirectories(True);
  if ADir <> '' then
  begin
    LInitialDir := TNSURL.Create;
    LInitialDir.initFileURLWithPath(NSSTR(ADir));
    LOpenDir.setDirectoryURL(LInitialDir);
  end;
  if ATitle <> '' then
    LOpenDir.setTitle(NSSTR(ATitle));
  LOpenDir.retain;
  try
    LDlgResult := LOpenDir.runModal;
    if LDlgResult = NSOKButton then
    begin
      ADir := string(TNSUrl.Wrap(LOpenDir.URLs.objectAtIndex(0)).relativePath.UTF8String);
      Result := True;
    end;
  finally
    LOpenDir.release;
  end;
end;