Waiting for Delphi XE2 with excitement | VCL Developer

Waiting for Delphi XE2 with excitement

Posted on August 7th, 2011 Ali Keshavarz 17 comments

Delphi world is full of good news these days. Delphi XE2 is announced officially a couple of days ago, and it is supposed to bring some lovely features

It was obvious that XE2 will bring 64-bits support to Delphi, along with supporting Mac OS as a new target platform. Mac OS support was supposed to be added to Delphi XE, but it was postponed to this release. Although 64-bits and Mac OS support are cool, they were both expected. The big news was FireMonkey!

When Embarcadero announced their plan for adding Mac OS support, the original plan was a continuation of the old CLX framework which was based on Qt. The difference was, the new CLX was supposed to bring just cross-compiling for Mac OS (and later on Linux), not like original CLX which had a Linux-based IDE (Kylix) for compiling the same source code for Linux. However the plan changed, Embarcadero bought KSDev company, creator of VGScene and DXScene components, and hired its programmer. They decided to provide a vector-based, GPU accelerated, cross-platform GUI framework based on the recently bought KSDev products; and that is FireMonkey.

FireMonkey is the new cross-platform GUI framework for Delphi. You can create Windows (32-bits, 64-bits), Mac OS (32-bits), and iOS (32-bits) applications using FireMonkey in Delphi XE2. iOS addition was a surprised, and I didn’t expect it; although it is not a direct compilation to ARM code. Actually you have to export your iOS code to a XCode project, and compile it with XCode, to be able to run it on your iPhone or iPad devices. Also, 64-bits support for Mac is not ready yet. It seems they are still working on it.

On Windows platform, FireMonkey uses Direct2D for 2D renderings, Direct 3D for 3D renderings; and OpenGL on Mac OS. If Direct2D is not available, FireMonkey will fall back to GDI+ to render the GUI.

Here is a video by Andreano Lanusse demoing 3D capabilities of FireMonkey on Windows, Mac OS, and iOS :

Delphi XE2 and FireMonkey Application on Windows, Mac OS, and iOS

You can also read more about FireMonkey on Andreano’s weblog (Do not miss the comments) :

A little bit about FireMonkey and Delphi XE2

However that is not the whole story; in XE2 we don’t need to deal with a separate set of components as data-aware components. Now in XE2 we will have Live Binding. It means we can bind any data source to any visual control. If you are familiar with .NET controls, you probably saw this binding property. Now the same thing exists in Delphi too.

What’s more, DataSnap and DBX are also enhanced; for DataSnap, AFAIK, proxy class generators are added for many platforms (i.e. Android, iOS, JavaScript, .NET, BlackBerry, etc.). Also I heard some features are added for deployment to could. For DBX, it seems a driver for ODBC is added.

Beside all of these new features, the popular reporting tool, FastReport, will be shipped by default with Delphi XE2 too.

There must be many enhancements and additions to Delphi RTL too, but I haven’t heard anything about them yet. So we have to wait for other worldwide tours Embarcadero is conducting in August to get more detail information about this exciting release.

It seems XE2 might be the most significant Delphi release in the past decade. It is not officially announced when XE2 will be released, but I can guess it will be some time in September.
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News Delphi, FireMonkey, RAD Studio, RAD Studio XE2, XE2
15 responses to “Waiting for Delphi XE2 with excitement”
- Shahriar-b August 7th, 2011 at 16:20
  
  Great news! finally their trying to resurrect delphi!
  
  Reply
- A. Bouchez August 11th, 2011 at 13:52
  
  For those how are interested in FireMonkey, I made some screenshots of DXScene sample application.
  It may give you some good starting point about the features of the upcoming Delphi XE2 user interface components.
  http://blog.synopse.info/post/2011/08/11/FireMonkey-and-DXScene
  
  Reply
- Lena August 16th, 2011 at 16:07
  
  Which version VCL for WEB as IntraWEB (Standard or Ultimate) will be in new XE2?
  Here is a difference:
  http://www.atozed.com/intraweb/FeatureMatrix.ru.aspx
  Thanks.
  
  Reply
- néo August 17th, 2011 at 14:15
  
  you write : “FastReport will be shipped by default with Delphi XE2″. What about Rave Report ? It will be included in Delphi XE2 too ?
  
  Reply
- Lena August 17th, 2011 at 14:45
  
  Historically every new RAD version provides new opportunities and improves the one which already exists. It proves RAD progress. In a new RAD XE the option to deploy IntraWEB (VCL for WEB) attachment as ISAPI dll for IIS doesn’t exist anymore. In a new RAD XE an attachment can get deployed only as Standalone and Windows Service. Previous RAD versions enabled additional deployment of ISAPI dll for IIS too.
  In C++ Builder 2010, 2007, 2009 a can deploy IntraWEB as ISAPI dll, but in C++ Builder XE I can’t.
  That it way I ask about new XE2 with IntraWEB.
  
  Reply
- Vlad August 18th, 2011 at 18:13
  
  Which version of FastReport (Basic, Standard, Professional, Enterprise) will be include in RAD XE2?
  Thanks.
  
  Reply
- hamid karimy September 10th, 2011 at 00:10
  
  what about the xe2 tours
  doest any one join that these days?
  i am thinking to dobai tour in 19 sep
  
  Reply
- Fouad Loucif September 16th, 2011 at 03:34
  
  I’m a Delphi developer and I hope that we can see a lot of “working” samples of FireMonkey to see its capabilities in all platforms not only a fliping pictures a small database application will be welcome.
  
  Reply
- service September 20th, 2011 at 06:34
  
  unfortunately ,it don’t support linux
  
  Reply
2 Trackbacks / Pingbacks
- FireMonkey and support for bi-directional text | VCL Developer August 16th, 2011 at 07:23
  
  [...] GPU-accelerated, vector-based GUI framework; FireMonkey. I talked about XE2 and FireMonkey in the previous post, but since it is not officially released yet, I am not sure if FireMonkey will have any support for [...]
- Delphi XE2 Rumor Roundup | TwoDesk Delphi Blog August 22nd, 2011 at 20:50
  
  [...] Firemonkey is, in fact, the evolution VGScene and DXScene which Embarcadero acquired when they bought KSDev and hired its programmer (source). [...]
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