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November 22, 2011

FireMonkey Webinar QA

Embarcadero has published the transcript of the question and answer sessions at the end of the webinars I did last week. Here are some notable entries.

Embarcadero has published the transcript of the question and answer sessions at the end of the webinars I did last week. The full set is available at Q&A log files from the Marco Cantu RAD in Action Webinar “Building Rich Business Applications with FireMonkey”, on http://edn.embarcadero.com.

Here are only the most significant entries, with some further comments

Q: How to use data grid with LiveBindings?

A: You can use LiveBindings with FireMonkey's StringGrid. --- Now LiveBinding is not the simplest feature to use, but they are very powerful. Also, FireMonkey comes with more LiveBinding options thatn the VCL. 

Q: Will there be any tools to move current Delphi apps to FireMonkey?

A: MonkeyGroomer ( http://pascalcoder.blogspot.com/search/label/MonkeyGroomer ) and MIDA( http://midafiremonkey.wordpress.com/ ). --- Actuallty the latter has a new home site at http://www.midaconverter.com (I'll blog about it ASAP).

Q: What iOS features are not available? (e.g. accelerometer)

A: Everything on iOS is available via code in your FireMonkey applications. Use the iphoneall unit to get at everything. Anders Ohlsson has lots of example code at  http://blogs.embarcadero.com/ao/category/ios . Anders is also wrapping the code as components see his iOS component blog post at  http://blogs.embarcadero.com/ao/2011/10/28/39192 . -- not much more to add, if not that I'm going to focus on this in the coming weeks.

Q: I don't use XE2 yet, what's the requirement in order to build XOS apps in Delphi running on Windows? Grazie

A: For OSX - everything is built in the XE2 IDE. You don't even have to have a Mac. Best practice would be to do final debug on a Mac, Mac Mini for final testing. -- Specially, I have a Mac Mini that I use as target, as I recently blogged. Others use the host in their Mac a Windows virtual machine with Delphi XE2 installed.

Q: Marco, Thank you for helping me understand FireMonkey. Please keep up your great work. Are you going to post more videos on YouTube?

A: That is the idea - Marco will do more videos, time permitting --- that's not a promise, but I'll try to create YouTube video while working on my new FireMonkey book.

Again, there is much more in the Q6A, including many questions about Android support for which Embarcadero offered a reply, not me... so I didn't #34e them here even if they are probably the most interesting questions! Same for other questions about "missing" features that are int he current product roadmap.

 

posted by marcocantu @ 5:53PM | 3 Comments [0 Pending]




 

3 Comments

FireMonkey Webinar QA  

 You say in your blog that you don't need to have a Mac 
to create OSX applications. I thought you had to have PA 
Server installed on a remote Mac machine to provide a 
remote profile in order to compile the executables.

If you don't need a Mac, how do you do this with only 
XE2/Firemonkey running on a Windows machine? I know you 
can't use a VM running OSX on a Windows host so where do 
you get the remote profile from?

Thanks.
Comment by Mike O'Sullivan on March 24, 10:52

FireMonkey Webinar QA  

Mike,

  The PA server is used to deploy and debug the 
application, not to compile it. You first compile the 
Mac app on Delphi, than you deploy it on the Mac via 
sockets using the PA server.

So you don't need a Mac to compile, but I doubt you 
want to distribute an app without even trying to run 
it. 

The other issue is that the deployment mechanism 
creates the mac app 8a zip file) putting together the 
executable, the icons, and more. You'll have to 
assemble these files manually, in case you don't have 
the PA server. Which is possible, but very boring...

Hope this helps clarify,

Marco
Comment by Marco Cantu [http://www.marcocantu.com] on March 24, 17:09

FireMonkey Webinar QA  

Thanks Marco - that's a very clear answer. 

I think I allowed myself to be misled by the Grid++ 
website (gridplusplus.com) where they state that 
XPower does not need to recompile a project on a 
remote platform in order to produce executable 
binaries for OSX and I inferred (falsely) from this 
that they were referring to the modus operandi of 
Delphi XE2.

To a developer (like me) on the verge of investing in 
a cross platform IDE, XPower does appear to have an 
easier approach than Delphi XE2 but I'm sure you may 
well not agree with that.

I do appreciate you taking the time to answer my 
question.

Mike
Comment by Mike O'Sullivan on March 25, 11:38


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