The ebook, which can be found at www.marcocantu.com/md2005/UpdateDelphi2006.html now covers the most important new areas of the product, from the IDE to the language, from the RTL to the VCL, and from the database area to the Internet development tools.

I have to say that the final chapters (ECO, Indy, IntraWeb, ASP.NET) have very limited material, as most of the changes are really at a very technical level while the (printed) book itself mostly introduces these topics, providing intermediate coverage at most. In the first two of these 4 chapters I complain about the lack of compatibility.

Low-level Indy 10 applications built in Delphi 2005 do not compile in Delphi 2006, as the core classes have changed considerably. With the help not being up-to-date, more care for compatibility would have helped a lot.

A slighty different (worse?) problem emerges with ECO III. Not only doens't the existing code of my Mastering Delphi 2005 book compile any more (which is not good), but most of the step-to-step instructions given in the book have been made obsolete by the new version. I know I should have learned the differences and update the material, but as I didn't originally write this portion of the book I found this more challenging that I originally though.

With Delphi 2006 still compiling most Delphi 1 source code, it is hard to get into this different mindset. I found that preserving past investments in source code is very important for all my projects, even if I have to miss some "high-end" features... so I have a problem with this approach. Anyway, if any ECO expert out there is willing to help me out by updating the examples (Delphi 2005 source code is available here) or with the step-by-step instructions to create them, I'll be more than happy to add them to the free ebook.