Marco Tech Blog

March 6, 2014

My Webinar about Modernizing Windows Applications (or Move Away from Windows XP)

In two weeks I'll host an online webinar about modernizing Windows applications written with the VCL. Live events on a similar topic are ongoing in Europe, and I'm presenting one in Milan next week.

In two weeks I'll host an online webinar about modernizing Windows applications written with the VCL. Live events on a similar topic are ongoing in Europe, and I'm presenting one in Milan next week.

The Online Webinar, March 19

The webinar is on Wednesday March 19th (the first day of spring), repeated 3 times during the day. You can sign up at forms.embarcadero.com/ModernWindowsApps3-19 . Topics include:

Pure migration form XP and from old versions of Delphi (moving to Unicode, User Account Control, recompiling old Delphi applications)
Modernizing applications with new styles, graphic support, following Windows 8 Modern UI, using new dialogs, and so on
Upgrading data access to today's world, moving away from the BDE, using FireDAC, using cloud and REST servers, looking into Live Bindings
Peering into what's new in the language
Mentioning why, how, and when move to FMX.

The Webinar Focus: VCL and XP Migration

As you can see from the list above, the webinar should take about 100 hours, but due to time constrains we will ZIP it into a single hour. Needless to say, it will be more of an overview, but with enough technical information to get you started. The goal is primarily developers who are still targeting Windows XP with old versions of Delphi, but the content is rich and wide enough that most Delphi developers will have a change to learn some new tricks.

If you know other Delphi developers stuck in the past, let them know about this webinar, as this is a way for them to understand how the product is evolving. And if you know developers still focused on Windows XP as a target platform, notice they have a month left to migrate their applications according to Microsoft.

Seriously, moving away from Windows XP is a very significant business requirement these days, worth your effort and worth your customers attention. But given this is a significant topic, I'll blog about it separately.

Live Event in Milan Next Week

Finally, let me point out to an Italian event with a similar focus, a Delphi Live meeting in Milan, next Tuesday (March 11th), in the morning. Sign up at forms.embarcadero.com/EM14Q1ITDeveloperDirectLive (I'll be giving the session in Milan, but not the one in Rome, where Daniele Teti will be speaking). There are other similar sessions happening around Europe, like in Germany and Russia.

posted by marcocantu @ 10:40AM | 4 Comments [0 Pending]

4 Comments

My Webinar about Modernizing Windows Applications or Move Away from Windows XP

Embedded XP will live for another 2-5 years.
See http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-remember-some-xp-
based-embedded-systems-to-get-support-to-2019-
7000026449/

Comment by Leif [http://www.opsis.se] on March 6, 16:12

My Webinar about Modernizing Windows Applications or Move Away from Windows XP

I must admit I still do my coding on XP and Delphi 7. I 
guess it's the least common denominator. I have a 
license for XE4 and Windows 7. I made it a new year 
resolution to move all my projects to at least XE4. 
Looking forward to the webinar.

Comment by Wilfred Oluoch [http://www.ideaz.co.ke] on March 6, 17:33

It should really be "Move Away from Windows 95"

XP was already full Unicode - for the matter, Windows 
is since NT (although NT used only UCS-2). It was 
Delphi to be late, not Windows.
UAC would not be an issue if applications had been 
written to comply with rules set since Windows 2000 - 
but for those really requiring administrative 
privileges. Sure, if some developers still use Win 
3.1/95 habits they are 20 years late - their 
applications didn't work in any properly set 2000/XP 
machine already.
Recompiling doesn't bring any advantage. AFAIK Delphi 
XE5 still targets XP - no newer APIs available unless 
you call them directly.
Windows 8 modern UI is for WinRT applications - it's 
not a skin. It is meant to work inside the WinRT 
Subsystem, and its UI design - including the "auto" 
keyboard, charm integration, and so on. Delphi can't 
do that.
FireDAC, clould, rest, etc. have nothing to do 
with "modern" Windows applications. I would like to 
see a topic like "integrating Delphi applications 
with Active Directory, MMC, PowerShell, and Rights 
Management". That wouild be "modernizing" Windows 
applications, although those tools have been 
available for years. For example I find surprising 
Delphi never offered support to write MMC plug-ins 
easily.
Last but not least, moving away from XP doesn't mean 
to move away from the Windows API and UI - and switch 
to Firemonkey. But is true that Delphi doesn't 
support yet newer UI elements, like native ribbons.
But after all telling Delphi developers they need to 
stop coding as if the OS works still as 95 did, it's 
something useful. After all there are too many that 
still use the old file interface, when 
Assign/Reset/Rewrite will be removed from Delphi? 
That's one of the few things I'd really drop, 
especially because it's not thread safe due to its 
use of global variables to control locking.

Comment by Luigi D. Sandon on March 6, 22:14

My Webinar about Modernizing Windows Applications or Move Away from Windows XP

Luigi, 

while I agree on some of your points, your description of Delphi support 
for new APIs is off point. Anyway:

- On UAC, applications and users file storage, I agree with you, it has 
been around long time. It is surprising how many popular applications 
still do it wrong.
- Recompiling doesn't bring any advantage. It does. For example, you get 
new dialogs and task dialogs without touching your code.
- No API available unless you call them directly? There are VCL functions 
mapped to newer APIs when available. The product has delayed binding 
of external functions for that purpose.
- Windows 8 modern UI is for WinRT apps. What said that? Microsoft? 
They did, and delivered modern UI elements in Win32 apps... and even 
web sites!
- FireDAC has nothing to do. It has. Running BDE on modern version os 
Windows is not only difficult, but is rather pointless. Developers need to 
move on.
- Cloud support is part of a modern application. How comes modern 
Windows applications need to use only Windows technologies?
- Moving to FireMonkey is not a topic of the webinar, and it is not 
something we are pushing developers to, unless they want to do mobile. 
We want VCL applications to work side by side with mobile.
- I agree we need to explain developers they should stop coding like on 
Win95. Too many still do it.

Bye
-Marco

Comment by Marco Cantu [http://www.marcocantu.com] on March 8, 07:55

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