Thursday, 28 June 2018

Delphi features that I was not aware of

The other day I came across a feature of Delphi that in my 18+ years of using Delphi have never used, it is the 'Hide Non-Visual Components' (Ctrl+H) when design a form. I came across this because another Developer pointed out to me that he could not see the menu controls on a form. I thought there might be an option somewhere and on the right click menu was the option.

I have never used this feature and it got me thinking what other features are there that I am not aware of (Delphi Berlin) and are there any that I might use. Here are 2 lists of features I have since discovered, one list is for ones that I think are pointless and I would never use and the other for features that I believe are useful.

Features I've found that I think I will never use:
  1. Quick Icon - right click menu option in the form designer.
  2. Quick Edit - right click menu option in the form designer.
  3. Flip Children - right click menu option in the form designer. I think I'v seen this before, but have never used it and cannot think of when I would.
  4. Lock Controls - main menu > edit. This feature locks some controls on forms from resizing and moving. This feature has strange behaviour as it sometimes locks the resize, but not the ability to move the control, try locking the controls, closing the form and opening it again and the size of the controls cannot be changed but the positions can. Clearly never been through QA.
  5. Scale - main menu option > edit. This gives the developer the feature to scale a form and it's controls be a percentage. 

Features I've found that could be useful:
  1. Surround > Region - right click menu option in the code editor. 
  2. Search for Usages - right click menu option in the code editor.  
This is just a brief list of features that I have found over the last couple of day that I was not aware of, most of which I will never use. There are most likely other features in Delphi I have yet to discover that are of some use. 

3 comments:

  1. Quick Edit in the form designer is actually quite useful. You don't have to switch to the Object Inspector and can set some basic properties quite easily. I recently started using it and I like it.

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    Replies
    1. It would be more useful if the dialog stayed open, every time I select another component it closes. It also feels like a feature that was started, but has not been finished. I am using Berlin, so maybe in Tokyo it has changed.

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  2. Flip Children might actually become useful to me some day, if I only can remember that it is there.
    btw: I have added something similar to Quick Edit to GExperts. It's an extension to the Rename Components expert and therefore it has a Hotkey Shift+F2 (which is sadly missing from Quick Edit).

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