No Metro in Windows 8 !!
[Estimated Reading Time: < 1 minutes] That’s right. When Windows 8 ships there will be NO METRO in the box!
Thinking Creatively with QueryInterface()
[Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes] I soon hope to be releasing “Smoketest”, a testing framework that I have developed over the past few years. It has actually been in production use for most of that time (albeit by my own good self) but also continues to develop and evolve. On the occasions when I have mentioned it, people have asked me to publish it, but I have been reluctant to do so up to now for a number of reasons, not least that it needs a bit of polishing to make it suitable for public scrutiny.
RAD Studio (XE3 Launch?) Event Announced in NZ
[Estimated Reading Time: < 1 minutes] Just a few moments ago I received an invitation to register for what I presume to be the launch event of RAD Studio XE3. 28th August is the date for your diary!
FireMonkey to Support Native Controls
[Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes] In the comments to my previous post, David Intersimone mentioned that Embarcadero are working on enabling support for platform native UI controls within FireMonkey!
A Pain In The Butt
[Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes] This post is one of those classic double-entendres for which us Brits are (in)famous, involving as it does both an actual Pain In The Butt and a euphemistic one.
CFStringRef and TCFString(s)
[Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes] In the comments on yesterdays initial post in a series following the experiences of porting an Objective-C sample to XE2, a number of people have asked why I didn’t use the TCFString record type in System.Mac.CFUtils to get the CFStringRef references that I required. The reason is embarrassingly simple.
Porting the Objective-C CFFTPSample to XE2: Part 1
[Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes] On the NZ DUG email list (yes, we still have those here) a question was recently posted asking for help with getting some FTP code working on OSX, using XE2. This coincided nicely with my reaching a point in my Objective-C learning where this sort of exercise was of interest to me also, so I decided to try porting the CFFTPSample from the Apple Developer reference materials as a learning exercise.
Using History to Make Sense of the Present
[Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes] In a recent post on interop in .NET framework, Jeroen Pluimers wrote “I don’t see COM as the first class citizen it was in the VB6 era.” I always find it funny when the .NET camp start poo-pooing COM and dismissing it as yesterdays technology that some people just can’t seem to let go of (apologies to Jeroen if this was not his intention in this case).
Poll: FireMonkey or “Platform Native” ?
[Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes] We have had almost a year of monkeying with fire now – enough time I think for people to have formed a view as to whether it is truly a viable multi-platform framework for the future, or just a convenient cross-platform solution with limited, genuine utility. At the same time, we have had OS X and some iOS support for the same period, with the prospect of more platforms being made available to us Delphi developers in the future. So, looking ahead, do we see FireMonkey as providing a solid foundation for a cross-platform future, or would we prefer to see tighter, closer “native” support for MULTIPLE-platforms (both currently supported and envisaged/promised) ? I know what I think: As much as I’d prefer to use ObjectPascal, I quickly decided that using Delphi + FireMonkey for OS X / iOS was like trying to ice-skate uphill. I couldn’t shake off the feeling that the disconnect between me, my code and the environment I was writing for was going to be a source of nothing but constant pain and frustration, and so decided to learn Objective-C and Xcode instead. I anticipate this will be only worse when it comes to Android, so Read More…
Commonest Weakness…
[Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes] Stefan Glienke recently added his contribution to the various solutions for implementing weak interface references in Delphi.