Software development - Technology and processes
TwitterGoogle

José León

RAD Studio XE4 – What’s new in the IDE (X) – Info.plist

Posted on by Posted in RAD Studio, software development Leave a comment

Info.plist is a settings file for iOS applications, you can find more information here. The IDE interacts with this file (and with others, like the entitlements) in order to make it easy for you to specify settings for your application.

In this article I show you how to change the setting of our project which controls if our application is going to be universal (is going to work on iPhone and iPad) or just is going to be an iPhone-only application.

An iPhone-only application can also run on the iPad, but it doesn’t use the whole screen space, that is, the iPad “emulates” an iPhone and allows you to run the app at double the size.

A universal application run properly on both devices.

Here is the screencast:

RAD Studio XE4 – What’s new in the IDE (IX) – Misc Changes

Posted on by Posted in RAD Studio, software development Leave a comment

This post is to showcase several small changes in the IDE. First, I show where you can set all the artwork you will need to provide for your app to show properly on the different iOS devices, both for regular resolutions and for retina ones. I also show where you can set the orientations supported by the app. If you don’t change any setting, the app will support all orientations, but you can specify to support only one if your application must be shown that way.

After that, I show the changes on the right-click menu for platforms, and what’s the logic behind that change.

And finally, I show the new Tools | Options available on this release, in which we have split the Profiles in two entities: Connection Profiles and SDKs.

Here is the video:

RAD Studio XE4 – What’s new in the IDE (VIII) – Mobile Templates

Posted on by Posted in RAD Studio, software development Leave a comment

On XE4, in order to ease the path to get a mobile application up and running, the IDE provides several built-in templates. You can use those templates to start with a predefined UI and behavior for your app, so there is no need for you to start from scratch.

You can get to those templates using the gallery, that is, File | New | Other…, and then, in the gallery, selecting the Delphi Projects category, and invoking the FireMonkey Mobile Application item, which will show up the wizard containing all available templates.

You can also go directly to the Mobile Projects subcategory, where you will find the same templates, and there is no need for you to invoke the wizard.

If you don’t want to start with a template, you can always select the Blank Application option, which will simply create an empty mobile form.

Here is the video:

RAD Studio XE4 – What’s new in the IDE (VII) – SDK Manager

Posted on by Posted in RAD Studio, software development Leave a comment

To complete the previous post, this post is about the SDK Manager, which provides you a way to fetch an SDK from an external machine so it’s available for compile C++Builder OSX apps, and Delphi iOS apps for the device.

The SDK Manager is located in Tools | Options | SDK Manager, and there you can:

  • Add new SDKs
  • Delete Existing SDKs
  • Modify Existing SDKs
    • Add new files to the SDK
    • Add new frameworks to the SDK
    • Update Local File cache, so the files are copied again from the remote machine
  • Export
  • Import

Check out the screencast:

RAD Studio XE4 – What’s new in the IDE (VI) – Connection Profiles

Posted on by Posted in RAD Studio, software development 3 Comments

In this article I explain what a Connection Profile is and how to add them and manage them in the IDE.

To develop applications for multiple platforms (Win64, OS X, iOS, etc) and being the IDE a Win32 application, you need to tell the IDE which machine you are going to use for deploying, running and debugging your application. You will need to install PAServer on the machine you want to use, so the IDE can interact with them, copy binaries, fetch information, run the app, etc.

You can get more information about PAServer, on this link.

To add a new connection profile, you have several ways:

  • Using the Profile Manager in Tools | Options
  • If you don’t have any connection profile, but you try to run an app for a platform that requires it, the IDE will ask you to create one when it’s needed
  • Editing the platform properties, you can add one from that dialog
  • Or when adding SDKs to the IDE (to be seen on the next article), you can add a new profile

The information for a profile is quite straightforward:

  • Name to identify that profile
  • The platform (OS) of the machine you want to use for deployment and running
  • Host name, is the IP address or network name for that machine. You can use the ‘i’ command on PAServer to get the list of IP addresses you can use
  • Port number
  • Password, if you set a password when running PAServer
  • Default, to set this profile as the default one for the specified platform

You can also test the profile connection directly from the wizard, or in the Profile Manager, to ensure the connection is working.

To remove or to edit a profile, you can only do it on the Profile Manager.

And you can also export and import profiles, to XML files you can share with other team mates, so they can use them to connect to those machines.

Check this video to get an overview on how to manage Connection Profiles in the IDE:

RAD Studio XE4 – What’s new in the IDE (V) – iOS Packages

Posted on by Posted in RAD Studio, software development Leave a comment

The Tool Palette filters the components depending on the platform those components have been written for. So, if you want your components to be available for iOS development, you must add the iOS platform (simulator or device) to your package.

Apart from that, component development methodology, is exactly the same as with other FireMonkey components.

This video shows you how to do it:

 

RAD Studio XE4 – What’s new in the IDE (IV) – iPhone 5 Support

Posted on by Posted in RAD Studio, software development 1 Comment

In RAD Studio XE4 there is support for the iPhone 5 form factor, there is a device in the drop down selector on the mobile designer, called iPhone 5, which switches the designer to those specific dimensions.

Also, you can select which device to be selected on the designer when creating new forms, this is quite useful if you are designing your app for an specific form factor, and you want any new mobile form created to use that device by default.

And finally, I’m showing how the application can use the whole screen real state of the iPhone 5, because we are supporting the iPhone 5 splash screen specification, and also, using the BorderStyle property with a value of bsNone, you can get ride of the status bar.

Check out the video:

RAD Studio XE4 – What’s new in the IDE (III) – FireMonkey Frames

Posted on by Posted in RAD Studio, software development 1 Comment

On XE4, we have added Frame support for FireMonkey apps. This means you can now isolate your UI pieces on Frames and reuse them to build your app. For VCL developers, just say this works exactly the same as VCL Frames.

The goal for Frames is to provide you a visual container where you can place any component and create a reusable piece of UI. Later, when you are designing your Forms, you can place Frames inside and use them as panels that contain specific UI and behavior.

You can change the Frame and that change will be populated along all the instances of that Frame. If you want to customize a Frame instance on an specific form, you can do it, but after that, of course, changes on the base Frame won’t be reflected on that control on the Frame instances.

Check this video to get how it works:

RAD Studio XE4 – What’s new in the IDE (II) – Retina Icon Support for Mac OS X apps

Posted on by Posted in RAD Studio, software development 2 Comments

As I explained on the first article, this series is not only about iOS, but about all the modifications we have performed on the IDE for the XE4 release. While this one was already available on the P64 release, I have thought it might be useful to make a post about it.

Apple requires any Mac application submitted to the App Store, to feature Retina resolutions for the application icon. Now you can meet that requirement directly from the IDE by specifying an ICNS file to be used as the icon for your app. ICNS is an Apple’s specific format, which can contain more formats and with higher resolutions than its Windows equivalent.

On previous versions, the ICNS file was generated by converting the ICO file, but as the ICO format has a limit of 256×256 pixels, we have added a new setting to the IDE for you to specify the ICNS file directly.

Check out this video to know how this works:

RAD Studio XE4 – What’s new in the IDE (I) – Start Here

Posted on by Posted in RAD Studio, software development 1 Comment

This is the first article about RAD Studio XE4 IDE. On this serie I will focus exclusively on what has been added on this release, from the requirements standpoint. I’m not going to focus exclusively on iOS, but on any addition/change that has been made to the IDE. So, if you want to know every single detail on what’s new on the IDE, stay tunned!!

On the following video I’m going to explain how the new Start Here section on the Welcome Page works. The Welcome Page is the very first thing you see when you open the IDE, and now, the default section is the Start Here section.  A nice introduction page to everything you need to get setup and running quickly.