Expand your Delphi skills to build a new generation of Windows, web, mobile, and IoT applications
by David Cornelius
Embarcadero MVP,
a passionate software developer
the author of corneliusconcepts.tech blog
When I started to use FireMonkey for developing cross-platform mobile applications for my professional career I was a pioneer for this framework. There was a boom of mobile apps development, but more about development of native apps using native tools such as Android Studio and XCode or cross-platform tools using different browser and Java-script based frameworks, e.g. PhoneGap. FireMonkey and Delphi suggested a totally different approach – create a native app using Delphi. But… I couldn’t easily find easy-read and clear A-Z documentation, books or guides about FireMonkey… I explored the frameworks during the development and spent a lot of time on simple things.
Interesting, but now I keep this book in my hands. The book which can drive you through ALL steps of the creation of your cross-platform app using FireMonkey – from the development to the deployment.
Some notes and insights:
- The book explains not only FireMokey and cross-platform development, but also covers RAD Studio basics, its interface, possibilities and feature, Object Pascal language improvements and differences with previous versions – this also can be helpful for developers, who use legacy Delphi versions or for the new Delphi developers.
- Deploying the application to the iOS can be a nightmare for the classic Delphi-developer. David’s book in detail explains how to do that and explains some steps which are not clear if you will do that without existing knowledge with Apple’s OSs.
- I know a lot of Delphi developers who do not understand the purpose of RAD Server and how to use it – now I can recommend David’s book.
- FireMonkey is a framework with new implementation from scratch (FMX – not VCL). Compared with VCL, FMX has a totally different implementation of representation layer, based on Styles philosophy. For classic Delphi developers it can be not obvious how to work with FireMonkey styles. And again, David explained this in an easy and clear way.
- Not many Delphi developers use LiveBindings – this book is a good start for using this technique.
- Interesting section about working with BLE devices. Maybe it doesn’t cover how to connect to FireMonkey existing SDK from some beacon manufacturer – but it explains the basics about BLE device standards.
I want to add that for a complete picture, again, in my opinion, I would also want to have detailed explanations (maybe in the future editions?): how to build the app architecture using well-known patterns, such as MVC or MVVM; how to organize navigation for the mobile application; how to implement platform-specific features, which does not exist in the FMX; how to quickly adjust all necessary Apple certificates and provisioning profiles and so on. Of course, one book cannot cover everything, especially with high standards.
Although we already have the RAD Studio 11 version and in the book David uses 10.4 version – everything should be actual for 11 version as well. I can recommend the book for both FireMonkey newbies and for the guys, who already developed their first commercial FireMonkey application, but still have questions and want to improve it architecturally. Unfortunately, I cannot expand here all my thoughts about the book – because it will be another book. My goal now is to encourage you to read the book.
