[DUG] Spacely Beta Bloggers

[Jeremy North]

Hi John,

> I am tempted to upgrade to Delphi D2007  win32.

You won't regret it, even if you are just coming for BDS2006.

> Q1 - Is there a restriction about programs built under Spacely not running
> on Win9x?  Or running as long as certain components are not used?

The same restrictions apply that did in BDS2006. There is no new
restrictions added. All the vista stuff is dynamically loaded.

> Q2 - alternatively if I move to Delphi 2007 and copy source back to the BDS
> 2006 environment will BDS 2006 remove any form and component properties it
> doesn't recognise?

You can. Except for DBExpress (which has changed a bit and ISN'T
compatible) the only published property introduced is GlassFrame on
TForm. Don't change the defaults and it won't be streamed to the DFM,
so no issues with BDS2006.

As Spacely is a non-breaking release it wasn't possible to add
published properties to many componets because they just didn't have
the method overrides in place. If you do upgrade to Spacely, I
recommend you check out the source code for forms.pas and see how the
GlassFrame published property is implemented.

> Q3 - Apart from Vista aero and dialogs support and refinements in the IDE
> mentioned on the blog with the components palette speed, any other
> significant enhancements/alterations?

The two most significant changes are Vista support and the new MSBuild
system. That is not to say that hundreds of bugs and features have
been added.
  * Error Insight has been greatly enhanced.
  * A number of Refactoring enhancements/fixes have been done.
  * Code Editor enhancements
  * Speed enhancements
  * Errant painting/flicker fixes
  * Layout loading issues (a lot less flicker when changing to debug
desktop on run)
  * Speed of layout loading increased greatly
  * The start up speed and general use speed of the IDE has improved greatly
  * DBExpress changes are huge (although I don't use DBExpress). The
DBExpress text on my blog was reviewed by a DBExpress developer for
accuracy!
  * Help has had a lot of attention. It won't be perfect but it has
come a long long way.
  * New installation method to allow for updating with new patches
(ie. Help, IDE updates) easily.
  * Change to the community edition welcome page (with improvements).
The community welcome page is great, especially the Favourites
section.

Hopefully some of the fixed QC reports will be made available for
people to query on.

cheers,
Jeremy