Delphi on Vista?

[HPW]

Hello,

Yesterday I had the pleasure to attend to german delphi community event 'Delphi Days 2007' in the HNF ( www.hnf.de/ ) where the delphi-community gets latest info from codegear.

We could get a look at latest 'Delphi 2007 for WIN32' and 'Delphi for PHP' which was very interesting.

There are details important for delphi-developers.

They informed about the new security restrictions coming in Vista.
As long apps run in 'XP Compatibility mode' we gets a sort of virtualisation into the user own paths.

But there are other big issue's for delphi-developers:

Vista is always an english OS. German users may install there apps in 'Programme'. But when they search them they will find them in 'Program files' now (When not virtual under user-path).

Programms compiled for Vista gets their info (Vista programm/required user-rights etc.) from an improved manifest-info compiled into the app.
But when you do provide this vista-manifest info, the app crashes on windows XP!! (Microsoft provides a patch for XP for this!!).

When we want to have the new aero-supported Open- and SaveFileDialogs for Vista in our apps and plugins, we have to do version checking and provide both old and new dialogs, because the new dialogs are not compatibel to older OS.

DragAndDrop with files from different user-security level can fail without any error-message. So you try to drag a TXT-file created with admin-rights into a notepad-session started with normal user-account, you drag it onto the window and nothing happens without any error-message.

There were also hints that windows-message between sessions on different user-levels will be blocked on Vista.

I have no access to a vista-system yet, so I can not test in detail.
When this will change I expect a deep learning curve until everything is working the vista-way.
And it seems so, that a delphi-developer will be forced to upgrade his compiler to 'delphi 2007' with vista support.

One thing is fact: We can not ignore this changes in the windows world!

[DwrCymru]

I have quite a few customers who use Vista and run my D7 compiled programs without any problems. Microsoft is already looking ahead to their next OS codenamed "Vienna", that is slated for a 2009 release which basically means forget Vista and all the problems it brings with it. No doubt "Vienna" will bring even more problems and the need to upgrade compilers once more.

I think XP is going to be around for quite a while yet, especially as MS is offering it for sale to under developed countries for only $3.00.

[Johnny_Bit]

Well... MS just does the tests...

Look at it: Support for XP is till 2012 while for vista it's for 2009... Same was for 98 and ME, and now look, nobody used ME when there was 98 SE avail. 3 years had to pass before we got XP, now with XP being rather successful product I don't see why are they breaking stuff up. Besides, vista doesn't bring anything that could be valued.

On the other hand I'm wondering why they stopped Kylix? I mean, it was bad alright, but hey, it still was cool.

Well, on my part, I grew tired since 2002 and I ditched that away. I no longer need to care about many things that concerned MS users. Since I switched to better world however, there were many bad things happening coming from MS, like claiming that Aero interface is "New" and what a brake through it is (Open source got it first, almost everything that MS claims "new" in vista was in open source community for at least 5 years prior, most of this stuff was even better and required less).

Now some wonderful thing: I write apps in Dephi, without need of Windows! Isn't that great?

[HPW]

Now some wonderful thing: I write apps in Delphi, without need of Windows! Isn't that great?

Just curious. Where do they run?

When you do release apps to public use, you have to care about every version of windows, because you do not control where the end-user run your app.

[DwrCymru]

I use Free Pascal for Linux programming and it's "nearly" painless converting Delphi apps and best of all it's FREE, not only that but the source code is available to the compiler and that's written in Pascal.

[Johnny_Bit]

Just curious. Where do they run?

When you do release apps to public use, you have to care about every version of windows, because you do not control where the end-user run your app.

Oh, they run on systems they're designed to run. Simple. If it works under wine it must work under any normal windows. Also none of my clients uses vista... well, even some of them had a rather hard time switching to XP...

What's more interesting to me, it seems that "larger" companies I cooperate with, tend to switch to open-source.

Alright, let's wrap this Up:

Nobody should care about vista, like nobody even cared about ME.
Vista does not offer any real improvements.
Vista is a joke...
Vista's interface is direct copy from MacOSX and Linux's XGL+Compiz.
In my whole IT life (I was into IT since I was a small kid) I'd never advice neither ME nor Vista... If something would require it I'd say: "F*** that, get a Linux or *BSD and I' write it for you if it hasn't been already done"

[Kambiz]

As a PHP developer I love to have 'Delphi for PHP'. But there's one problem, most of host providers do not have PHP 5 yet.

[HPW]

But there's one problem, most of host providers do not have PHP 5 yet.

Yes, but there are more and more providers who offer several PHP versions including PHP5.

I think Delhi4PHP can get big, when it work similar to D5/D7 in terms of quality. When it gets like D4/D8 it will suck.

There are mixed echos on the web about it:

http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/defau ... 3.485411.5

[DwrCymru]

The worst versions of Delphi I ever used were V4 and 2005, I now use V7 Pro and 2006 Enterprise all the time but V7 Pro remains my most favorite and stable release. IMHO PHP is an improved Delphi and it's how Delphi should evolve. The Web is the future of programming and we should all embrace it with open arms, but only if we are satisfied that the compiler we use actually works the way we do

[Johnny_Bit]

Wait... Compiler? For PHP? Wasn't PHP like, scripting language? I mean, it's not like it's going binary, isn't it?

On the other side... Well... No.

I don't even like the idea of Dephi for PHP. Drag'n'Drop is no-go for my vision of working with php. As I remember we (where I worked as something like web developer) would work like this: graphics do their job, programmers don't even care about it, "assholes from interfaces" do templates and programmers use them when scripts reach GUI. That meant, programmers didn't even care 'bout interface, they just make sure the things work. That way we could do things fast, and not waste time for something we don't care.

To tell you weird truth: when I was doing my were-to-be-last project in delphi, that had any interface, I even didn't look at form, I just writed the interface. Weird, eh?

[Kambiz]

Johnny, you're very lucky.
Besides delphiarea.com that I didn't write a single line of code, I had to do all tasks of my web projects by myself.

[Johnny_Bit]

Oh, I didn't know...

Well, I also have to add that I use PHP not only for web but also as CLI. So no rad for me there either.

[Kambiz]

Finally the last night I had the chance to see Delphi for PHP in action. Besides the documentation that sucks, the rest is amazing.

I guess you'll see some Delphi components for PHP here soon.

[HPW]

I guess you'll see some Delphi components for PHP here soon.

Is that an announcement?

I was also very impressed by a demo, but the statement that delphi for PHP is the same as early delphi is not quite right. For example I would like to have a TCanvas with the same methods and events as in delphi.

[Kambiz]

Although Canvas of Delphi for PHP is not as perfect of Delphi, but having even a simple canvas in a web application is great.
Creating a canvas using web elements and Javascript is innovative.

Is that an announcement?

Please don't consider it as an announcement. But whenever I find a spare time, I'll try to develop something.