Tour of the IDE

When you start Delphi 2005, the integrated development environment (IDE) launches and displays several tools and menus. The IDE helps you visually design user interfaces, set object properties, write code, and view and manage your application in various ways. The default IDE desktop layout includes some of the most commonly used tools. You can use the View menu to display or hide certain tools. You can also customize and save the desktop layouts that work best for you. The tools available in the IDE depend on the edition of Delphi 2005 you are using and include the:

    Welcome Page

    Forms

    Designer Surface

    Tool Palette

    Object Inspector

    Object Repository

    Project Manager

    Data Explorer

    Structure View

    History Manager

    Code Editor

The following sections describe each of these tools.

Welcome Page

When you open Delphi 2005, the Welcome Page appears with a number of links to developer resources, such as product-related articles, training, and online Help. As you develop projects, you can quickly access them from the list recent projects at the top of the page. If you close the Welcome Page, you can reopen it by choosing View Welcome Page .

Forms

Typically, a form represents a window or HTML page in a user interface. At design-time, a form is displayed on the Designer surface. You add components from the Tool Palette to a form to create your user interface. Delphi 2005 provides several types of forms, as described in the following sections. Select the form that best suits your application design, whether it’s a Web application that provides business logic functionality over the Web, or a Windows application that provides processing and high-performance content display. To switch between the Designer and Code Editor, click their associated tabs below the IDE. To access forms, choose File New Other.

Windows Forms

Use Windows Forms to build native Windows applications that run in a managed environment. You use the .NET classes to build Windows clients which presents two major advantages—it allows application clients to use features unavailable to browser clients, and it leverages the .NET Framework infrastructure. Windows Forms present a programming model that takes advantage of a unified .NET Framework (for security and dynamic application updates, for instance) and the richness of GUI Windows clients. You use Windows controls, such as buttons, list boxes, and text boxes, to build your Windows applications. To access a Windows Form, choose File New Other

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