I didn't know that yesterday!

I've already waxed lyrical about Nick Hodges and how much things have improved at CodeGear since he came on the scene. I was going to lay off for a while before I became a full on stalker, but then he goes and posts something that is genuinely useful, not once but thrice on the same day.

OK, so he futzed up the links the first time, that's because he's a marketing/techo schizo like me. And sometimes the marketing part of your brain lets you go and do something impulsive before the techo part has a chance to say, "Hey, that's not gonna work"

So, anyway, he's gone and posted three articles on new features since Delphi 7. It's supposed to get all you D7 stalwarts to pull our your wallet and part with some deniro (yeah, he's talking to you, lard-arse), so you'd think it doesn't apply to me having shelled out a fair wad some six months ago on Delphi 2006. I should know all of this stuff (excluding the D2007 specific items) and mostly i do, but really, i guess i've been stuck in my ways as there are a lot of cool features that i just don't use enough.

Reading Nick's articles was the slap in the face I needed to lift my game:

- Flow Panels: I've known about these for ages, but only acutally used one for the first time the other day. Very useful for forms with dynamically displayed controls

- AlignWithMargins: OMFG, I don't know how I ever lived without this (Oh that's right nested panels, Peeuh!) I cottoned onto AlignWithMargins as soon as I moved to D2006 and have never looked back.

(Source: http://dn.codegear.com/article/34325)


- Class Helpers: Fantastic feature! I don't use these nearly enough!

- Records with Methods: Really? I did not even know about these! I'm a Record junkie and I'm so going to love this feature

- For in Loops: It took me the longest time to use these things. I had to delete "for I:=0 to List.count-1 do" a hundred times before my brain finally got used to the new construct. Now i can't imagine life without them

(Source: http://dn.codegear.com/article/34324)


- SyncEdit: I'm just getting into the habit of using this. Very useful when i do remember

- Live Templates: These are excellent, but i really don't use them anything like i should. The method to create your own templates is quite a PITA and after an initial burst of custom templates I haven't created one in an age. There are about a dozen templates i use frequently and couldn't live without. I'm sure there is a goldmine of productivity there that i 'm just not tapping. I was hoping someone would seize the initiative and start selling Template Packs, but that doesn't seem to have come about. I expect at some point CG will create a GUI editor for LT creation and that will make them much more useful.

(Source: http://dn.codegear.com/article/34323)

nafdb