Details of what features FireMonkey (FMX) inside the NEW Delphi Rad Studio XE2 contains?

Question

I\'ve heard that Delphi\'s NEW Rad Studio XE2 has something called FireMonkey that will allow the same code to build Windows 32, Windows 64 and

Answer 1

I think the only "official" bit of info about FireMonkey now is the recent Andreano Lanusse blog post

Answer 2

We are not allowed to talk about it (NDA) ... but testing showed that FireMonkey apps work on my OS X machine :-P

Answer 3

At least on David Intersimone's blog, it says that the Firemonkey lib would do exactly that: Win32, Win64 and Mac OSX and iOS. Relevant extract from the blog post:

• Create GPU-powered FireMonkey applications that will keep your
  customers engaged
• Build 64-bit Delphi applications to take advantage of the latest
  hardware
• Create a single application and target both Windows and OS X and iOS

But I agree with David Heffernan that no technical information is available now, just sales talk.

Answer 4

FireMonkey comes from the former DXScene library, which has been acquired by Embarcadero.

You've plenty of information and screenshots in this blog site: http://ksdev.blogspot.com/

Eugene wrote in his forum that all registered users (like me) will get the Embarcadero version "for free"...

Here are the features of DXScene - working with FreePascal compiler to run under Linux or Mac OS X:

DXScene is 3D hardware accelerated graphics library Delphi/C++ Builder/Lazarus.

• Hardware accelerated graphics on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux
• 3D and 2D graphical editor integrated in IDE
• Powerful 3D layer containing items such as Cube, Sphere, Cone, Plane, Mesh, free Camera and Lights
• Mesh object have WPF mesh data format, DXScene have advanced import tool which support - GLSM,WRL,TIN,STL,SMD,Q3BSP,BSP,PLY,OCT,OBJ,OBJF,NURBS,NMF,MS3D,MDC,MD2,LWO,GTS,GLM,GLX,GLA,B3D,MD5MESH,MD5ANIM,MD3,3DS,PRJ file formats
• Powerful 2D vector engine like Adobe Flash or Microsoft WPF includes high quality shapes and controls like window, label, button, checkbox, textbox and more
• Advanced GUI engine - window, button, textbox, numberbox, memo, anglebox, list box and much much more
• Advanced skinning engine based on vector graphics styles. Cool exists styles - Dark, Modern, Vista.
• DXScene can be used to create hardware accelerated 2D applications with cool animation like CoverFlow, layer and more
• Easy to use time-based animation and transition effects
• Layered windows, Jpeg, Png, Tiff and Gif format read/write support, fast thumbnail creation
• Realtime mode for games and realtime simulations
• DXScene can be used as development tools for SCADA, GIS, CAD and KIOSK applications
• DB-Aware controls - TvxDBNavigator, TvxDBLabel, TvxDBTextBox and more Multilanguage engine, editor and examples
• Physics simulation using Newton Game Dynamics
• Cross-platform solution available on Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X and Linux

We can guess that FireMonkey will have some of these features, depending on the new Delphi XE2 cross-compiling features. Will it build OSX, iOS, Linux apps? Does it require XCode?

In short, FireMonkey will allow you:

• To build 32 bit and 64 bit Windows or 32 bit Mac OS X native applications, and debug them from the Delphi IDE, running in Windows - but you need a Mac computer to run remotely the OSX app;
• To build iOS native application, with XCode-based debugging - in fact, the iOS simulator in OSX runs in x86/x64 mode, and the FreePascalCompiler is used to create ARM applications;
• Applications may be 2D (with controls) or 3D (using DirectX under Windows or OpenGL under Mac);
• To build DB-related applications, using the new Live Bindings feature.

But FireMonkey is not compatible with the GUI part of the VCL. It's a brand new library, with its own architecture, which is indeed based on the former DXScene.

All details available at http://www.deltics.co.nz/blog/?p=735

I think Mac OS X support is reduced to 32 bit version, because FireMonkey uses the Carbon API, which is 32 bit only. See http://developer.apple.com/carbon It’s worth saying that making a Mac OS X 64 bit version will need to use an "Objective C" syntax (or linking) and direct Cocoa. Some additional work…

I’m still waiting for the Linux version. FireMonkey ancestor (aka DXScene) was already Linux ready (using GTK/Pango/Cairo/OpenGL), and they already have an ELF linker in-house (the one from Kylix, which was very good). I understand that Mac OS X had a higher priority in the list, since it’s a more common platform for desktop computing. But for server applications, Linux is a most have. In XE3, may be?

Edit: previous "pessimistic" version - extracted ;)

Edit: I’ve made some screenshots of DXScene components demo - it may help you have a better impression on what FireMonkey will be.

Answer 5

Rad Studio XE2 Launch Event Report

Summary from the blog

• FireMonkey – a scalable vector graphics based GUI framework exploiting GPU capabilities for hardware accelerated cross platform GUI’s.

• Cross-Platform support – Target Win32 and Win64 with single-source VCL applications or Win32, Win64 and MORE using FireMonkey.

• iOS support for native code FireMonkey apps !! – Yes folks – use Delphi to build iPhone and iPad apps that even Steve Jobs will be happy to have in his Store!

• LiveBindings – a way to create ‘live” relationships not just between objects but between individual properties of objects.

• Native Android apps – using PhoneGap in RadPHP

• Native Android apps – to come in the future for Delphi (as well as Linux)

• DataSnap client proxy generation – for Android, .NET, Objective-C, Blackberry, iOS etc etc

• Starter Edition will be available right from the start along with Pro, Enterprise and Architect.

• ALL platforms supported by the cross-platform capabilities will be in ALL editions, including Starter!

Edit

Firemonkey in Action Video

Answer 6

You can't get any technical documentation yet because XE2 has been announced but not released.