TimCS.Co.Uk Delphi Delphi Guides A Brief Guide to the Delphi Environment
A Brief Guide to the Delphi Environment


Before starting to write and create a program it is best to become familiar with Delphi's interface. For this the main sections will be covered and these sections have always existed on any version of Delphi. 

N.B: This documentation is the work of the author of this website and has no connection at all with Borland Inc at all. Therefore this guide has not been written by or with the help of any employee of that company. Please do not contact Borland relating to any questions regarding this guide.If help is needed please visit the forums on this website



The Delphi Menu bar:

IDE800


This manages several areas of Delphi which include: Saving, opening, closing  projects; running the program , debugging and stopping; finally holds all of the visual and non visual components that can be added to a project to make up the final program. There are also other programs provided, which can assist in managing a project which appear under the tools menu.

Now lets look at the separate areas of the Delphi menu bar :

The Project Management Section :


Project Control


Across the top from the left control the options for creating a new project newfile, opening a file open, saving the current changes to a project save, save all  changes to a project save all, open a project openproject, add a file to a project addtoproject, remove a file from a project removefromproject and the help file help.

On the bottom section from the left are view unit viewunit , view form viewform, toggle between the form and the unit toggleunitform, new form newform, run the program runprogram, pause the program pauseprogram, trace into the program stepintoprogram and step over within the program stepoverprogram.

These shortcuts can very very useful when working on a program as they offer quick access to managing the program that is currently open.  Like most windows based applications there are the common options ,as mentioned above, such as the save ,new and the open functions. However other available options mentioned, are more aimed at the control of running a program that is currently being managed. For example the ability to pause a program means that it then allows for the user control what the program is doing and then let it carry on. Obviously the run option is fairly self explanatory as it simply starts the program.

The most powerful controls that are given, are the trace into stepintoprogram and step over stepoverprogram options. Differences between these two are fairly noticeable when used. For example to use the option trace into stepintoprogram,  will allow a more in depth incite into what the program is doing. So, when using this option, it will go through each part of the program step by step until either the program is put back into the running state or when after stepping through the program, it comes to a stage where the program can continue by manually choosing the run option.

On the other hand using the step over  stepoverprogram option, allows a more simple stepping process by moving from one line of code. When using this method , it does not move into what a single function is doing but instead moves to the next line after that. This means that if there are several lines of code and some of these lines are calling other functions else where in the program, it does not go to those other functions and then step through the code there.  When stepping through a large program and trying to find a problem within it, this can be useful if the other functions that are being called are not the cause.

Most of the other options under this section are self explanatory. If however further help is needed, please do not hesitate to ask by posting a question on the forums.


 

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