RAD Studio (Common)
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Getting Started

The RAD Studio integrated development environment (IDE) provides many tools and features to help you build powerful applications quickly. Not all features and tools are available in all editions of RAD Studio. For a list of features and tools included in your edition, refer to the feature matrix on http://www.codegear.com.

Name 
Description 
RAD Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) for building Delphi Win32 applications. The RAD Studio IDE provides a comprehensive set of tools that streamline and simplify the development life cycle. The tools available in the IDE depend on the version of RAD Studio you are using. The following sections briefly describe these tools. 
RAD Studio provides key new features for developing Delphi for Microsoft .NET applications. 
RAD Studio provides key new features for developing C++ applications. 
RAD Studio provides key new features for developing Delphi applications for Win32. 
When you start RAD Studio, 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 RAD Studio you are using and include the following:
  • Welcome Page... more 

The IDE includes support for many new Vista user interface features including:
  • Vista-style Open File, Save File, and Task dialog boxes.
  • Vista theming.
  • AERO glass effects in controls.
 
RAD Studio provides several developer tools that are available in the IDE and as standalone executables, as described in the following table.  
The Code Editor occupies the center pane of the IDE window. The Code Editor is a full-featured, customizable, UTF8 editor that provides syntax highlighting, multiple undo capability, and context-sensitive Help for language elements.
As you design the user interface for your application, RAD Studio generates the underlying code. When you modify object properties, your changes are automatically reflected in the source files.
Because all of your programs share common characteristics, RAD Studio auto-generates code to get you started. You can think of the auto-generated code as an outline that you can examine to create your program.
The Code Editor provides... more 
The Form Designer or Designer, is displayed automatically when you are creating or editing a form. To access the Designer, click the Design tab at the bottom of the main editing window.
The appearance and functionality of the Designer depends on the type of form you are creating or editing. For example, if you are using an HTML Element, you can display the HTML Tag Editor in the Designer by selecting ViewTag Editor
A project is a collection of files that is used to create a target application. This collection consists of the files you include and modify directly, such as source code files and resources, and other files that RAD Studio maintains to store project settings, such as the .dproj project file. Projects are created at design time, and they produce the project target files (.exe, .dll, .bpl, etc.) when you compile the project.To assist in the development process, the Object Repository offers many pre-designed templates, forms, files, and other items that you can use to create applications.
To create a project,... more 
RAD Studio allows you to create multiple custom template libraries to use as the basis for creating future projects. Template libraries let you declare how a project can look, and enable you to add new types of projects to the New Items dialog box.
Creating a template library is a two-step process.
  1. First, you create a RAD Studio project to use as the basis for the template, and an XML file with a .bdstemplatelib extension that describes the project. This project can be any kind of project that RAD Studio supports.
  2. Next, you add the project to the list of... more 
For C++ only, the Project Manager allows any file entry in the project to be arranged and displayed in an arbitrary grouping of your choice called a virtual folder. These folders persist in the project file and make no reference to the file's actual location on disk.
Virtual folders can only contain file system entries or other virtual folders. Virtual folders can be reordered within the project, be renamed, and be deleted. Deleting a virtual folder does not delete the contained files--they simply resume their normal Project Manager location prior to their inclusion in the virtual folder.
Note that... more 
This section includes information about the:
  • RAD Studio Help
  • Microsoft .NET Framework SDK Help
  • CodeGear Developer Support Services and Web Sites
  • RAD Studio Quick Start Guide
  • Typographic Conventions Used in the Help
 
Code Completion is a Code Insight feature available in the Code Editor. Code Completion displays a resizable “hint” window that lists valid elements that you can select to add to your code. You can control the sorting of items in the Code Completion hint window by right-clicking the box and choosing Sort by Name or Sort by Scope.
Different items appear in different colors in the list. For example, by default, procedures are teal, functions are dark blue, and abstract methods are shown in red.
Automatic code completion is on by default. Options for enabling and disabling Code Completion... more 
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