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Showing posts from 2015

Article Removed

I've removed article #26, "How To Embed GoogleEarth in your Delphi Application", from my website. This is because the article demonstrated how to use the Google Earth API with Delphi. Now that Google has withdrawn the API the article itself has become redundant.

DelphiDabbler.com Lives On!

On 1st October I wrote a post on this blog that questioned whether or  not DelphiDabbler.com should remain or be taken down. I've been quite overwhelmed by the response and the support shown. Thanks to everyone who took the time to comment. The bottom line is that I'm persuaded that the site should continue. So what decided me? I had been wondering if anyone found the site useful, and it seems the answer is yes! The consensus seems to be that people would prefer the site to stay around, even in a dormant state. The response has been such that a couple weeks ago I had come to the conclusion that I should try keep the site going. However, I was still concerned that I was having to finance the site in the face of a collapse in advertising and donation revenue. Some kind individuals had made donations since my blog post, but more was still needed. Then, two days ago a particularly generous donation arrived that should enable the site t

System Information Unit v5.2.0 Released

I've just released v5.2.0 of the System Information Unit . This release adds support for detecting and reporting on the new "November Update" TH2 release of Windows 10. This has been quite hard to detect because although Microsoft bumped the build number they haven't classed the update as a service pack, so TPJOSInfo reports no service pack as being present. In fact everything looks the same as the original Windows 10 except for the build number. To allow users to display a bit more information when running on Windows 10 TH2 I've added a new ServicePackEx method to TPJOSInfo . This returns the same result as the existing ServicePack method when run on any OS prior to Windows 10 TH2. However on that OS ServicePack returns an empty string while ServicePackEx returns 'TH2: November Update' . The rationale of providing the new method is that I don't want to subvert  ServicePack from its documented remit of reporting genuine service packs and on

DelphiDabbler.com - Live Or Die?

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If you're one of the regular visitors to DelphiDabbler.com then you may have noticed that it's not been updated much over the last year or so. Same goes for this blog, my applications, the code library and the code snippets database . What it boils down to is this: the time has come to decide whether to continue with the site or not.   And I need your help to decide. There are a couple of reasons why I've got to this point. The first is that my interest in music, playing the guitar and recording has resurfaced and it's taking up some of my spare time. The second, and most important, reason is that I'm getting disillusioned with Delphi (the compiler, not the language). I just can't, or won't, keep up with the cost of upgrades. The problem is that I'm just a hobbyist developer and the cost of staying up to date is getting prohibitive. I feel I'm getting more reward by spending my cash on musical instruments and studio kit than on a constant stre

Delphi XE and ShellExecute glitch

Just encountered a strange bug in one of my programs when running it from the Delphi XE IDE on Windows 10. Triggering a TBrowseURL action with a valid URL property value causes the program to hang and the default browser (Chrome) is not displayed. The BeforeBrowse event is triggered, but AfterBrowse is not until the program is closed. Sometimes the program hangs and I have to close it with Ctrl+F2. Running the same code outside the IDE works correctly, but running the program either with or without the debugger in the IDE makes no difference. I've tracked this down to where TBrowseURL calls ShellExecute from the ShellAPI unit. If I call ShellExecute directly I get the same problem. I never noticed this problem before when running Windows 7 on my old laptop - it just seems to have started on my new Windows 10 laptop. Still, it's possible the bug was still there on the old machine and I just never noticed it, but I doubt it. Anyone else had this problem? Any ideas what may be cau

DelphiDabbler Code Library project on GoogleCode Closed

Following the announcement earlier this year that GoogleCode was about to close I moved the Delphidabbler Code Library Subversion source code repository to SourceForge , where the downloads had been hosted for some time. A little later I started a GitHub project to host the library documentation and copied all the docs formerly hosted in the GoogleCode wiki to there. The documentation is currently split between GitHub and my wiki sub-domain , but ultimately I intend for it all to be on GitHub. Now that GoogleCode has become read-only I've decided to close that project down, and that's happening as I write this. The old GoogleCode URL will simply redirect to SourceForge. So, in summary, you'll now find the library in the following places: Subversion source code repository on SourceForge Releases on SourceForge Tickets / issues on SourceForge Documentation main page on GitHub - this page has links for each sub-project either to GitHub or the DelphiDabbler wiki. L