DelphiDabbler's Blog

There were some well hidden demos for a smattering of the tips on the Delphi Tips microsite that had been mouldering away over on a long forgotten Assembla repo. On rediscovering them the other day I copied them over to the demos directory of the delphi-tips repo on GitHub. Like the tips, the demos are quite elderly, but some of them may still prove useful. Of course, if anyone would like to add any more, you're welcome to fork away.

Just released a bug fix update for  CodeSnip  - v4.18.1. Full details over on the CodeSnip Blog . To skip the blurb and just download it, go to the releases page on GitHub or discuss it here .

I've just released v5.7.1 of my System Information Unit . This version fixes a minor bug in v5.7.0's detection of various Windows 11 preview versions. It shouldn't ever manifest itself, but better safe than sorry. I've also tidied up the code relating to Windows 10 21H2 now that it's out and the build number is confirmed. Finally there's a little bit of refactoring. No a big deal, but to be safe I recommend downloading it. PJSysInfo v5.7.1 - 64 bit FMX demo

Well, my first DelphiCon is over I've got to say I enjoyed it. Thanks to Jim McKeeth & the team for all their work arranging it. I found several of the presentations rather stimulating. One, however, has resulted in me having to do some work, damn it. Which one? One, by Ray Konopka called How Tab Controls Can Ruin Desktop UX is which one. I must say though that, despite making me feeling embarrassed, this was one of my favourite presentations at DelphiCon. For some time I've thought that the multi row tabs in the CodeSnip Preferences dialogue box were confusing. Take a look: I dislike the way that the tab lines rearrange themselves when you click on one of the tabs on the top rows. Hell, even I get confused using this dialogue, and I wrote the damn thing. This has been niggling me literally for years, but never got beyond the "must fix that one day" stage until Ray heaped opprobrium upon such aberrations in front of the whole world (well, in front of Delphi...

I've been feeling my age lately for several reasons. Maybe, I thought, it would be therapeutic to share! Reason 1 is that it just dawned on me that my website, delphidabbler.com had been around since the early 2000s. So I checked the internet archive, and sure enough, the domain was registered, and the holding page was up, on or before 2002/10/17. So it's 20 years old in just under a year's time. Must remember to celebrate! Party? Video? Endless self indulgent blog posts? Who knows! Here's the first recorded page. It's the web host's holding page. Not very inspiring, but it was a start: The first page with content was snapped by the Wayback Machine on 2002/11/19. Here it is, sans title image: Interestingly, the colour scheme hasn't changed much in the intervening years. And, e mbarrassingly, the layout didn't change much until it's overhaul last year. Here's the last internet archive snapshot of the old site from 2020/05/10: ...

I'm looking forward to DelphiCon 2021 which starts next week: Tues 16th November, to be precise. The first session is at 14:30, UK time (UTC+0). It's my first one, so I'm curious as to how I'll find it. In the time I have available I'll be "attending" about 50% of the sessions, but that's about 90% of the ones that interest me the most. Will your virtual self be there? Still not too late to book . It's free just now , but prices go up after15th November, i.e. after  TOMORROW!