LMD Innovative Blog

Without doubt you already heard of the upcomcing RAD Studio XE2 release – by sure the most important Delphi/C++ release for years. If not – we strongly recommend to take a look at the World Tour Page and register for an event near you. Learn about the many new and exciting features which will be built into our favourite IDE.  This blog entry outlines which and when new features and technologies  presented at the XE2 World Tour events will be supported by LMD products. Please note that specifications may change until final release of RAD Studio XE2.

Build 64-bit Delphi applications to take advantage of the latest hardware
All LMD VCL 2011 packages will support XE2 almost instantly  after release for 32bit-platform. At the same time betas of LMD VCL 2012 packages will be available which include support for 64bit-platform as well. Subscription user and LMD 2012 customers can start immediately with porting their applications to 64bit.
Final versions of LMD VCL 2012 will be available about four weeks after XE2 release. All purchases after 01-Aug-2011 receive free upgrade to LMD 2012 release of their product. Bookmark the What’s New Page for LMD 2012 release. We will summarize there all features which can be expected for the next major release.

Modern Look and Feel with VCL Styles
RAD Studio XE2 will include its own skinning engine. The LMD Theme Engine was always designed to be used as optional theme engine, hence our controls are prepared to support a different skinning engine. Nevertheless support won’t be included in initial LMD 2012 release but  will be added during LMD 2012 life cycle.

Connect any visual element to any type of data using LiveBindings™
We are still evaluating this feature and it is possible, that certain controls in LMD VCL line receive LiveBindings support. New controls will most probably support this important built-in functionlity, though.

Create GPU-powered FireMonkey applications that will keep your customers engaged
FireMonkey is a completely new framework which allows to compile your applications to different targets (Windows, MacOS etc.). Like the VCL the LMD VCL product line is bound to Windows API heavily. Hence it is unlikely that there will be a complete port of LMD VCL product line to FireMonkey. However for new controls and packages or subsets of existing VCL packages FireMonkey support is definitely planned and on the RoadMap in the nearby future. Send us suggestions and requests for those controls, which you would like to see as FireMonkey version.

LMD VCL 2012 notes and upcoming products
Supporting XE2 requires internal changes in LMD VCL package and product structure. Nevertheless  LMD VCL 2012 will still support all Delphi/C++Builder releases from version 6 on. But keep in mind new LMD products (we’ll write about them in our next blog entry) will support higher RAD Studio releases only – allowing us to use modern features like Generics or built-in VCL functionality.
If you are still using a previous Delphi/C++Builder IDE: RAD Studio XE2 with its many new features might be a perfect opportunity to upgrade!