New in 10.3: IDE UI Improvements in the Main Window

[Mohammed Nasman 11]

Seems the new Delphi 10.3 Rio will get a new modern style, it's first major redesign since Delphi 8/2005

https://community.embarcadero.com/blogs/entry/new-in-10-3-ide-ui-improvements-in-the-main-window

[Sherlock 663]

I'll have to see how it feels, pics look OK though.

[David Millington 79]

We use it internally, daily, and so it's had a lot of revision over time as we made changes. While nothing is ever perfect, I can tell you I love using it much more than 10.2.3 - it's is just nicer.

 

The animated videos on the blog should give you an idea of what using it is like, I hope. If you have requests about other areas, let me know. There are two more blog posts in the UX series planned, on other areas in the IDE.

[Sherlock 663]

Thanks and welcome!

[Attila Kovacs 631]

@David Millington Nice, is it your work? Btw. a customizable property sub-tab would be nice, with favorite props. And the "Quick copy name" link always on the first place.

Now it's just a Not-So-Quick-Copy-Name-Because-We-Have-To-Look-After-It. 😉

Edited November 1, 2018 by Attila Kovacs

[Lars Fosdal 1793]

I think it looks good. It adds clarity and reduces clutter. I am slightly unsure of the [+] to > change for expansion in tree views, but we'll see.

[David Millington 79]

@Attila Kovacs I look after the IDE, so it is "my work" in that sense, but credit really needs to go to our very hard-working developer, and the UX designer I worked with to create the new look.

 

@Lars Fosdal + vs > is a stylistic choice, since > seems to be more common today.

[Johan Bontes 11]

I'm strangely excited about this release, in a way that I have not been for a while.

The language improvements mostly, but a cleaner IDE is just very nice icing on the cake.

 

[Clément 148]

Very nice!! I spend every day of the week and sometimes weekend using delphi. The dark theme helped a lot! Those visual enhancements looks really nice!
Please make this version very stable! I don't want to wait for an update to start using it!

[John Kouraklis 94]

@David Millington I see many posts about 10.3. Does this mean that people in Beta program can speak freely now? 

[Markus Kinzler 174]

No. All posts are from EMBT employees or from people attended official presentations or discussing discovered features. Still there is no official date for release.

[Markus Kinzler 174]

 

[Bill Meyer 337]

Looks nice! Now, on a more serious note, I am dragging a very large app forward in time (from D2007), and trying also to untangle snarls of legacy sins. Bringing code into XE7 has been a necessary first step, and has shown me just how easily the IDE's internal systems can be compromised. Killing and restarting the IDE a few times an hour is annoying. So are the Out of Memory error. I freely grant that many issues are caused by poorly written code, but the rework can only be accomplished if a stable environment is available. 

One example is the minor editing of an interface uses clause which all by itself provoked a rising memory burden until it was necessary to kill and restart. In a few cases, I found it easier to simply use Notepad++ to edit the file, and then reopen in Delphi.

All versions work fine on small apps. But large apps filled with legacy code are an everyday reality.

[Markus Kinzler 174]

The ide of RadStudio 10.x is much more stable than XE7.

[Lars Fosdal 1793]

XE7 was bad. 

[Bill Meyer 337]

6 minutes ago, Lars Fosdal said:

XE7 was bad. 

When you're right, Lars, you're right. Unfortunately, for reasons of logistics, it is a necessary step.

[ertank 28]

I have a friend using XE6. I did not use XE6 myself. How is XE6 compared to latest version in terms of IDE stability?

[Kryvich 165]

Can someone suggests a really big open source project with plenty forms and units to test it on my Delphi 10.2.3 SE? Because I never seen no one exception in IDE after installing the Community Edition this summer. Though my projects not so big, a few hundred of thousand lines max.

OK I opened JVCL package in my IDE, opened a few dozen files via Project Manager. I tried to compile, switch to form designer and back to code, type text. No problems. Even ErrorInsight works as expected. Bds.exe ate 370 megabytes of memory, but the IDE is still responsive. So far so good...

Edited November 6, 2018 by Kryvich

[Sherlock 663]

Tokyo really is quake proof 😉

 

[Markus Kinzler 174]

Hope Rio is bulletproof then 🤩

[Lars Fosdal 1793]

Tokyo is pretty good, but if I switch between a lot of projects to build - I still eventually run out of memory.

I wouldn't mind a 64-bit IDE down the road.

[Stefan Glienke 2019]

On 11/7/2018 at 10:03 AM, Lars Fosdal said:

I wouldn't mind a 64-bit IDE down the road.

Yeah, then the IDE can more excessively waste memory left and right until your RAM is used up instead of crash early, brilliant idea...

 

Throwing more memory at an application that does not know how to properly manage memory is not the solution.

 

Oh, please, no excuses about the compiler leaking memory because of LLVM, if you know that then don't load it into the IDE process.

Ah, that has to be done to use it for IDE tooling, like code completion and all kinds of source related things.

Now you see why other languages and IDEs go the way of separating this and using a language service to provide such information

Edited November 8, 2018 by Stefan Glienke

[Lars Fosdal 1793]

I got 32Gb RAM, and I rarely go above 18-20Gb - so I got a lot of RAM to spare for IDEs excessively wasting memory.

[Sherlock 663]

As always, there is the easy way and there is the hard way. Incidentally you can also call them the cheap way and the expensive way. And I'm talking short term, that is the only term modern management thinks in (Who cares about long term? I'll be retired by then, or in some other company). It takes no genius to find out which is the easy/cheap way and which is the hard/expensive way, now does it? So I'll be expecting 64Bit long before fixing those other problems, simply because it looks good on a feature matrix. And a good looking feature matrix is what gets customers. So I'll be on EMBTs side for this one, because more customers mean more money which in turn could mean more resources to fix the stuff under the hood. But it's good to keep reminding them of the faults in the tool.

[Stefan Glienke 2019]

It will not get them more customers just because it's 64bit and runs out of memory later because all the instabilities and the compiler getting into a bad state because of compile errors or what not crashing the IDE will still be there as will the poor code tooling.

Going the easy/cheap way every time is what puts Delphi and the IDE into the current situation of constantly having to react to external factors and tinker around edges.

 

On 11/1/2018 at 12:38 PM, David Millington said:

We use it internally, daily,

Sometimes I really have a hard time believing that or you just avoid certain features or have subconsciously developed a certain habit to do things differently.

Or you just use it to prepare demos.

Edited November 9, 2018 by Stefan Glienke