ANN: TMS Web Core for Visual Studio Code - Public Beta

[José León 12]

https://www.tmssoftware.com/site/tmswebcorevsc.asp

Happy to announce the public beta of TMS Web Core for Visual Studio Code, you can install it directly from Visual Studio Code's marketplace and start writing web applications in Pascal in minutes.

 

 

 

Please, use the support center forums to provide any feedback you want and help us to polish the product towards its upcoming release:

https://support.tmssoftware.com/c/web-core/tms-web-core-vsc/87

 

RADical Web

• Modern SPA web application model
• Pure HTML5/CSS3/Javascript based applications
• Standard component framework for common UI controls and access to browser features
• Debugging in Pascal code via the browser
• Backed by a solid & proven Delphi Pascal to Javascript compiler that was years in development

Reuse skills and components

• Open to consume other existing Javascript frameworks & libraries
• Open to use HTML/CSS for design
• Open to use other jQuery controls or even other Javascript frameworks
• Easy interfacing to REST cloud services including to TMS XData for database

Easy Deployment

• Application consists of HTML & Javascript files only that can be easily deployed on any light or heavyweight webservers
• Use any existing load-balancing software and/or techniques for highest performance

Visual Studio Code version benefits

• WYSIWYG form designer
• Debugging integrated in the IDE
• Cross-Platform (Windows / MacOS / Linux)
• High DPI enabled IDE
• Ecosystem with many additional plugins to enchance development productivity

 

Get started with TMS Web Core for Visual Studio Code

 

Edited August 7, 2020 by José León

[Arnaud Bouchez 407]

This is a huge step forward, to allow RAD development using Visual Studio code, for client applications.

Even young developers, unwilling to use Delphi, could use the tool and develop the frontend.

Then the server side can still use Lazarus or Delphi, and existing code for the business logic and the data access.

[José León 12]

Thanks! You got perfectly the goal. Please, help us spread the word by telling other developers about the product!!

[Rollo62 536]

Yes, they are in VsCode anyway.

Installing another Plugin is no big deal.
Not sure if in VsCode marketplace is some kind of "Ad" publishing for new plugins.

If so, would be maybe great to try to reach all those JS, Node.js developers out there.

 

Edited August 10, 2020 by Rollo62

[José León 12]

Yes, apart from that, would be good for Delphi developers to know about this product, so any help commenting about it on Facebook groups, mailing lists or forums would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks!

[Stefan Glienke 2006]

I watched the video series and I have to say it unfortunately did not do a very good job showing why this is a big deal.

Tedious copying and modifying the template and all that.

When I watched this I thought by myself "I am a noob with web development but probably would have slapped this together faster with something like knockout.js or similar.

 

Don't get me wrong - it looks interesting - just the video series was a bit off-putting.

 

What get's me more interested here is if you could use the designer to design VCL forms within VSC - not asking for the entire featureset and behavior at designtime but just the basic align, anchor, size/position shebang.

Edited August 11, 2020 by Stefan Glienke

[José León 12]

No problem, thanks for the feedback. The very first thing is explained on the series of videos is that the goal is to show the process step by step, that is, to teach how to do things in a very detailed way in order for viewers to learn. We are not trying to compete with any Javascript library, that's not the goal of the product, in fact, you can integrate it if you want 🙂

[Guest]

I suggest a more advanced video samples, no need for commentary, few subtitles may be, this will shorten your time and give you the opportunity to make more of them, as the point is to show some more advanced stuff, like footer and header usage with CSS, frames replacing behaviour at runtime, switching between forms, session control... how to take photo from a mobile browser and share it with other browsers at runtime, how thumbnails will be added ... etc

In short, show power points combined in few minutes, just please take your time showing the result unlike many video out there with less than one second click and end of video.

 

10 hours ago, Stefan Glienke said:

What get's me more interested here is if you could use the designer to design VCL forms within VSC - not asking for the entire featureset and behavior at designtime but just the basic align, anchor, size/position shebang.

I second that, but why VSC ? i am not sure on that.

You like me sure of this, if TMS to build an expert/addon to RAD IDE as designer replacement it would be 1000000% better the one we are using now on all aspect, so why not to ask for one ?

 

@José León Is it doable ?

Can it be free ? 😎, or at least with affordable price ?

With your experience in visual designers, Do you need more than one week to make it happen ? 

Wouldn't that increase the stability of the unstable ?

 

[Rollo62 536]

Quote

I second that, but why VSC ? i am not sure on that.

VSC is a great tool, seems to be well thought from ground up, with a zillion users out there.

Also consisting of a large ecosystem, with plugins and many supporters.

Most important maybe, as said before, the young guys are there: If you want catch attraction to Delphi code in the young generation,

then this is a good place to go.

VsCode is Open-Platform, mostly used on Macos, because of its coolness factor.

By the way: Worth to mention, its free and open source

IMHO this is the new way to go, all other IDE look old fashioned against this ( Ok, I know Atom, etc. too, but the winner takes it all).

 

Edited August 12, 2020 by Rollo62

[Guest]

I agree on that too, VSC is great, it is the future, but ..

Having VCL designer which TMS almost already did is a thing, while supporting different design time packages is completely different thing, means they need a full rewrite of the RTL with registering and loading the packages, this is huge process and will take time and effort, unlike what it is now, utilizing the compiler only with predefined packages and components.

 

My TMS subscription expired in 2011, and one in that packages was the TMS scripter pro, this one doesn't have 64bit, yet i am using it on those day, and i am happy with its designer and never saw a glitch in over 11 years, when i can justify the update that package will be my center of attention.

 

What i was pointing to is to revive the current and the old IDE's, because if someone have the ability it is TMS, but still i have no problem with VSC if it is doable or the work is justifiable.

 

[José León 12]

50 minutes ago, Kas Ob. said:

I suggest a more advanced video samples, no need for commentary, few subtitles may be, this will shorten your time and give you the opportunity to make more of them, as the point is to show some more advanced stuff, like footer and header usage with CSS, frames replacing behaviour at runtime, switching between forms, session control... how to take photo from a mobile browser and share it with other browsers at runtime, how thumbnails will be added ... etc

In short, show power points combined in few minutes, just please take your time showing the result unlike many video out there with less than one second click and end of video.

 

Thanks for the suggestions, I take note and will review it once I finish the current series.

 

11 hours ago, Stefan Glienke said:

What get's me more interested here is if you could use the designer to design VCL forms within VSC - not asking for the entire featureset and behavior at designtime but just the basic align, anchor, size/position shebang.

While this could be done, I'm not sure about the benefits for a third-party to do this, in the sense that the toolchain for VCL from Embarcadero would still be required, that is, you need the compiler, the debugger, and also, the Delphi license prevents using Delphi to build a Delphi clone. So in short, you will still need a RAD Studio license in order to use that product, so you can build your apps.

 

The only reason to create a product based on Visual Studio Code for VCL apps would be for Embarcadero, to provide their existing customer base an alternative, like Microsoft does with its Visual Studio line:

 

With TMS Web Core for Visual Studio Code, by no means we are trying to compete with Embarcadero, it would be even ridiculous to think that. The goal with this product is to provide a lightweight solution for customers willing to use TMS Web Core to build their web apps. Visual Studio Code is an IDE built with web technologies, so we can do web things there that are simply not possible in RAD Studio, and also, the toolchain is completely independent. But remember TMS is and will be producing the RAD Studio product for TMS Web Core, so again, it's all about options 🙂

 

 

[Stefan Glienke 2006]

15 minutes ago, José León said:

While this could be done, I'm not sure about the benefits for a third-party to do this, in the sense that the toolchain for VCL from Embarcadero would still be required, that is, you need the compiler, the debugger, and also, the Delphi license prevents using Delphi to build a Delphi clone. So in short, you will still need a RAD Studio license in order to use that product, so you can build your apps.

Sure but as it stands and even with LSP support in 10.4 Visual Studio Code with OmniPascal (not sure what you offer for code tooling in your package) even with its glitches runs circles around what you can do in RAD Studio coding and code navigation wise.

So doing all form stuff and debugging in RAD Studio while doing the pure coding in Visual Studio Code (yes some people don't just slap components on forms and implement event handlers!) is often the superior experience.

[Lars Fosdal 1792]

FMX / VCL form designer plugins for VSC would be sweet.

[Rollo62 536]

42 minutes ago, Lars Fosdal said:

FMX / VCL form designer plugins for VSC would be sweet.

I can think of a world with RAD designers, as the best and fastes way to create views, prototypes,

and maybe even events and bindigs.

 

Plus a code-centric, MVVM enabled, way to produce the business logic behind in a modern way.

 

Why should that be so hard to bring both concepts (RAD & MVxx ) together in a nice marriage, I never understood that. ?

Just open all the options in the framework, and let people create the way they want (and let them also grow with their skills in the same tool).

Even if thats a complete rewrite of most the components, that should be worth it.

 

From all other visual designers I have checked so far, the RadStudio I like the most.

Thats why I'm on RadStudio.

Maybe thats only because of old habits and laziness, but I think the current concept is still best.

 

Maybe the question is not RAD or MVVM, but RAD plus MVVM.

 

Edited August 12, 2020 by Rollo62

[Lars Fosdal 1792]

I honestly don't care about RAD/MVVM.
I just want the visual form editing capabilities in VSC so that I wouldn't have to use two IDEs.

[Rollo62 536]

1 hour ago, Lars Fosdal said:

I honestly don't care about RAD/MVVM

I just want the visual form editing capabilities in VSC so that I wouldn't have to use two IDEs.

Then you should care, that "visual form editing capabilities" is what I meant by RAD.

[José León 12]

In any case, the Form Designer will be the same, it has been designed to be agnostic and to abstract any class library, that means that any help you provide us to polish TMS Web Core for Visual Studio Code now, will revert on any future project we start with this designer. Thanks in advance!! 🙂