A simple way to create an URL label in Delphi

[dummzeuch 1387]

An URL label is a TLabel on a form which displays some blue, underlined text which, when clicked with the mouse, opens a web page.

This kind of labels is nothing new in Delphi, I remember using them even back in the 1990s, but they always were a pain in the lower back to create:

• Write the URL into the caption.
• Set the font color to blue
• Set the font to underlined
• Set the cursor to crHandPoint
• Write an OnClick event handler that opens the desired URL

Lots of boring and repetitive work and on top of that a Windows API call which I kept forgetting.
This led me to simply not use them. [...]

 

https://blog.dummzeuch.de/2019/04/19/a-simple-way-to-create-an-url-label-in-delphi/

[Uwe Raabe 1877]

17 minutes ago, dummzeuch said:

but they always were a pain in the lower back to create

Not really since TLinkLabel was introduced as a standard VCL control in Delphi XE2.

[dummzeuch 1387]

4 minutes ago, Uwe Raabe said:

TLinkLabel was introduced as a standard VCL control in Delphi XE2

Goes to show that I spend a lot of time working with old Delphi versions.

[dummzeuch 1387]

Hm, a TLinkLabel seems to have no FocusControl property and I could find no way to actually set an URL that is different from the caption.

(OK, it's in the documentation: It allows HTML code.) But apparently it still does not automatically open the browser but calls the OnLinkClick event, so it solves a completely different problem than my code does.

[Uwe Raabe 1877]

TLinkLabel is a wrapper around the Windows SysLink control. It has greater flexibility (f.i. can show a mixture of text and several links, not only one URL, as well as distinguish between a link, a focused link and a visited link) and thus requires a more sophisticated event handling (not every link needs to be opened in a browser).

 

Anyway, my quote was rather related to the list of PITAs than your actual code.