Mobile development using Delphi RAD Studio XE8

Embarcadero hosted an event ‘Developer Direct LIVE RAD Studio XE8 Launch Tour’ in New Delhi. We had seen exciting new features as part of Delphi RAD Studio XE8. I was impressed with mobile development features. I am mentioning few interesting ones here.

 

Embarcadero RAD Studio XE8 provides Connected App Platform for Windows and beyond. RAD Studio XE8 is the complete software development solution using one codebase for rapid designing, coding, and extending “connected” app across Windows, Mac, iOS, Android and IoT.

 

Some of the additions in RAD Studio XE8 for Mobile Development are:

1. Includes iOS Object Pascal 64-bit delphi compiler (DCCIOSARM64.exe)
2. App support for iOS and Android
3. Multi-Device User Interface and Preview with FireUI (Multiple form factors, Design time side-by-side view)
4. AppAnalytics provides a visual representation of how users are using your apps
5. IoT gadgets that communicate over Bluetooth or WiFi
6. App Tethering (helps in rapidly build and extend app user experiences across multiple connected apps on various platforms, devices and gadgets)
7. Support for iBeacons and AltBeacons for proximity awareness support to your apps
8. Includes Mobile, Cloud, Wearables and IoT in VCL& FireMonkey libraries
9. New Push Notification service for Android and iOS developers (Event-driven notifications through EMS)
10. Native HTTP and HTTPS client libraries for iOS and Android
11. MapView component for iOS and Android (support for multiple map types including normal, Satellite and hybrid maps)
12. TWebBrowser component in FireMonkey application for iOS and Android

 
Apart from Mobile development features, I would like to mention some interesting additions also.

1. New configuration Migration tool (Helpful in migrating source code from earlier version of RAD Studio to RAD Studio XE8)
2. Productivity enhancement features (like Live Syntax Checking, Code Refactoring, Structural Code highlighting, parenthesis matching, code analysis, Multi-Paste, Flow Control highlighting etc.)
3. GetIt Package Manager (Future proof and helpful in browsing, downloading and integrating new components from IDE itself)