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Where do you want ... TMS to go in 2010 ?

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Tuesday, December 8, 2009

The end of 2009 is approaching rapidly. Almost time to make up the balance of 2009 and to make plans for the new year. 2010 looks to be an exciting year full of challenges as well.
Perhaps the most eagerly anticipated product will be Delphi Project X. We look forward to explore new opportunities with Project X. Another big step looks to be IntraWeb XI and we're watching the new developments closely to ensure existing and new components will use the framework as good as possible. Meanwhile, Microsoft is adding ever more exciting features to Silverlight. In 2009, we released our first product for Silverlight, the TMS Silverlight Planner and we look forward to continue to add features to this component as well as work on other Silverlight controls. Around the corner is also a new version of Visual Studio. Our team has been working harder than ever on our VCL components as always. We've released several new VCL components and many major updates to existing VCL products. This will be no different in the coming year 2010. Also, documentation overall is high on the list of priorities. A big effort is underway and we hope to reveal the results in the first half of 2010.

To align our efforts and hard work in the best possible way with your wishes & needs, this is also an excellent period to listen carefully to your feedback. Some questions we have for you:

  • What components are you missing ?
  • What extensions to existing components do you need ?
  • What technologies should we focus on ?
  • What can we improve or add on our website to make things easier, faster, better for you ?
  • What can we improve in the way our components are distributed ?
  • What can we do better for help files, FAQs, sample apps, developer guides ?
  • What can be improved in the way we provide support ?
  • Anything else we can do to provide you with a better experience and to provide you with the solutions,service & products you need ?

We look forward to all your feedback. You can post your comments, questions, wishes here or you can also contact us directly by email via the newsgroups. Let's make 2010 a great and fruitful year!

Bruno Fierens


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This blog post has received 25 comments.


1. Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 2:56:00 PM

I love your components, they give me power to make an easier interaction between both end-user and software. The only thing I missed was a translation to Portuguese, now I''m doing this task. What technologies should you focus on? I''d bet on Android.

Happy new year!

Cavalcanti Herculis


2. Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 3:06:54 PM

Data aware versions of the smooth controls and any other controls that are missing a data aware equivalent.

Gemmell Lachlan


3. Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 9:08:54 PM

0: How about a software protection component - Features that would be very welcome include: protected code block encryption, License Key and block list, number of uses and time limited trial period. I could think of much more but I don''t want to write a book!

1: I think it would be great to have an extended FormStyler component in which you can configure and save your own named styles.

2: I think the documentation needs to be a little more detailed.

3: How about adding a Forum to the site.

4: I think your support is excellent and give you 11/10 for that :)

O''Connor Chris


4. Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 5:26:09 AM

I wish that TMS fully support Windows 7 Taskbar and the new Office 2010 Beta "Menuband" and new "File"-Register ín the Ribbon.

My Customers have asked, when my Software could support these really cool features.



Speck Thomas


5. Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 7:54:54 AM

My #1 wish is: more documentation, and everything in one place.

Andreas Firnau


6. Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 11:28:22 AM

Hi. Your advanced date-time picker does not work well enough for my needs, and because of that I have to use a competitor''s editing suite just for that one component.

Regards,
RIchard Ulrich

Ulrich Richard


7. Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 12:05:11 PM

Improve code quality.

Your components look very good, but I think robustness is very poor with some component. I had to remove all the SmoothListBox from my interface because they were unstable. I had many problems at each version increment with it. For example, incorrect destroy order, followed in an version update by some call to a refresh method after the inherited destroy called in the destructor, followed by some strange crashes hard to reproduce with this component, followed by removing the component to get some stability...

Moreover if a couple of smooth components (like smooth buttons, edit box, etc) are put on a smooth panel, the interface becomes very sluggish and unresponsive, that makes the smooth panel almost useless for me. The support told me that the solution is to avoid this kind of use..

Also, the code still have compilation warning, that I think is not acceptable in commercial code.

After all this I only use the AdvStringGrid, the only component I didn''t have problem with until now, but the code quality is still suspicious with a lot of commented code, ultra long methods with nested sub-methods and incoherent programming, naming and spacing style.

I like the look and the wide choice of components in your suite, but I think I will have to stop using them if stability and quality is not getting better. I use them in industrial application and I cannot afford to get such kind of problems.

Regards,

Simon Alex Berube

Berube Simon Alex


8. Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 4:50:30 PM

I''d like an addon to use AdvChart in FastReport and FactCube

Van Landeghem Hugues


9. Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 7:32:52 PM

#1 - Documentation, not just what the properties and methods are but how to use the component.

#2 - better custom framing options for edit controls (border style,etc) check out what woll2woll gives the ability to do. changing borders/which borders, etc depending on focused or not, etc.

#2 - a smooth rich text editor (basically full editor) like woll2woll''s but more visually customizable to match the rest of the program interface.

Messerschmidt Michael


10. Thursday, December 10, 2009 at 2:26:55 AM

#1 More of the developers guides, as a guide or in the standard help files. Most entries there, especially for the "simpler" components, are just not very helpful.

#2 Better extensibility of the components. More protected instead of private methods, more protected access to private fields and better "hooking" possibilities. With regard to "hooking": it is very hard to derive specialized components from yours. Many events are triggered throughout various method implementations and are therefore difficult to "hook into". Currently often the only option is to duplicate code... It would be a lot easier if events were always triggered in their own protected "DoEvent" methods.

#3 A good rich text editor that can read and save rtf, html and perhaps even ms-word. With style support so that style changes to a text don''t require someone to change each and every occurence of a particular style use.

Venema Marjan


11. Thursday, December 10, 2009 at 2:47:14 AM

Documentation for all components with ''How To ..''-Sections




Kieninger Günter


12. Thursday, December 10, 2009 at 4:14:16 AM

I work with the component pack for while now and am very happy with it so far. In March I licensed the TMS Subsription in order to evaluate the rest of your components, e.g. the scripter studio. I found out, that it is not possible to install the whole package of components at once, because the components are delivered in several packages. Installing the packages separately doesn''t work either because some of the packages contain the same components and classes, possibly in different versions (e.g. both the component pack and the scripter studio contain the AdvMemo component and necessary classes.) Your support tried to assist but the fixes only produced more errors the Delphi 2007 IDE came up with and finally (after the 5th mail) your support didn''t answer my mails anymore. Until today I haven''t been able to even install the components I licensed. As you asked for things to improve, I would recommend an installer for all components at once.

I found couple of bugs in the AdvStringGrid concerning a Combobox as Inplace Editing Control and Cursor Navigation when there are Fixed Cells in the grid (I have to tell you in detail later). There is always something to improve in the existing controls, so please keep maintaining your top components.

You could as well enhance the syntax highlighting capabilities of your AdvMemo components. Currently it is only possible to choose from a set of languages. I would be very nice if you could add ways to customize the styling. I''d like to define keywords to be highlighted always, independent from delimiters that surround the keyword.

Thanks!


Korte Christian


13. Thursday, December 10, 2009 at 11:50:15 AM

I agree with Simon Alex Berube, components look nice but quality is not good enough to be used in commercial applications.

Documentation and Help needs lots of work to be usable.


Pohjonen Pentti


14. Friday, December 11, 2009 at 7:56:38 AM

Have to agree with above, documentation and help needs to be more expansive. I have had many simple questions which bruno has responded to and helped me, but several of the things he told me are methods and properties that are not even mentioned in the documentation at all. A hard push on documentation including "How to''s .." would free up time from support to focus on debugging and development.

Again, as above, would like a component that allows opening and saving of ms-word .doc, and rtf formats.

Lastly I have FastReports and FastCube, but do wish there was a TMS equivalent of FastReports, and more in the charts to approach the breadth and flexibility of Steemas Teechart Pro.


Robert Edgar


15. Sunday, December 13, 2009 at 4:08:53 AM

Honestly, I"m not current on my TMS subscription. The reason is that I still program in D7 and the components I use from my lapsed TMS sub still work. Have to also admit I"m a little astonished by the tone of many of the above comments. It seems the compaintants have come out of the woodwork. I"m pretty happy with what Bruno has done so far, by me. I came here to suggest documentation improvements. I agree with Robert (and the others) in those areas. But for some of them to suggest "quality if not good enough to be used in commercial applications," is outlandish. As a one-man shop who depends on good third-party libraries to do system software for a host of small to medium sized businesses, I can tell you the quality IS good enough.

All that hectoring aside, what do the writers expect those comments to produce? A sudden rush to fix the bugs because Bruno hasn"t shown any interest in fixing them? That"s farcial. Bruno"s fixing them as fast as he can. He sees the end of the tunnel coming and wants direction on where next to go.

Documentation. That"s a good idea. The rest of the moaning? A waste of everybody"s time.

Mugford Gary


16. Sunday, December 13, 2009 at 9:59:30 PM

How about a popup similar to the "insert symbol" popup in MS Word? I would want to be able to define a small set of special characters with the ability for the user to add more as needed.

Thanks
Martin Lawrence

Martin Lawrence


17. Monday, December 14, 2009 at 10:33:45 AM

Workflow Studio for Intraweb ?


Pucino Francesco


18. Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 3:41:06 AM

ExcelIO support for new .xlsx
Maybe an ExporttoPDF in the same component?

Component for showing events in an "Iphone-bubble" style (or Skype-like style) would be cool.

Documentation could improve, but I''m very happy with the support team!

I wish you a Happy new year!

Malinovszky Laszlo


19. Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 5:09:03 AM

A compiled Ultra-Mega-Demo that shows the capabilities of all your components.

Aignesberger Martin


20. Friday, December 18, 2009 at 6:24:34 AM

I think it is high time to go for documentation, documentation and some more documentation!

It has always struck me kind of strange that a nice product like TMS Component etc. has such crappy documentation.

My wishlist for Xmas might also include:

o SourceCode System Integration (SCC connection).
o License handling component (like LockBox from TurboPower).
o A barcode component.

Finally I want to take this opportunity to send to every user of Delphi the very best holiday wishes.

Per Danielsson


21. Tuesday, December 22, 2009 at 5:26:07 PM

Love the components you have.
The only big thing on my wish list would be a commitment or comment on cross platform features of the next Delphi release.


Searancke Martin


22. Wednesday, December 23, 2009 at 4:25:08 AM

TMS has great components for Delphi.
I started using Delphi about 15 years ago, but now I''m tired of the poor evolution of Delphi, and I have switched to iPhone dev with XCode. Very exiting !! really love it.

So why not porting some comps to iPhone.
For instance there is no Excell export on iPhone, so why not making a Flexcell for iPhone (Without PDF, PDF already exists).
Also there not a lot of comps in iPhone, why not adding some new ones ?
Best holidays wishes to all.

Da Silva Armindo


23. Wednesday, December 23, 2009 at 1:26:24 PM

Oh and very important to me:

Please ensure that all units compile without producing hints and warnings.

I compile all my projects using the source of the components I have, never using pre-compiled dcu''s. I also have a zero tolerance policy for hints and warnings: all projects must compile cleanly.

TMS components perform very poorly in this regard, as many TMS Component units produce hints and/or warnings. Doesn''t look very professional, and is a nuisance and a hindrance to my own QA efforts.

The hints and warnings produced by TMS code prevent me from enforcing the zero tolerance policy in my automated builds. It would be very hard if not impossible to make exceptions for TMS units. And amending the sources myself is not an option either, as I would have to do this again and again for every update you publish...


Venema Marjan


24. Wednesday, December 23, 2009 at 2:06:43 PM

Just got a mail from Bruno. He stated that he and his team ensure that hints/warnings are not produced by tms components as of D7 and up. And that D5 does produce some hints/warning. And yes, I was using D5. I apologize for not making that clear in my previous comment.

Venema Marjan


25. Thursday, December 24, 2009 at 11:40:00 PM

My wishlist to Santa.. I mean Bruno is to update the documentation.

And if Bruno can improve TMS Component Software in a couple of key areas - to make me a millionare, tax free of course. Isn''t it nice that my needs are small ?

Merry Christmas all !!!

HO HO HO !!!

Barone Mike




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