Integrated Development Environment
Go Up to Delphi Programming Fundamentals
When you start RAD Studio, you are immediately placed within the integrated development environment, also called the IDE. This IDE provides all the tools you need to design, develop, test, debug, and deploy applications, allowing rapid prototyping and a shorter development time.
The IDE includes all the tools necessary to start designing applications, such as the:
- Form Designer, or form, a blank window on which to design the UI for your application.
- Tool Palette for displaying visual and nonvisual components you can use to design your user interface.
- Object Inspector for examining and changing an object’s properties and events.
- Structure View for displaying and changing a components’ logical relationships.
- Code Editor for writing and editing the underlying program logic.
- Project Manager for managing the files that make up one or more projects.
- Integrated debugger for finding and fixing errors in your code.
- Many other tools such as property editors to change the values for an object’s property.
- Command-line tools including compilers, linkers, and other utilities.
- Extensive VCL/RTL class libraries with many reusable objects. Many of the objects provided in the class library are accessible in the IDE from the Tool Palette. By convention, the names of objects in the class library begin with a T, such as TStatusBar. Some tools might not be included in all editions of the product.
A more complete overview of the development environment is presented in the Tutorial: Using the IDE. In addition, the online Help system provides context-sensitive help on all menus, dialog boxes, and windows.