Software & Technology – Page 11 – Brandon Staggs .Com

Delphi 2007 Update 1: CodeGear Delivers

A while back I blogged about my major disappointments with Delphi 2007. I’m happy to say that the problems D2007 had, which prevented me from using it for project development, seem to have been adequately addressed with CodeGear’s first service pack.

To wit, I’ve just used Delphi 2007 Update 1 to compile what I hope to be the next release of Daily Bible and Prayer — version 2.1, a small update. I was able to do all of the .1 development in D2007 without anything holding me back, and the finished product works as it should. If all goes well, DBAP 2.1 will be released (as a free update) later this week.

Patents Gone Wild

EBay in Patent Fight Over ‘Buy It Now’

“A small Virginia company in a patent fight with eBay Inc. asked a federal judge Tuesday to stop the online auction powerhouse from using its ‘Buy It Now’ feature allowing shoppers to buy items at a fixed price.”

And here I thought buying items at a fixed price was just the way most stores sell things! I never knew it was such a novel concept that someone could actually file a patent on it.

Obviously, there’s some absurd obfuscation involved that some patent clerk thought was good enough for a filing. This is just like the ridiculous “One click buying” patent Amazon.com had — a company being granted ownership of a concept so utterly simple and obvious.

I’m all for intellectual property rights, but this is beyond absurd.

SwordSearcher 5.1 Released

SwordSearcher Bible Software 5.1 is released. Here’s the revision history.

Delphi 2007 for Win32 Workarounds

My recent post on Delphi 2007’s problems with the taskbar and task manager list shouldn’t simply “sit there” — my disappointment is all well and fine, but what if you have D2007 and you need to make do before a hotfix is released?

Dave Nottage, always a helpful poster in the Delphi newsgroups, has succinct workarounds.

Delphi 2007 for Win32: Oops!

Delphi 2007 — Oops!

Earlier this month I blogged about my enthusiasm about Delphi 2007 and CodeGear. I did so before D2007 was shipping based on what I saw in the betas. I meant every word of it.

But.

Hold on a bit. D2007 has shipped, but there exist a couple of serious problems. Suffice it to say I can’t build a production-level application with D2007 due to some nagging open issues — issues that should never have made it into the final release. It appears that CodeGear was so in need of revenue in 1Q 2007 that they simply had to get it out the door this month. Unfortunately, this means that it’s not good for releasing applications until they release a hotfix or two to address two major issues:

1. Task bar button stuff. Applications compiled with D2007 just don’t work right in this respect.

2. Applications compiled with D2007 don’t show up on the Windows task list. Ouch!

Of course, there are workarounds, but this is pretty disappointing. I’m not disclosing anything that comes from beta testing — this is stuff from the released version of D2007.

Why am I writing this? I opened my mouth (er, typed my keys) and said how great D2007 is. I owe it to anyone reading my blog to update them on it just in case it matters to them. D2007 is great, to be sure, but it’s just not done!

This isn’t really new, of course. D2005 wasn’t done when it was released either, and eventually became usable. D2007 is way better than D2005 — it’s just frustrating that some very visible issues still need to be fixed before it can actually be used in a production environment.