Delphi Famous Skin Control Library landscape contrast __ Controls

Skin this thing many people are mixed, some think the procedure does well on the line, the interface or maintain the original ecological stability. Indeed, stability is a vital point of procedure, leave this point any other can not talk about, but can not be denied, whether it is Microsoft, Apple, or the public users, aesthetic more and more high, imagine the same QQ software or cool dog software, functional stability, you are like to bring beautiful skin or like the original ecology of it. Therefore, the program interface beautification is also a product very important point.

Doing skin is actually a huge project, from the art design, to the map, to the design, are very troublesome, if not a very mature product and have a large user groups, and the company has considerable strength, generally do not go to do their own skin, after all, involved in too many things, once there are problems, That would have unintended consequences for the software itself.

So I chose to use the finished skin library on the existing software, in order to achieve balance between the effect and stability, so the current Delphi market of skin controls are tested one by one, including stability testing, memory leak testing, mapping effect testing, use efficiency, The five major items of the skin interface are compared in a horizontal way to give some references to friends who are preparing to use the skin.

This choice of products are "famous" control package, why add the word "famous", this is reasonable, skin this thing directly affect the operation of the program, follow-up maintenance must have protection, imagine you use a skin control, there is no follow-up protection, encountered bugs no one corrected, you do not have the source code of the case, There is no way except to change the skin control. Therefore, the standard of the famous Delphi control is that there is a formal company or individual operation, maintain continuous updates, encounter problems feedback can be a response to the control package.

The control package involved in this test includes: Alphacontrols/businessskinform/dynamicskinform/vclskin/appface Five, I also tested some other controls that can be found on the web, but they are not updated for a long time and therefore are eliminated directly. In the control package, foreign products than the domestic strong too much, take a QQ interface control package (not directly indicated here), control bugs piled up, even the minimum of the interface redraw, refresh and memory leaks are not done well, such products are also taken out to sell money, and found no one to buy, the author to release the control in Free name, But does not contain the source code, nearly a year has not updated once, you found that the bug submitted to him, he let you buy the source code, the price of 2000-5000, such as the control package suggested that everyone does not need to use, direct pass, so as not to do a lot of futile things.

These control packages in addition to Appface are provided in the demo program, in addition to Appface are provided in the form of Delphi components, and Appface is a DLL way to provide.

Use the convenience stability memory leak test Map effect test use efficiency skin interface

Alphacontrols convenience generally has leaks very good high exquisite

Businessskinform convenience, no leakage generally high general

Dynamicskinform convenience, no leakage generally high general

Vclskin convenience generally have leakage generally general

Appface Convenience Difference No leakage general high general

The table above summarizes the characteristics of several interface control packages, the following details of the test of the next few boundaries of the problem encountered.

The first test is Alphacontrols, version is the latest 7.54 LITE edittion, the source version is 7.34, to tell the truth, from the interface effect, Alphacontrols is undoubtedly the best of these few boundaries, but also the most exquisite, Also provides more than 60 kinds of skin, and is increasing, the texture effect is also the best. The test process found that there was a slight leak, mainly concentrated on a few controls, the problem is not large. But after the window title often appear some garbled characters, this makes people very uncomfortable, originally thought to be 7.34 version of the problem, the results were updated to the latest 7.54 free version of the official, still have this problem. But these can be ignored, the most important bug is the interface minimized, recovery often cause panic, attention is the panic, not the application is not responding, at this time, in addition to press hard to start outside any way. I thought it was a machine problem, change the machine to use the official demo, still found this serious problem. But the problem is not always there, the basic rate is 1/20. But this problem is not so serious, cause the crash is what concept, really let people have no language. Therefore, Alphacontrols is also the first to be eliminated, and the most of the control package, hope that the future version of the problem can be resolved. (See the official update history, has updated the problem, but does not seem to be completely revised)

always remember the interface of the Alphacontrols, because there are very few skin controls so exquisite, so the problem of the crash and detailed test (October 25), after the latest test found that the cause of the crash is because of the window animation effect, so the window hide, minimize, When the three animation effects are turned off, the crash disappears.

The second test is appface, a lightweight skin control that is fairly simple to load, and can be said to have no adjustment to the program. The supply of bread is relatively small, the skin is not exquisite. But the memory leak is well controlled. In the testing process, first with a simple small software loaded to do the test, there is no problem, and then come up with a similar Notepad I wrote a program, this time found that the load appface, the software to start the error, in order to confirm whether it is a software problem, I deliberately took an open source program (to do script editing), It turns out that the same thing happened. Helpless had to pass.

The third Test is businessskinform and Dynamicskinform, which can be said to be twin brothers, because it was developed by a company, Dynamicskinform less data-aware controls than Businessskinform, Do not do database program, no difference, interface skin package is also universal, and up to more than 170 kinds. But to tell the truth, the delicacy is not good enough. We found that it also provides a number of innovative interface design components, you can design a very distinctive interface. In the test are used by manufacturers to provide the standard demo, memory without leakage, this is commendable, after all, is such a large control package. The texture effect is passable, but compared with alphacontrols is slightly inferior, there is no small gap. Although the interface provides more than 170 skin bags, but the exquisite is still limited, so you can choose to find some skin release. Use efficiency, if the window does not use animation, the display speed will be faster, but the interface switch has flicker. If you use animation effect, the use of efficiency is much lower, give a person a casual feeling. The two controls found good stability during the two days of the test, without sending a panic, unresponsive, and automatic exit. But found that the window title is not very good for Chinese support, there will be incomplete in Chinese, you can own the title of the number of characters in the text, and then add so many spaces after the title to display the full title.

The final test is the old Vclskin, this control package is very convenient to use, provide more skin bags, memory leakage control is also good, the use of high efficiency, the interface is not exquisite, but also said the past. Stability is also good, more than a few years before the use of the stability to improve a lot, but in the test process or occurred two times abnormal error. So there seems to be more room for stability.

After passing the test, I chose the Businessskinform control package, although the efficiency is not the highest, the interface is not the most exquisite, but expensive in stability. By the end of the article, this set of control packs was still running and testing without any surprises.

as of October 25 to modify the program using Businessskinform has more than half of the project, but how to see the interface is not so comfortable, although up to more than 170 sets of skin, but exquisite effect of a few really good. Due to the discovery of alphacontrols bugs, and no impact, the final decision to give up businessskinform use Alphacontrols,alphacontrols regardless of the interface fine, the details are very beautiful.

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