Overview

If you've read the previous chapters, you should now be able to use Delphi's visual components to create the user interface for your applications. Now let's turn our attention to another central element of development in Delphi: forms. You have used forms since the initial chapters, but I've never described in detail what you can do with a form, which properties you can use, or which methods of the TForm class are particularly interesting.

This chapter looks at some of the properties and styles of forms and at sizing and positioning them, as well as form scaling and scrolling. I'll also introduce applications with multiple forms, the use of dialog boxes (custom and predefined ones), frames, and visual form inheritance. Finally, I'll devote some time to input on a form, from both the keyboard and the mouse.