Embarcadero is pleased to announce the release of Delphi 11, C++Builder 11 and RAD Studio 11. RAD Studio 11 Alexandria builds on the feature set of the 10.4 releases and offers many new features, including an improved user experience with a High DPI IDE. 

In this blog post, we want to highlight some of the main new features and enhancements in RAD 11. This release introduces numerous new capabilities, enhancements, and quality updates in key areas.

Key New Features

Key New IDE Features and Enhancements

• RAD Studio 11 adds high-DPI support to the IDE: This improves daily developer activities with full support for the latest 4k+ monitors, with cleaner, sharper fonts and icons, and high-resolution support throughout the IDE windows including in the VCL and FMX form designers and code editor. You can now design your forms directly at multiple scales and in high resolution.
• VCL Styles add design-time support: Prototype stylish UIs even faster by seeing immediately at design-time how your styled forms and controls will look when running. 
• Multi-monitor and multi-window improvements: you can design and edit code for the same form at the same time in multiple windows, including ‘pulling’ the form designer from one window to another. This allows you to mimic the benefits of the old floating form designer in the modern IDE layout, including across multiple screens 
• Welcome Page: Completely rebuilt with the VCL (removing browser dependencies), the new page has a native look and feel and a UI that fits the IDE, plus is easy for you to customize in layout and content.

• C++ Code Formatter: Automate the layout of your C++ code using clang-format.
• Numerous Code Insight (DelphiLSP) improvements based on developer community feedback and requests.
• Remote Desktop: Improved remote desktop support (for VCL and IDE).
• FireMonkey design-time guidelines: Prototype faster with visual lines for moving and aligning controls (similar to the VCL), with enhanced margin and padding support.  

VCL Modernization

Many VCL components updated to new features in the Windows API:

• Rich Edit component updated: A new implementation removes XP dependencies and brings additional features into the TRichEdit control, including: URL detection, spell checking, background color and transparency.
• TreeView CheckBoxes: Support for CheckBoxes in TreeViews added, with each node supporting 3 states (Partial, Dimmed, Exclusion) to help customise the UI
• New TDBLabeledEdit component offering a data-aware version of the TLabelEdit for faster prototyping. 
• Large collection of minor VCL improvements including default form size and font, exception dialog copy button, Coolbar improvements, margins on Memo and RichEdit, Optional Group box frames and many more.

Key FireMonkey Platform Enhancements 

• Improved FMX High-DPI support for Windows and Desktop applications with a visibly superior desktop UI, driven by an updated scaling engine that has been moved from physical to logical coordinates.
• Support for Microsoft’s WebView 2 control (Edge Chromium) in the WebBrowser component.
• RAD Studio 11 supports the latest Android 30 API and latest Billing APIs, and also migrates to use the AndroidX libraries.
• Android support for multiple classes.dex files, simplifying integration of external Android dependencies.

Target Platforms and Compilers

• macOS 64bit ARM compiler and toolchain that includes building universal binaries for Intel/ARM AppStore submissions. 
• Delphi language support for binary decimals and digits separator.
• C++ toolchain improvements include overhauled Delphi-style RTTI for C++ types (allowing using components built with Clang in the IDE), including using typeid on Delphi-style types; improved C++-style RTTI for Delphi types; CMake quality improvements, and greatly improved exception handling on both Win32 and Win64.

Key Run-Time Library Enhancements and More

• RTL Quality focus: TZipFile, 64bit improvements for large data structures, Bluetooth LE 
• Record Helper for TDateTime in System.DateUtils. Makes common date and time tasks faster to code, and code cleaner to read. Examples include getting the first date of the Month or Year, or converting to a Unix date format, checking AM/PM, finding out if it’s in a Leap Year, etc. 
• Record Helper for TCurrency in System.SysUtils makes working with Currency simpler and easier. 
• C++ RTL improvements focusing on Delphi interop include using make_shared<> and make_unique<> with Delphi classes; string_view support for Delphi strings; easy Delphi/C++ string conversion including being able to directly assign a Delphi string to a C++ string and vice versa; and Delphi core data type (such as TDateTime, Variant, etc) conversion to and from C++ strings using to_string() and from_string(). 

Enhanced Delphi Code Insight with LSP

• LSP awareness of Include (.inc) files used in a .pas file
• Auto restart of LSP server
• Auto code completion with Tab key
• Class helper support
• Array suggestions when assigning arrays
• Use of Visual Studio Code to edit Delphi source with full code completion, thanks to LSP support as part of your license

Data Connectivity 

• FireDAC in the new release offers specific improvements for the PostgreSQL, Oracle, and Firebird databases
• The HTTP and REST client libraries have been extended with timeout mechanisms, support for HTTP/2, TLS 1.3, Base64 URL Encoding
• A new component TRESTRequestDataSetAdapter simplifies uploading datasets to RAD Server
• A new low-traffic RAD Server Lite allows unlimited deployment of your multi-tier solutions, alongside with the fully scalable RAD Server engine 
• For DataSnap, the REST URL mapping logic is now fully configurable 

Overall Quality 

This release includes specific fixes for over 650 issues reported by customers on Quality Portal (QP) plus over 110 new features requested by customers on the same portal (Notice that QP synchronization is not immediate)

Ready to Go

Product trials for RAD Studio, Delphi and C++Builder 11 are now available and the updated product builds are live in the online store. Customers on Update Subscription can download and install RAD Studio 11 today using their existing license and will receive an email announcing the new release availability. Downloads are available for download in the new customers portal at my.embarcadero.com.

For more information, you can check:

• The What’s New in 11 Alexandria page, in the revamped Embarcadero website
• The more detailed What’s New page in the DocWiki
• The list of customer reported issues addressed in RAD Studio 11
• The RAD Studio feature matrix at www.embarcadero.com/docs/rad-studio-feature-matrix.pdf
• RAD Studio 11 demos on GitHub

We are very happy with the work our team did for RAD 11 and we are certain you’ll equally enjoy using the new version of RAD Studio, C++Builder and Delphi.

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