Question

I am venturing into making my own components in Delphi. I’m having difficulty getting started with component development.

I want to make a composite control ie a control made up of several other controls, eg like an address form or something like that.

I am descending from TWinControl. Would that be considered to be the correct choice?

The main thing is, I cannot see a way to visually design the component in D2010. Is this possible? eg drop some text boxes onto your component, as you would with a form. I’m hoping I don’t have to hand code all the visual aspects to my own components..

Also any good links on delphi component dev would be very much appreciated – esp for composite controls. The docs are not A1, its a struggle. I searched a lot already, I’m still going nowhere fast.

Answer 1

If you’re making something with multiple controls such as an address form, you might consider making it a frame instead of a control. Frames can be designed like windows, and re-used.