How to improve the use of Delphi Frames

Posted by Brian Frost on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Brian Frost
Published on 2010-04-29T07:40:18Z Indexed on 2010/04/29 7:47 UTC
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delphi

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frame

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components

I've used frames in Delphi for years, and they are one of the most powerful features of the VCL, but standard use of them seems to have some risk such as:

It's easy to accidentally move or edit the frame sub-components on a frame's host form without realising that you are 'tweaking' with the frame - I know this does not affect the original frame code, but it's generally not what you would want.
When working with the frame you are still exposed to its sub-components for visual editing, even when that frame is years old and should not be touched.

So I got to thinking....

Is there a way of 'grouping' components such that their positions are 'locked'? This would be useful for finished forms as well as frames. Often other developers return code to me where only the form bounds have changed and even they did not intend any change.
Is there any way of turning a frame and its components into a single Delphi component? If so, the frame internals would be completely hidden and its useability would increase further.

I'm interested in any thoughts...

Brian.

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