VCL — More than 10 Ideas to Modernize Your Existing Forms and Unlock the Latest Benefits

In this blog post, I will document legacy/deprecated VCL controls and their modern counterparts. 

Please consider the use of these modern counterparts in your existing projects. By using more modern versions, you'll benefit from all new DevExpress VCL capabilities including: High DPI, SVG, 'Light' Style rendering, and Windows 11 theme support. Of course, benefits also include better performance, online documentation, and future support/evolution.

All the legacy/deprecated VCL controls listed in this post have been in maintenance mode for a very long time. No new features/capabilities will be incorporated into these controls. Technical support services, online documentation updates, and bug fixes are also limited.

ExpressBars

Long time ago when we shipped ExpressBars Suite separately from the ExpressEditors Library, we had only a limited number of built-in editors (namely TdxBarEdit class descendants). At present, the ExpressBars Suite relies on toolbar edit containers (TcxBarEditItem instances) and modern in-place editors from the ExpressEditors Library.

To replace a legacy toolbar editor with a corresponding editor from the ExpressEditors Library, create a component and assign the target editor class to the PropertiesClass property:

• Use TcxTextEdit instead of TdxBarEdit.
• Use TcxSpinEdit instead of TdxBarSpinEdit.
• Use TcxDateEdit instead of TdxBarDateCombo.
• Use TcxLookupComboBox instead of TdxBarLookupCombo.
• Use TcxExtLookupComboBox instead of TdxBarTreeViewCombo.
• Use TcxColorComboBox instead of TdxBarColorCombo.
• Use TcxComboBox instead of TdxBarCombo.
• Use TcxFontNameComboBox instead of TdxBarFontNameCombo.
• Use TcxImageComboBox instead of TdxBarImageCombo.

ExpressEditors

The ExpressEditors Library includes a number of legacy/deprecated VCL controls based on controls from the standard VCL library such as TTreeView or TListView. We recommend you replace the following in your VCL projects:

• Use TdxListViewControl instead of TcxMCListBox.
• Use TdxListViewControl and TdxTreeViewControl instead of TcxListView and TcxTreeView respectively.
• Use TdxShellListView and TdxShellTreeView instead of TcxShellListView and TcxShellTreeView respectively.

ExpressDBTree

The ExpressDBTree Suite includes legacy unbound and data-aware tree view controls and editors based on controls from the standard VCL library. We recommend you replace the following in your VCL projects: 

• Use TdxTreeViewControl instead of TdxTreeView.
• Use TcxDBTreeList instead of TdxDBTreeView.
• Use TcxPopupEdit with TdxTreeViewControl instead of TdxTreeViewEdit.
• Use TcxDBPopupEdit with TdxTreeViewControl instead of TdxDBTreeViewEdit.

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Thanks,
Dennis Garavsky
Principal Product Manager
dennis@devexpress.com