[IPSteven]

The new angle property with TsLabelFX sounds great but it has a number of bad side effects:

• Resizes all existing TsLabelFX labels in project.

All right aligned labels instantly become misaligned.

• Introduces a non-backward compatible property – angle.

If you try to roll back AlphaSkins to an earlier version – your project is broken. You have to replace all the TsLabelFX in your project before it becomes usable.

This feature should have been rolled out as a new label type, say TsLabelFXRotatable, not as a modification of the existing TsLabelFX.

General Feedback on the 8.31 beta

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I've been trying to use the 8.31 beta and yesterday finally gave up. That's when I discovered that the 8.31 TsLabelFX changes made my project incompatible with the previous AlphaSkins stable release.

I had major stability issues with 8.31 – PageControl refresh issues, resize refresh issues and others. The more I tried to fix the various issues the more unstable my app became.

I thought the problems stemmed from changes I had made in my code until I rolled back my project to the earlier version using AlphaSkins v8.20 stable, reset AlphaSkins to v8.20 and re-added the code that I thought screwed things up — and it is stable as a rock.

I know it's a beta release, but I've never had these kind or number of issues with any AlphaSkins release, including the betas. Anyway like I said I know its a beta and things sometimes get broken moving forward. Looking forward to the next update.

Best regards,

…Steven

[Support]

Next update will be available soon.

Reason of problem in LabelFX is not in new Angle property.

Some changes were added in positioning of text, because position of text is depended from Shadow size and offset.

In the Stable release you can see as text position changed when skin is changed in real-time.

But, unfortunately, some problems exists in the Beta version with new code. I hope to fix it.

[IPSteven]

'Support' wrote:

Next update will be available soon.

Reason of problem in LabelFX is not in new Angle property.

Some changes were added in positioning of text, because position of text is depended from Shadow size and offset.

In the Stable release you can see as text position changed when skin is changed in real-time.

But, unfortunately, some problems exists in the Beta version with new code. I hope to fix it.

Cool. Unfortunately the current beta resizes the FXLabel components on the form so all center and right justified LabelFX become mis-aligned.

I don't know if it's in the plans but adding a vertical offset property would be cool. Being able to top align a center justified LabelFX in a panel is an easy way to put a nice header on a panel but it tends to place the LabelFX a little too close to the top edge of the panel.

Unfortunately the Angle property introduces a feature that is not backwards compatible with previous versions of AlphaSkins.

To fix it you have to open the form file (*.dfm – if you have them set to save as text) containing the FXLabel components in a text editor and manually delete all the Angle references. Delphi hides them when you view the DFM as text but doesn't remove them so you have to fix this issue outside of Delphi or you can't recompile your app.

[Support]

Delphi can remove the Angle property automatically when pressed “Ignore” button.

[IPSteven]

'Support' wrote:

Delphi can remove the Angle property automatically when pressed “Ignore” button.

Yes, that should work – but it didn't.

I hit ignore and when I tried to recompile the project I received errors regarding the angle property.

When I tried to run the project it showed errors then crashed before formActivate.

I tried cleaning/rebuilding the project and no change.

I tried saving the project and then reloading reloading it.

Still had same issue.

I tried manually editing dfms, cleaned and rebuilt the project.

This stopped the error while compiling but when I try to run it I get a “project xxxx.exe raised exception class EReadError with message 'Property Angle does not exist'.

Even after reloading AlphaSkins.20 (blowing away 8.31, verifying that it worked on old & new projects; blowing away all DCUs with my project, running clean & rebuild) the same project is still having angle problems.

I've never had this kind of issue be this 'sticky' before.

The only thing that fixed the project was loading the last saved version of the project that used AS8.20 and updating the code to reinstitute the changes I lost.

[Jeremy©JTECH]

I've run into this a bit myself when switching back and forth between the latest beta and 8.20. It's been awhile since I've worked on component creation, but don't Delphi properties allow you to specify a default value that isn't saved inside the DFM? If so, why not set the default value for Angle as 0? That way the vast majority of new TsLabelFX controls out there with an Angle of 0 won't actually save this value into the DFM, right?

[minou]

[Support]

Old files used in compiling. You should search all old units and remove them.

I can help remotely if you can share your PC by TeamViewer tool.

[Author]

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