If you have ever used any kind of animation software (like Adobe Flash Pro) you are familiar with the concept of a timeline. Delphi XE7 Firemonkey doesn’t really have that concept of a timeline. I thought it would be interesting to introduce that concept of a timeline IDE tool and component to Delphi XE7. A timeline can greatly speed up rapid application development especially for mobile applications and make it easier for novice developers to produce apps quickly. I used a number of different developers on oDesk to come up with a TTimeLine component and IDE dialog window prototype (BSD license). It probably cost around $500-$1000 via oDesk to get the prototype to where it is now based on the architecture that I wanted. The prototype does utilize TFiremonkeyContainer (MPL license) by developer David Millington to allow for a Firemonkey form within the Delphi IDE. The basic functionality is a timeline interface where you can add layers of frames and then you can add components to each frame. The TTimeLine component manages the visibility of the components based on the current frame. It supports simple navigation of the timeline with functions like TTimeLine.Play, TTimeLine.Stop, TTimeLine.Next, TTimeLine.Prev, TTimeLine.GotoAndPlay, and TTimeLine.GotoAndStop. There is a demo application included within the download which demonstrates how the timeline can be used to create an animation of a circle bouncing in 5 easy frames. The component should work under Android, IOS, OSX, and Windows. It will probably work in Appmethod as well with some or no changes.
Download the free TTimeLine component and IDE editor prototype for Delphi XE7 Firemonkey.
