Thursday, July 05, 2007

Some IDE Experts

Triggered by some comments in my previous post I have digged a little into some available Delphi IDE Experts.
So far I found and used (not completed tested) the following:

1. Castalia
Castalia has two comboboxes on top of the Delphi editor, with the classes and methods of the current unit, which are great for navigating your source. Another nice feature is structural highlighting, where lines are placed between the begin and end blocks of your source. A free Castalia version is available for registered BDS 2006 users.

2. GExperts
GExperts offers lots of extra functions in the editor. To name a few: Find procedure, reverse statement, replace and rename component functions. The rename component function helps you to use your component naming convention wisely.
GExperts is open source.

3. DDevExtensions
DDevExtensions offers some nice, more technical, functions. If you don't like the BDS 2005-2006 and Delphi 2007 tool palette, DDevextensions allows you to use the old style tabbed tool palette. DDevExtensions is freeware.

4. cnPack
I have not yet used it very much, but it offers lot's of functions to help you to be more productive. cnPack is freeware.

Anyhow IDE experts can help you be even more productive in the Delphi environment.

I am sure there will be more out there, so if you have/know another one please leave a comment! (I will add it to this list)

Btw if you want to make your own expert, these links are a good start point:
Experts and Wizards in Delphi (delphi.about)
Delphi Open Tools API Nice overview and tutorial by Mustangpeak.

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