Merlin’s Delphi Forge

Here are 3 undocumented registry settings that modify the behavior of the Delphi component palette in a manner you may like. But why are there hidden features first of all and why are they not “available” to the public? They may may have been introduced too late into the product to get documented, or they may not have made it in time to be quality assured, or they may just have fallen off the documentation list because is was not said that they should be a feature that will remain in the final product. This simply means, use this information at your own risk. It is not tested or certified by Inprise (now Borland, again), and it is not guaranteed that it will be surfaced or even remain in future versions of Delphi.

These undocumented registry settings must be put in this registry location:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Borland\Delphi\5.0\Extras. You will need to create the Extras registry key.

• Automatically Selecting a Component Page - There are two registry values that control how the component palette reacts to the mouse. Setting the value of AutoPaletteSelect to “1″ will cause a tab on the component palette to be automatically selected when the mouse is hovering over it. If the mouse is in the top two-thirds (2/ 3) of the tab, the palette for that tab will automatically be displayed. This is a string value.
• Automatically Scrolling in a Component Page - If you have a lower resolution display or a component page with many components on it, you probably see arrows on the component page for scrolling left and right through the component list. Setting the value of AutoPaletteScroll to “1″ will make you scroll left and right automatically whenever the mouse is positioned over the relevant arrow. This, also is a string value.
• Displaying the font in the property editor - Are you’re tired of having to guess how each font looks? You remember how the font looks but have no idea what it’s name was… Microsoft Word 2000 has this problem already solved. The property editor font list is drawn using the fonts themselves. Now, wouldn’t that be helpful? Well, Delphi 5 does have this option already. But it has been hidded. Just create a new value: FontNamePropertyDisplayFontNames and either set it to “1″ to enable this function or set the value to “0″ if for any reason you do not want this. This function can really slow down the font listings if you have a slow computer and a lot of fonts. As usual… this also is a string value

I put these keys into my registry and got used to the changes very quickly. For me they’re very useful tweaks for the IDE. Try them out yourself and see if you like them. If you don’t just remove these values. At first you may get the impression that everything is “running away”, but after a few minutes it gets really useful (I’ve got 53 tabs so I can’t say that automatic scrolling bothers me

John Kaster: “There are more hidden features out there.”

Based on article by: John Kaster, Inprise/Borland Developer Relations http://community.borland.com/article/0,1410,20624,00.html
Article ID: 20624

PS: Some of these tweaks work with Delphi 6 too

Tags: 5, 6, automatic scrolling, borland, borland delphi 5, coding, Delphi, delphi component palette, editor, faq, features, font, forum, guess, hidden, hidden features, hkey current user, ide, may may, programmer, programming, property editor, quality assured, registry key, registry location, registry settings, registry values, show, string value, tip, trick, user software