The Borland Delphi IDE was designed (organized) to help you develop your projects with speed and the good folk at Borland (Inprise) have gone to great lengths to give you a programming environment that is very efficient.
The IDE makes it easy for you to create your own programs with ease, it does take a little time for a beginner to get to know how to use the Delphi IDE but the effort is worth it. We have included these Delphi IDE web pages to help the beginner get to know how to use the IDE which will help them learn how to program with Delphi in the long run.
Note: Some of the items mentioned below will only work on some versions of Delphi.
This web page will be updated often as we add more helpful information about Borland Delphi's IDE.
 

Delphi IDE Menu Items:

First lets have a look at the Delphi IDE menu items, we will give you a brief run-down of the Delphi menu items and what they are for, you may want to print these out and hang them on a wall close to your computer, this will save you having to open the help files to find out what they are used for. They are listed on different web pages so you can print them separately.
 
 

File Menu

Edit Menu

Search Menu

View Menu

Project Menu

Run Menu

Component Menu

The Window menu now shows a list of all the open windows this is the same as pressing the Alt + 0 keys.

Below we cover many things that you will find in the Delphi IDE.

Saving Your Delphi Desktop Settings:

From Delphi 5 upwards you can now save the the Desktop Settings. This is very easy to do.
Most developers need to use one set of windows at design time and a different set at debug time and with this new feature you can do just that by arranging the Delphi IDE and docking windows the way you want them for both and then go to View|DeskTops in the menu and then click on Save Desktop.
You can also delete and load another desktop from View|Desktops as well as Set the Debug Desktop.
 

The To-Do List:

With Delphi 5 Borland introduced an interesting new feature called the To-Do List.
This is a collection of notes (tasks) that you need to do to finish the current project that you are working on.

Go to View|To-Do List in the menu.

If more than one programmer is working on a project then the To-Do List can be very helpful.

Object TreeView

Object Inspector:

Now lets move on to the Object Inspector which is used to change a component or forms property values while you are designing a project.
The Object Inspector in Delphi 6 is located below the Object TreeView.

The Object Selector (instance list) is at the top of the Object Inspector and it is used to indicate the current component and its data type in the Object Inspector.
When you click on the Object Selector a drop-down list appears, you can use the scroll bar to find the component or form that you want or you can just start typing the component or forms name until the one you want is found.

In Delphi 6 you can now see the class name for each object in the list.
When you select a components name in the Object Inspector in Delphi 6 you can now see a tool tip (Hint) for that component, this is a useful feature that helps greatly if the components name is so long that in older versions of Delphi you couldn't see it all.

You can hide the Object Selector in Delphi 6 by unchecking 'Show Instance List' in the new Object Inspector properties.

The left hand side of the Object Inspector lists the components properties, the right hand side is for changing values to a property. Some are Boolean, in other words True or False, to change one of these from one value to another just double-click on it. Sometimes you may see an ellipsis button, like the Font property for a form, you can click on this and the Font dialog box will appear for you to make you changes to the forms fonts, styles etc.
Experiment with these, it will not take you long to learn all the mysteries of the Object Inspector.

Should you ever need help while you are using the Object Inspector while using a property or event just press the F1 key.

If you right-click on the Object Inspector you will see a popup menu with many options for you to choose like:
Stay On Top, Dockable and Show All.

When you click in the Object Inspector you can use the Tab key to move between the Properties column and the
Values column.
If the Property item has a '+' sign then you can expand it by using the Right Arrow key.
When the '-' is shown you can use the Left Arrow key to close it again. (You can also use the Up & Down arrow keys to move up and down.)
When you have tabbed to the Property column you can type a letter and the text cursor will jump to the property that starts with that letter.

Example: If you type a 'c' then it may jump to the Caption property in the Object Inspector.
You can then type the rest of the word and the text cursor will go to it or just tab to the Value column to make a change to the Caption property.
If you keep typing more letters then the cursor will jump to the property that you are spelling, in other words you are doing an incremental search in the properties column in the Object Inspector.

With the release of Delphi 5 you can now arrange the contents by alphabetically or by category, just right-click in the Object Inspector and then move the mouse cursor to the word Arrange, you will then see the new options.

Object Inspector Properties:

You can right-click on the Object Inspector and select Properties from the menu or go to Tools|Environment Options and click on the Object Inspector tab.

You can now:

Customize the colors of the Object Inspector.
Change the Speed Settings to suit your needs.
Display or hide the new instance list, class names in the instance list, the Object Inspector status bar, the background grid, and read-only properties.
The properties of component references can be expanded inline and displayed on both the properties and events pages.

A new feature (Delphi 6) is that you can use the Object Inspector to select another component when another components properties are shown in Object Inspector.

Example:

Start a new project.
Add a Tutton to the for (Form1).
Click on Form1 then go to the Object Inspector and change the ActiveControl property for the form to Button1.
Next hold down the Ctrl key and then double-click in the ActiveControl value which is in this case Button1.

You should now see that Button1 is selected on Form1.

If you add a TToolBar component to Form1 and then add a TImageList (ImageList1) and then change the ToolBar1 Images property to ImagList1 you can do the same etc.

Another very helpful time saving feature you will find in Delphi 6 is if you add a TMainMenu component to a form and then you set the forms Menu property to MainMenu1 you will notice that a + sign appears to the left in the Menu property, if you click on the + sign the tree will expand to show you the properties of MainMenu1.
This is very helpful and it means you do not have to click on the MainMenu component to set its properties.

Also you will also notice that some of these properties are in a different color which is also helpful.
And if you add a ImageList you can 'connect' it to MainMenu1 using the Image property with the same result.

Docking Support:

The Delphi 4, Delphi5 and Delphi 6 IDE has docking support.
If you don't want an IDE window to dock you can right-click on the window and then uncheck the dockable menu item.

To turn off docking support temporarily, hold down the Ctrl key while dragging the dockable window.
While the Ctrl key is pressed the dockable window will not dock.
In Tools|Environment Options|Preferences you can turn off docking.

Alignment Palette:

The Alignment Palette is very useful for aligning the components on a form, place the mouse over the buttons so the hints show they will give you an idea about what the button is for.
You can disable the Alignment Palette hints, by right-clicking on the Alignment Palette and clicking on Show Hints, if the tick is on Show Hints then you will be able to see the hint for each button on the Alignment Palette.
You can also make the Alignment Palette, 'Stay On Top', by right-clicking on the  Alignment Palette and then click on Stay On Top.

Project Manager:

When using the Project Manager in Delphi 4 and Delphi 5, you can have small or large Project Manager ToolBar buttons.
To change the size of the buttons you drag the bottom of the Project Managers ToolBar, up for small buttons and down for large buttons.

Project Options:

The Project Options dialog box is to specify options for compiler, form, application, and linker (Manages how your program files are linked) for your project, and also to manage your projects directories.
The Default check box will save the current settings as the default for each new project.

If you open the Project Options dialog box when no project is currently opened in the Delphi IDE, any changes you make in the Project Options dialog box is applied to all new projects, these changes will become the defaults.

If you open the Project Options dialog box when a project is open in the Delphi IDE then the changes you make will be applied only to the opened project.
Unless of course you click on the 'Default' check box which is to the bottom left of the Project Options dialog box.

IDE command-line options:

Some Delphi 5 command line options:

• ? - the question mark will displays help for IDE command-line options.
• ns - is for No Splash Screen, so when Delphi starts the Delphi splash screen will not be seen, see the example below about how you can do this.
• np - is for No Project, if you use this then no project will load when Delphi has loaded (started) and the Delphi desktop files will not load as well.
• hv - is for Heap Verify which erforms validation of memory allocated using the memory manager, and displays error information in the IDE title bar if errors are found in the heap.
• hm - is for Heap Monitor which displays information in the IDE title bar regarding the amount of memory allocated using the memory manager

You can use -ns to stop the Delphi splash screen showing at Delphi's startup like this:

E:\Delphi5\Bin\delphi32.exe -ns

you can also do it this way:

E:\Delphi5\Bin\delphi32.exe /ns

Though it doesn't appear to make much difference in speeding up the startup of Delphi.

And here is another example:

E:\Delphi5\Bin\delphi32.exe /ns /hm /hv

And here is a screen shot of the IDE Title Bar:

Components List:

You may also find the Component List helpful. You will find it under 'View' in the Delphi Menu.
You can type in the name of the component in the edit box at the top of the Component List and this will start an incremental search through your components until you find the one you want.

Next double-click on the component name in the list to add that component to the form or click on the Add To Form button to do the same thing.

Watch List Window:

You can use the Watch to view variables. You type in the name of the variable you want to view, then you can step through the code to see the variables value change.
This is a great way to see what is happening. You will find Watch in the 'View' drop-down menu, click on "Watches".
You can also make the Watch List Window, 'Stay On Top', by right-clicking on the Watch List Window and then click on Stay On Top.

OpenHelp:

This is the oh.exe which should be found in your Delphi/Bin directory and it is a tool you can use to manage the structure of Delphi ’s own Help files,integrating third-party files into the help system.
You can find in by going to Help|Customize in the IDE menu.

Problems With The Delphi IDE:

Borland states that there is a problem with the Delphi 5 IDE disappearing, the answer they suggest is to delete the desktop preference files, or '.dsk' files. After you do this Delphi will dynamically generate these files as it needs them, but you will lose any environment settings that you had set previously.