These components first appeared in 1995, back then they were a set of 20 and they were called AHM Components, they were developed by Alexander Mehlhorn.
Triton Tools has continued to grow with the help of the people using them.

Triton Tools has been given awards on major sites for its outstanding value to the developer community.

I am not going to write about every component in the Triton Tools, but I will try to give you a informative review, so you will know just what to expect should you decide to purchase them.
 
 

AHM Triton Tools 2000 - Menu Components

The AHM Triton Tools 2000 - Menu Components consist of:
 

• AHMMainMenu
• AHMApplicationMenu
• AHMFormMenu
• AHMPopupMenu

When you run the example you immediatly see the way these components can transform a simple gray menu, into a beautiful and very colorful display.
The users of your programs will enjoy the very modern look of these components.

If you double-click on the AHMMainMenu the AHM Menu Designer Window appears, this is for adding or deleting menu items.
Along with the normal menu items the AHM Menu Designer offers you many additional features which you can add to your menus, including graphics, side bars.

An interesting feature of the Menu Designer is that you can 'test' your menus as you make them, this is very helpful and it saves you starting the program to see your changes.

You can also have titles that are on the menu 'breaks', add bitmaps images to your menus as backgrounds, and you can add images from an ImageList to the menu commands, such as a floppy disc with Save under the File menu.
 
 

AHMTAnimator - is used for playing Avi files, you must ensure that avi files are in your path when distributing your application.

AHMAutoCombo - There was no help for this item, but as far as I could make out you put a list of words into the String List Editor for example:

New Zealand
Australia
USA
England

And when you run the program you type an 'a' into the AHMAutoCombo and the word Australia appears in the AHMAutoCombo box. You can change the MinComplete property which allows the user to type more letters before a word comes up.

AHMTClipboard - will show you the contents in the Windows clipboard.

AHMTColorCombo - this is a color combo box that displays the 16 default colors or all 40 predefined system colors for the user to select.

AHMTCommandLabel - this is the same as a link that you will find on the internet and it looks like a common label.
In the Object Inspector you type in the text you want in the Caption, the default is 'Home of the AHM Triton Tools', then you type in the Caption Value, the default is 'www.tritontools.com', then you set the Command, options are:
 

• runURL
• runEVENT
• runFILE
• runFTP
• runMAIL
• runNothing

TAHMControlStore - give the user an easy way to read and write to the registry or inifiles.
Some of the other AHM Triton Tools components can 'connect to this component' so that they have automatic storing of their values, these are:

 TAHMStoreCheckbox
 TAHMStoreCombobox
 TAHMStoreEdit
 TAHMStoreMemo
 TAHMStoreRadioButton

TAHMDBAscii - is a component can be used to export/import data from and to a CSV File.

TAHMDBCommandLabel - This is a lot like the TAHMCommandLabel component (See above), the difference is that this component is the Data-aware version, you can use it for displaying URLs (Internet Links) and email addresses in a database.

TAHMDBIndexLookup - you connect it to your datasource so the user can change the index of the current table by selecting the available indexes from a dropdown box.

TAHMDBLookupedit - This is the data-aware version of the Lookup Component.

TAHMDBOfficeEdit - this is the same as the TDBEdit component except that it looks like the Editbox used in MS Office 97.

TAHMDBSpinEdit - this is a nice looking data-aware version of the Spinedit component.

TAHMDBStickyLabel - this is a data-aware version of the Stickylabel.

TAHMDriveCombo - is a modern looking drive combo box, and it allows you to change a drive from a list of drives.

TAHMExplorerTree - this component will give you a proffesional Explorer tree view.

TAHMFileCombo - this combobox gives you a list of the files that are in the current directory.

TAHMFileLabel - has a displays the filename, path and image all together on one label, it also resizes its contents, depending on the screen space.

TAHMFileLookup - is an editbox that has a button that you click on to open an opendialog box and then open a file and the files name will appear in the editbox.

TAHMFolderLookup - is much the same as the TAHMFileLookup component, except it works for folders.

TAHMFontBox - this is a listbox that will let the user select a font from the list.
You can set the FontSelected in the Object Inspector and you also has FilterOptions such as:

• ShowTrueType
• ShowPostScript
• ShowRaster
• ShowOther

TAHMFormDivider - a nice looking divider with many options for different looks.
You can have a Caption on the divider.

TAHMIconCombo - you can use this component to extract an icon from a program or DLL, its a icon combobox. You change the ItemIndex and a different icon appears.

TAHMIconListbox - this is much the same as the TAHMIconCombo, but in a listbox type view.

TAHMInformationLabel - you should find this component helpful. In the Object Inspector you can change the InfoType:

• iAvailablePhysicalMemory
• iBuildNumber
• iCapsLock
• iComputerName
• iCurrentDate
• iCurrentDiskFree
• iCurrentDiskSize
• iCurrentTime
• iMemoryLoad
• iNumLock
• iOrganisationName
• iOwnerName
• iPlatformName
• iPlatformVersion
• iProcessorType
• iProgramFilesDir
• iScreenHeight
• iScreenWidth
• iScrollLock
• iSwapFileSettings
• iSwapFileSize
• iSwapFileUsage
• iSystemRoot
• iTotalPhysicalMemory
• iUsedPhysicalMemory
• iUserName

TAHMLanguageCombo - this component will a show a list of languages currently available on the pc system for selection.

TAHMLookupEdit - an editbox with buttons for lookups.

TAHMOfficeEdit - a nice Microsoft Office 97 looking editbox. The help file states:
Microsoft Office 97 compatible widget for the editbox.

TAHMPrinterCombo - a combobox with a list of your pc systems printers.

TAHMRealSpinEdit - will allow you to you to increment and decrement real numbers easily.

TAHMSpinButton - a spinbutton the user uses to increase or decrease values.

TAHMSpinEdit - a nice looking SpinEdit component.

TAHMStickyLabel - a label that will stick to other controls on your form.

TAHMVersionLabel - a component that looks like a label that will display all version related information as found in the application.
 

AHM Triton Tools 2000 - Dialog Components

 TAHMAppletDialog - an interesting component that will alow your application to open internal  Control Panel application applets. Its not hard to use and it has a nice example for you to study.

 TAHMColorPopup - this is a very nice looking ColorDialog that looks like the ones used in programs like Paint Shop Pro etc. Here is a picture of it.

 TAHMDBImageView - connect it to a datasource, then set its datafield which contains images, then call execute. This is a nice way to view a database images.

 TAHMDBMemoView - will open a new window with the contents of your database memo.

 TAHMDBPasswordDlg - this component if you want to capture a password from the user using his userinformation from the database before accessing secure processes.

Others are:

 TAHMFolderBrowser
 TAHMPageSetupDialog
 TAHMPasswordDlg
 TAHMQueryAccess
 TAHMSerialNumber
 TAHMShellAbout
 TAHMTextFileView
 TAHMTipTricks
 

AHM Triton Tools 2000 - E-Mail Components

TAHMAccountHolder - this component allows you to receive e-mail from as many accounts as you wish using the only one single TAHMPOPMail Component and one single TAHMAccountHolder.

TAHMMapiMail - this component will allow users of mapi based system to send e-mail.

TAHMPOPMail - this component is responsible for all incoming messages. It allows you to handle Pop transactions via the Internet.

TAHMQuickMail - this component will perform quick message sending from within your current application using a mapi based e-mail system.

TAHMSMTPMail - This component is inherited from TAHMMailHost. TAHMSMTPMail contains all properties and methods of the TAHMMailHost class and new functions which enable it to do SMTP Transactions with any SMTP Server.
 
 

AHM Triton Tools 2000 - Enhanced

These components are very nice and they will give your programs a very modern and fancy look.

An example is:
You can drop a AHMBackground component on a form and then drop a AHMFillBackground component on the form, in the Object Inspector change the AHMFillBackground's Align property to alClient. Then change the AHMFillBackgrounds Background property to AHMBackground1.
Then you can make changes to the AHMBackground properties in the Object Inspector to give your form different colors, you can even use an image.

You can then drop the AHMOfficeButton1 button on the form and change its Background property to AHMBackground1 and the AHMOfficeButton1 will have the same colored background. Other components on the AHM Triton Tools 2000 - Enhanced palette have the Background property as well.

The TAHMSplashScreen component makes a very nice, professional splash screen as you can see by running the TAHMSplashscreen example.

The other components are:

 TAHMArrowButton
 TAHMBackground
 TAHMButton
 TAHMCheckbox
 TAHMDBLabel
 TAHMDBNavigator
 TAHMFileLabel3D
 TAHMFillBackground
 TAHMFormSlide
 TAHMGauge
 TAHMHeader
 TAHMHeaderList
 TAHMHint
 TAHMIEButton
 TAHMImageScroller
 TAHMLabel
 TAHMOfficeButton
 TAHMPanel
 TAHMPresentation
 TAHMRadiobutton
 TAHMRoundButton
 TAHMScreenCanvas
 TAHMSplashScreen
 

AHM Triton Tools 2000 - System Components

 TAHMAppManager
 TAHMAppStarter
 TAHMControlManager
 TAHMDiskMonitor
 TAHMDisplayManager
 TAHMDriveDetails
 TAHMFileCollector
 TAHMFileDetails
 TAHMFileHolder
 TAHMFileOperator
 TAHMFontHolder
 TAHMFormExplode
 TAHMFormManager
 TAHMHotKeyHolder
 TAHMHotSpotManager
 TAHMListHolder
 TAHMLogFile
 TAHMMouseController
 TAHMMsgBoxes
 TAHMMsgBoxHolder
 TAHMMsgDlgHolder
 TAHMMultiThreader
 TAHMRASManager
 TAHMResourceDetails
 TAHMScheduler
 TAHMShellLinks
 TAHMStoreData
 TAHMSystemDetails
 TAHMSystemManager
 TAHMTextReplace
 TAHMTimeTrigger
 TAHMVersionDetails
 TAHMWaveHolder

Many of these components names speak for themselves and the best advice I can give you is, go the AHM Triton Tools web site and download the demos and examples, after you have run them I am sure you will find that these components are helpful and they will save you many hours of programming.

You can purchase two different versions of these components, one without the source code and one with the source code.
I do not recommend the version without the source code, I always prefer having the source code so that I can study the code and figure out what I can do with a component and maybe even make a few small changes to the code.

By the way Alexander Mehlhorn has been very kind by offering you a nice set of freeware components, be sure to download these as they are very helpful.