ANN: Imminent alpha release of Portal Builder for Delphi

Transportal Services is pleased to announce the imminent release of the
first public alpha version of Portal Builder, a new web development
component suite for Delphi.



Portal Builder Features



Panel based page updates. When viewing a Portal Builder page with an HTML 4
compliant browser, only the TpbPanel's that have changed get updated. This
is the default behaviour and is designed for IE 5.5+, Opera 7+, Safari and
Firefox. Older browsers such as Opera 6 are detected and Portal Builder
switches down into full page refreshing, like most other web pages.



WYSIWYG page design. We are striving to make the design time view of your
page as close as possible to the HTML rendered version (when viewed in IE.
Other browsers may differ).



TpbLabel has design time support for bold, italic and underline HTML tags,
allowing you to see what it will look like at run time. This makes lining up
controls less like guess work. It also has support for <ONCLICK>click
me</ONCLICK> tags, allowing you to use the new TpbLabel.OnWordClick event.
This is also rendered at design time.



TpbFrame support. This is a real TFrame descendant, not a TFrame with a
panel on it.



TpbForm support. You can assign a parent to a form and .Show it inside a
TpbPanel. Just like a normal Delphi application.



Dynamic controls. Create Portal Builder controls on the fly, just like a
normal Delphi application.



Minimal HTML output. We try to ensure that only the minimum amount of HTML
and Javascript is rendered. If you see a way of reducing the amount of HTML
rendered, please let us know.



Write, compile, run and debug ISAPI DLLs from within the IDE. The Portal
Builder Application wizard allows you to create a new Portal Builder project
and embed it into local IIS automatically, allowing you to run and debug the
same DLL that you would deploy. No need to change any settings or
configuration options when deploying to your live server.



In built state management. Each session is given a GUID which is used on
each submit to locate it.



Advanced support pages and forums. Instantly see the current status of
Portal Builder, any browser compatibility issues, latest bugs and their
status. If a user reports a bug in the forum, our support engineers can
easily create a bug report from it and attach it to that post. That post
will then always show the current status of that bug. No need for the user
to add the bug to a separate reporting system, we will do it for you.



Why create another web development component suite? Aren't there others
available?

Yes there are, and I am sure that they all have there place. But we became
frustrated over lack of "paid for" support, so we decided to write our own.
In Delphi, of course. :-)



What Delphi versions will be supported?

We intend to release the alpha version in Delphi 6 and Delphi 7. Delphi 2005
seems a little unstable at this time, but support for that version will be
in a future release. It is unknown at this time whether a Delphi 5 version
will be available, if you are interested, please let us know.



Are any websites currently using Portal Builder?

Yes there are a number of sites written in Portal Builder. Two sites you may
want to take a look at are;

www.MediaMerchant.net and www.Suitables.net. And of course the Transportal
Services website is written in Portal Builder, www.TransportalServices.com.



Why release an alpha version?

To be honest we need feedback and input to help shape and improve Portal
Builder. The component set is far from complete for version 1, we want
Portal Builder to become what our customers want.



How much will Portal Builder be when version 1 is released?

For the first 30 days after release we intend to offer Portal Builder for
sale at £99 per developer licence, before reverting to its standard price of
£149.



For more information, please visit www.transportalservices.com.



Many thanks

John Hair

Transportal Services


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