README

 FluentToggleSwitch-VCL

TFluentToggleSwitch is a Windows 11 toggle switch for the VCL. It looks and behaves like the one in Windows 11, and draws itself with GDI+ instead of wrapping a system control, so it looks the same on Windows 7, 8, 10 and 11.

Why TFluentToggleSwitch?

The VCL has no toggle switch that looks current: Vcl.WinXCtrls.TToggleSwitch shows its age, and the third-party ones bring dependencies with them.

What you get:

• the WinUI 3 design: a pill-shaped track, a thumb that grows under the pointer and stretches when pressed, the timings of the WinUI template
• the Windows accent colour, followed while the program runs
• mouse, keyboard and touch: click, drag the thumb, press the space bar
• a caption on either side and a header above or below, with an accelerator (&Sound makes Alt+S work the switch)
• a read-only state, a focus ring by the Windows rules, colours to override one by one
• right-to-left forms: BiDiMode mirrors the switch, thumb, caption and header
• correct on high DPI, and after a form moves between monitors of different scale

What you won't deal with:

• dependencies beyond the RTL, the VCL and GDI+
• a system control underneath, and the way it changes from one Windows to the next
• a timer ticking while nothing moves

Installation

Delphi 13 Florence, Win32 and Win64, from the 32-bit IDE or the 64-bit one.

1. Unpack a release where it can stay, keeping the version in the path: FluentToggleSwitch-VCL\<version>. The next upgrade is then a one-line edit.
2. Add its source directory to Tools | Options | Language | Delphi | Library, once for every platform you build for.
3. Open FluentToggleSwitch.groupproj, build FluentToggleSwitchR, then build and install FluentToggleSwitchD.

TFluentToggleSwitch appears on the Fluent page of the palette. Only the designer needs the packages: a project that creates the switch from code compiles with step 2 alone.

Open the demo only after that. If the IDE reports Class TFluentToggleSwitch not found when a form opens, the design-time package is not installed in this IDE: answer Cancel — Ignore strips the switches from the form.

Upgrading from an older release: see CHANGELOG, which says what to remove first.

note: 12.1 Athens can build the packages from packages\*.dpk; that route is not tested here.

Basic usage

uses
  Fluent.ToggleSwitch;

Toggle := TFluentToggleSwitch.Create(Self);
Toggle.Parent := Self;
Toggle.ShowText := True;
Toggle.TextOn := 'Enabled';
Toggle.TextOff := 'Disabled';
Toggle.OnChange := HandleChange;

• OnChange fires on every change of the value, from code as well as from the user
• OnClick fires only when the user toggles the switch, after the value has moved
• HeaderText and ShowHeader add a header; the control grows and moves itself so the switch stays where you put it
• every colour starts at clDefault, which leaves it to the theme; assigning one paints that colour in every interaction state
• ReadOnly shows a value the user may not change, without greying it out

Full reference: docs/API.md.

Things to know

• the packages keep their .dcu beside themselves; your project compiles the component from source under its own compiler settings
• a built .bpl carries the compiler version in its name, FluentToggleSwitchR370.bpl under Florence; the .dcp keeps the plain name
• changing the component means rebuilding both packages and restarting the IDE: the design-time package has the runtime one as a dependency

Project structure

source/     the component, and a design-time unit with the palette registration
packages/   the runtime package and the design-time one
resources/  the palette icon and the artwork it came from
demo/       a form showing the switch in its variants
tests/      DUnitX tests with a memory leak monitor of their own
docs/       the API reference and screenshots

Licence

MIT. See LICENSE.