What is the ideal way to modify sub control styles in a custom firemonkey control?

Question

I am attempting to develop my first proper custom control for the Firemonkey framework and have ran into what may possibly be an obvious (or not) solution.

Inside my Firemonkey control I have declared FPanel: TPanel; which is then created in the constructor and freed in the destructor. The panel is created along with my control when I add it to a new Multi-Device Form without any problems.

By default the TPanel has borders around the sides of the control which I do not need in my control.

So my question is, what is the ideal way to remove the borders of a TPanel which is child to my custom control? I could not see an obvious property to change, unless I am mistaking I believe we must modify the style of the panel which I assume would be done via a TStyleBook .

Am I right then in thinking that I need to add a TStyleBook to my control, and from there add the panel to the Style book and modify it this way? Unless I am missing something this seems like a lot of extra work for what should be a very quick and simple change.

Assuming this is the correct way, is there an example of modifying a TStyleBook through code?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Because all Firemonkey controls can be parents, one way is to not use TPanel at all and instead replace it with another Firemonkey control such as the TRectangle shape.

The TRectangle shape can then be customised directly through its properties to remove the border which can be achieved by setting the Corners and Sides to False.

Additionally if you don't require any borders whatsoever then the TLayout control behaves just like a TPanel but without the borders.