[Jaruzel]

The one thing that bugged me about Delphi apps on Windows, was that they used their own custom buttons on the forms (with little graphics of crosses and ticks etc.). I am not a Delphi programmer, but I always wondered why this was.

[pjmlp]

Because developers want to be fancy.

That was an additional custom controls library that you could enable, you could choose to use the standard L&F as well.

It was also available for the C++ products from Borland and it traces back to their first Windows 3.x compilers.

My first experience with it was in Turbo Pascal for Windows 1.5 (the last TP before Delphi was born).

Also, similar libraries existed for MFC or plain C Win32, sold by companies like ComponentOne.

[extrapickles]

Delphi made it easy as a developer to add those icons, and they had a nice standard set named for most actions you would want a user to do in a line-of-business application UI.

Also the hello world apps for Delphi had these icons everywhere so it was "just the way" you built applications using it.

[clouddrover]

It's just another button control available in Delphi's UI library so people use it.

A standard button is a TButton: http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/Libraries/Sydney/en/Vcl.StdCt...

A button with a glyph is a TBitBtn (bit meaning bitmap): http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/Libraries/Sydney/en/Vcl.Butto...

[dwd]

I always assumed it was a licensing thing where they couldn't use the MFC DLL to have the same buttons.

Made it easy to spot a Delphi app.