What's new in XE7 for VCL developers? And what about other recent versions?

Delphi XE7 (and C++Builder XE7, for those using the C++ language in RAD Studio) has a significant number of new VCL features, even if there is only one new VCL-specific component, TJumpList. There are many other components you can use in VCL applications, from TFDBatchMove in FireDAC to the TBluetoothLE component in the RTL.

I'm writing a document with a description of some of those features, focused on developers who haven't updated recently and might thing that all new features in Delphi are for mobile only. This is the list I have in mind, more than willing to get more ideas, of course (and I'm not including IDE new features all developers can benefit from):

VCL styles support, enhanced in particular in XE6 with menu styling (and including Windows 8 Modern UI styling for VCL applications) The Parallel Programming Library, which is a significant extension to the threading support Delphi has had for long time The Taskbar and JumpList components Several language and RTL improvements (including intrinsic type helpers, easier dynamic arrays, many new units, RTL optimizations, and more) VCL fixes and improvements, like the update to the TWebBrowser component Sensor and Bluetooth components for interacting with the world (with the location sensor, for example) and with nearby gadgets App tethering support with automatic discovery and peer-to-peer communication, to extend VCL applications with mobile companion apps... and even let VCL applications communicate directly among themselves The addition of the FireDAC universal data access library and its improvements over the last few releases Ability to customize the behavior of dynamic and persistent fields, including calculated fields, in all TDataSet classes The REST client library and the BaaS components Apache support in WebBroker

Did I miss anything? And which of these features do you think is more relevant? On my side I'm going to write some technical blog posts about these areas of the VCL worth an update to XE7. Some related, general information is also avaialble in the page www.embarcadero.com/products/rad-studio/modernize-vcl-apps.

(PS: If you upgrade to XE7 right now you should still benefit from the 10% discount, see http://www.embarcadero.com/radoffer )