Creating components in Delphi is a fairly simple task as long as you understand the workings of Object Oriented Programming. Since components are classes, most of the tips and techniques apply to both worlds, but there are a few gotcha's for components, since they descend from a particular type of class, TComponent. Components divide into three main huge categories: non-visual, visual and half-way. Non-visual components usually descend directly from TComponent or some other class that will ultimately descend from it, don't have a paint mechanism of any kind and are identifiable only through their icon. Visual components, instead, will mostly ultimately descend from one of these: