Are you building a financial chart with Silverlight? Do you need to see your volume bars along with your latest set of stock charts? Maybe you want to plot 4 different panes of data each with their own axis and scales. Coming in DXperience 2011 volume 2 you will be able to do that and more with our new support for Multiple Panes in both Silverlight and WPF. Let’s take a look and see what it looks like.
In the above image you are seeing 3 separate panes all sharing on common X axis. One of the really cool things about this is that it is all declarative. Meaning you define and assign the panes in XAML, the example below shows you exactly how this is done:
<dxc:XYDiagram2D.PanesPanel>
<ItemsPanelTemplate>
<Grid>
<Grid.RowDefinitions>
<RowDefinition Height="2*"/>
<RowDefinition Height="*"/>
<RowDefinition Height="1.7*"/>
</Grid.RowDefinitions>
</Grid>
</ItemsPanelTemplate>
</dxc:XYDiagram2D.PanesPanel>
<dxc:XYDiagram2D.DefaultPane>
<dxc:Pane x:Name="temperaturePane" Grid.Row="0">
<dxc:Pane.AxisXScrollBarOptions>
<dxc:ScrollBarOptions Visible="False" />
</dxc:Pane.AxisXScrollBarOptions>
</dxc:Pane>
</dxc:XYDiagram2D.DefaultPane>
<dxc:XYDiagram2D.Panes>
<dxc:Pane x:Name="pressurePane" Grid.Row="1">
<dxc:Pane.AxisXScrollBarOptions>
<dxc:ScrollBarOptions Visible="False" />
</dxc:Pane.AxisXScrollBarOptions>
</dxc:Pane>
<dxc:Pane x:Name="humidityPane" Grid.Row="2"/>
</dxc:XYDiagram2D.Panes>
Something that is interesting about the code above is you can take advantage of the XAML you already know by defining the base layout using a Grid alternately you could also use a StackPanel, Canvas, or UniformGrid. Because we support the standard XAML layout controls this gives you a lot of leeway in defining the panel structure. In addition to the horizontal panes you see here you could easily set up panes vertically as well. Just because you have multiple panes doesn’t mean you are going to loose the ability to have multiple Axes, each pane will still be able to take advantage of both multiple X and Y Axes.
Scrolling and Zooming is also fully supported by each individual pane. As the above code sample shows you can easily add, remove or modify the scroll bars for each individual pane by using the ScrollBarOptions.Visible = False|True. This also gives you the flexibility to use one scroll bar to scroll all panes (as in the above screen shot) or you can have a scroll bar for each pane.
The last thing we need to think about is appearance and you can rest assured that the appearance is completely under your control as well since each pane also has properties that let you adjust the template, background, and scroll bar settings to name a few.
Conclusion
We have a lot of new features coming to you in DXperience 2011 volume 2. Stay tuned here to get the latest announcements and to learn how to better take advantage of your DevExpress Charting Suites. As always if you have any questions or comments please leave them below!