Thinking Out Loud

April 2010 - Posts

• TechEd 2010 New Orleans

  As all of you probably know, Tech-Ed North America will be hosted by the great city of New Orleans in June. Unlike previous years, where our focus has been to invest heavily in the conference through sponsorships and elaborate presentations within our exhibit booth, Tech-Ed New Orleans has given us the opportunity to do something far more important and lasting - help families reclaim the city which was nearly taken from them by Hurricane Katrina. To that end, we're working directly with Habitat for Humanity to build a home for a deserving family in New Orleans and are organizing other events to help raise funds for charitable community organizations in the city over the next six weeks. If you are not familiar with Habitat for Humanity and the great work they do, you may want to review the following video:     Please keep tuned to our Blogs and follow us on Facebook and Twitter from now to June 7 to learn about ways in which you can participate alongside DevExpress as we do our small part in rebuilding the Big Easy.   And remember..."As the purse is emptied, the heart is filled." Victor Hugo Posted Apr 27 2010, 02:07 PM by Ray Navasarkian (DevExpress) with no comments Filed under: TechEd, Rebuild, New Orleans

• WPF Grid - Design Time and Misc Enhancements - v2010 vol 1

  DevExpress WPF Data Grid Design-Time Enhancements  in DXperience v2010 vol 1 With this release, our WPF Grid control provides enhanced design-time support within Visual Studio 2010 and Blend. Among these enhancements is the Quick Customization Panel that allows you to quickly access required objects, change view type, populate a view with columns and assign column data editors. As demonstrated in the image above, you can now click column headers to access column settings. You can also resize and reorder columns, specify their sort order or move them to the Group Box panel to apply data grouping. This is all accomplished using the same mechanisms available to end-users at runtime. Additional design-time capabilities introduced in DXperience v2010 vol 1 include the following: Specifying the WPF data grid's filter using the Filter Editor Specifying a column's unbound expression using the WPF Expression Editor Assigning a custom type as the WPF grid control's design-time data source. The grid will determine columns types and will allow you to populate the view with all available columns. All appropriate entries will be listed in the FieldName property editor and correct data source information will be provided for the Filter Criteria Builder and Expression Editor dialogs.   Miscellaneous Enhancements Your End-users can now select individual cells or cell blocks. Selected cell content can be copied onto the clipboard and then pasted to other applications such as Microsoft® Excel® worksheets. Data editing support is now available in server mode New editor controls shipping in the DXEditors Library - List Box, Checked List, Radio Group, Progress Bar, Marquee Bar, Track Bar and Zoom Bar - can now be used within grid cells Row indicator bar can now be used to select rows and cells Performance improvements - the grid's visual tree is now only re-built if data is re-grouped New Column Header Menu items allowing you to specify Group Intervals and Fixed Style for columns. Grid columns and their edit settings have been added to the grid's logical tree. This allows all binding types to be used for all column properties (using data context, element name, etc.) You can assign dynamic or static resource values to bindable properties.   Posted Apr 22 2010, 11:59 AM by Ray Navasarkian (DevExpress) with no comments Filed under: WPF, Grid, v2010.1, blend, visual studio 2010

• Rich Edit Controls - WinForms and Silverlight - v2010 vol 1

  The DevExpress Rich Edit controls for both WinForms and Silverlight will ship with some important new features. Beta Support for Tables You can now create new tables, add and remove rows, load documents containing tables and modify data placed into table cells. Since this will be the first beta of table support, we will offer limited table editing capabilities within the UI. There are no built-in commands for merging, splitting, inserting colums, and modifying cells properties. We can, however, perform formatting of complex tables and read tables stored in files (in any supported file format). The Rich Edit Controls can also edit cells contents, navigate through cells, and support nested tables. WinForms Rich Edit Control Silverlight Rich Edit Control Header and Footer Support Rich Editor controls fully support Header and Footer editing. You can provide common headers and footers for all pages within a document or you can specify different content for odd/even pages and change the first page’s header and footer individually. Both WinForms and Silverlight editors now ship with built-in toolbars and Ribbon groups allowing you to easily embed a Header/Footer editing UI into your editor. WinForms Rich Edit Control Silverlight Rich Edit Control Posted Apr 08 2010, 02:29 AM by Ray Navasarkian (DevExpress) with 5 comment(s) Filed under: Silverlight, RTF, WinForms, v2010.1, Rich Edit Control

• WinForms Office 2010 Theme and Ribbon (Skin) - v2010 vol 1

  A couple of weeks ago, I posted a couple of images of our upcoming WinForms Office 2010 Skin. That image demonstrated our WinForms RichEdit control...Here's a look at how other controls look when this theme is applied. For those who are wondering about the application menu. We now have an application menu content property - if you assign a menu to the property, you'll be able to maintain Office 2007 behaviors. If you assign any other control to the property, you'll have an Office 2010 full page view with the control embedded into it (for instance, place anything on a panel and then set the panel as the dropdown control). The following image demonstrates how this will look at runtime - note the orange effect in the right-bottom corner - it is a DevExpress Skin element. It will appear automatically (if not overlapped by non-transparent items).     Posted Apr 08 2010, 02:14 AM by Ray Navasarkian (DevExpress) with 7 comment(s) Filed under: Skins, v2010.1, Ribbon, Themes, Office 2010, Application Menu

• WPF Pivot Table-Grid - v2010 vol 1

  In DXperience v2009 vol 3, we introduced our WPF Pivot Table control - with this release, we've extended its feature set to mirror those found in its WinForms and ASP.NET counterparts. New features available in DXperience v2010 vol 1 include: Three New Microsoft Office Style Visual Themes Integration with DevExpress Charting for WPF Built-in Prefilter dialog MS Excel Style Customization Form Cell Selection and Clipboard Support Multiple Totals per Group Field Grouping and Custom Field Grouping Custom Summaries Unbound Columns Saving and Restoring Layout Sorting Columns and Rows by Corresponding Summary Values Context Menu In addition to the features listed above, we now allow you to create compact layouts for hierarchical pivot table row values (this capability is also available in the WinForms and ASP.NET versions of this control). For those who want more...we now allow you to use the DevExpress Expression Editor to specify summary value calculation formulas. The editor dialog allows you to construct your expression using other summary values. This eliminates the need to write code for complex summary calculation scenarios and also gives end-users control over individual calculations, Posted Apr 06 2010, 06:14 PM by Ray Navasarkian (DevExpress) with 11 comment(s) Filed under: WPF, v2010.1, Pivot, DXPivotGrid

• WPF Ribbon Toolbar Control - v2010 vol 1

  DXperience v2010 vol 1 will ship with a new WPF Ribbon Control. The control's feature set is nearly identical to that of its WinForms Ribbon counterpart. Key features include: Application Button and Application Menu User-customizable Quick Access Toolbar that can be displayed above or below the Ribbon Collapsing Ribbon by double-clicking tab headers or via the built-in context menu In-Ribbon and Dropdown Galleries Automatic layout adaptation when resizing the container Integrated editors from the DXEditors Library Dropdown menu items Check and radio group items   Posted Apr 06 2010, 04:48 PM by Ray Navasarkian (DevExpress) with 11 comment(s) Filed under: WPF, v2010.1, DXBars, Toolbar, Menu, Ribbon

• WPF Grid Expression Editor for Unbound Fields - v2010 vol 1

  The DevExpress WPF Expression Editor is yet another UI enhancement that was ported from our WinForms product line to WPF. With this dialog, you can visually build expressions that use field values, constants, numerous predefined functions and operators. These expressions can be used to calculate unbound field values. As you might expect, you can also enable the end-user customization of expressions. Posted Apr 06 2010, 04:40 PM by Ray Navasarkian (DevExpress) with 1 comment(s) Filed under: WPF, DXGrid, Grid, v2010.1, Expression Editor

• WPF Grid Filter Editor - v2010 vol 1

  DXperience v2010 vol 1, extends the capabilities of the DevExpress WPF Grid Control with a new Filter Editor. Like its WinForms and ASP.NET counterparts, the control allows your end-users to visually construct advanced filters with ease. To reduce the amount of code you need to write, the control was engineered to automatically determine associated fields and types in order to provide appropriate data field names and editor types when generating filter conditions.   Posted Apr 06 2010, 04:31 PM by Ray Navasarkian (DevExpress) with 8 comment(s) Filed under: WPF, DXGrid, Filter, Grid, v2010.1