Blogs

Thinking Out Loud

  • WinForms and ASP.NET Training Classes in Germany

         

    Oliver Sturm will be conducting two training courses in the coming months - one targeting DevExpress ASP.NET Controls and the other DevExpress WinForms Controls. Both events will be held in Germany.

    Expert DXperience ASP.NET - March 1-2 2012 (2 days) - Early bird pricing available until February 1st 2012!

    Expert DXperience WinForms - April 25-27 2012 (3 days) - Early bird pricing available until March 14 2012!
     

    To learn more and to reserve your seat, visit Oliver's website at:

    http://www.sturmnet.org/blog/2012/01/09/new-devexpress-classes-announced-for 

  • WPF Map Control - it's FREE to all MSDN Subscribers

         

    We've been receiving lots of questions on our WPF Map Control and I wanted to take a minute to remind all of you that the control is free to all MSDN Subscribers

    The link to MSDN is: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/ 

    Look for the banner that says: "Unwrap your map"

    WPF Map Control - FREE

    To learn more about the WPF Map Control and review its runtime capabilities, watch the following video:

    http://www.youtube.com/user/DeveloperExpress?feature=mhee#p/u/1/Gkf4aoXkv0o

    We also offer a Silverlight version of the Map Control (though its not free, it does ship as part of our subscriptions). We've got an introductory tutorial video available on YouTube.

    http://www.youtube.com/user/DeveloperExpress?feature=mhee#p/u/23/zsdwEVBbHg0

     

     

  • Introducing DXv2 from DevExpress

         

    Today we released DXv2 to the world and delivered the next generation of development tools from DevExpress. This marks a renewed commitment by DevExpress to help you bridge the gap from the technologies you are using today to the opportunities presented by the technologies of the future. The entire DevExpress team could not be more excited to bring these tools to you.

     

    Below I will outline some of the big investment areas for DXv2, but wanted to take a moment to remind you of some things that will never change:

    • DevExpress remains committed to unparalled customer service and support. We are here to help you today, tomorrow and always.
    • DevExpress remains committed to releasing high quality products, when they’re ready. We don’t rush to deliver but instead work to release the technology when it’s perfect and not until.
    • DevExpress remains committed to supporting a breadth of platforms. There is noise in the market today about the new technologies, and we’re excited about them too, but we also realize that many of you have made big investments in existing applications and technologies and you will continue to remain invested in them. We will be there as long as you are.

    What’s New in DXv2
    We identified three major shifts happening in the marketplace and focused our development efforts around them.

    Touch.  One key piece of feedback that we’ve heard from you is the critical need to support touch interfaces. We’ve seen a consistent shift in the way that end users experience technology. From touch-based Automatic Teller Machines (ATMs) to touch-based airport-kiosks for checking into a flight, consumers are growing increasingly accustomed to touch. Microsoft’s focus on touch is significant with Windows 8 and its new Metro user interface. So in this release, we’ve enabled touch support across our platforms and enabled WinForms, WPF and Silverlight developers to build Metro-inspired applications with ease. At the same time, we recognize that many developers have to start considerinis isg iPads that are showing up in the workplace. So with our touch support in ASP.NET platform, we can help Visual Studio developers build solutions for iOS as well.

    Stunning Applications. As end users enjoy rich, immersive applications at home, their expectation for the kinds of experiences they have at work has changed. It’s no longer good enough to build functional applications. And so we’ve focused on enabling the “wow” factor for your applications. Stunning applications require completeness and consistency of a platform. A beautiful grid control, for example, that is surrounded by other controls simply won’t be perceived as a stunning application. So we focused on ensuring that each platform (Silverlight, ASP.NET, Windows Forms, and WPF) had a complete and consistent set of controls.  That is necessary but not sufficient. Applications rarely live in isolation. A Windows Form application needs to work in an integrated way with an ASP.NET or WPF application. These applications need to look consistent on the platforms they target and so we've worked hard to ensure that our controls are themed and styled appropriately. Additionally, we've scheduled webinars throughout December to unveil new design options so you can re-imagine your next application using the themes we're building today.

    And with the new map controls shipping in WPF and Silverlight, you can now add a very rich location-based experience to your applications. As part of our relationship with Microsoft, we’ve decided to provide our WPF map control free-of-charge to all MSDN subscribers. So head on over to MSDN and “unwrap your map” for the holidays.

    Your Productivity. Accelerated. This isn’t new but the productivity bar just keeps getting higher. Every day, we wake up trying to come up with ways to make you more successful in writing applications. It is our passion. First, we challenged ourselves to provide quicker ways to get to the point in the development lifecycle where you could focus on writing code. Visual Studio is incredible but it starts you off with a blank form. Getting the user interface pulled together can be a daunting first step. So we came up with the “Miracle Minute.” In about a minute, we believe you should be able to have your user interface wired up so that you can start getting down to the business of writing your code. You’ll see our Miracle Minute videos on our new website and we’ll be adding more videos in the future.
    Our existing XAF customers know that it provides the critical building blocks that reduce the amount of “grunt” work required to get an app running. Why should you have to spend time worrying about security, workflow, reporting and other core functionality that is important but probably not differentiated in your application? And with this release XAF provides big performance improvements for AJAX apps and provides better support for n-tier application development.
    Finally, we’re very excited about the work we have done with CodeRush. We’re introducing a technology in this release that is new in the industry: duplicate code detection and consolidation. Most applications are made up of lots of reused functionality that has been copied and pasted all over your source code. The problem here is that now you have the same logic that exists throughout. If there is a bug, it’s in lots of places. If there is a code change required, you need to do it in lots of places. And of course your code is now much bigger than it needs to be. And new developers trying to get up to speed on your code base have more code to read and understand. Duplicate code detection solves this problem by analyzing your source code in the background and then enabling you to consolidate that code to a central location, increasing the quality of your code base. It’s pretty amazing.

    Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg. There is so much to this release. I encourage you to see what’s new and then go and try it for yourself. I can’t wait to see what you do with DXv2.

    Let’s see what develops.

    Ray Navasarkian

    President
    DevExpress 

     

  • Two Days @ TechEd Russia 2011!

         

    Tech·Ed Russia was held at the Crocus Expo, International Exhibition Center in Moscow on November 9-10th 2011. We were proud to sponsor the event and also had a booth where we demonstrated our products and chatted with countless customers. As always, it was great to meet so many of you in person and to hear how you are using our products.

    As you might expect, there was significant interest in the new features coming in DXperience v2011 vol 2 and of course in release datesWinking smile. The release is right around the corner and we expect you'll be as excited about the features we'll introduce as those who saw the demonstrations in our booth.

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    On the last day we raffled a couple of DXperience and CodeRush licenses as well as an Xbox:

    P1000527P1000542

    Thanks to the organizers for a great event and thanks to all of you for stopping by our booth to chat with us and view all that DevExpress has to offer.
    We had great time here and we are looking forward to seeing you next year!

  • WinForms Metro - How It Made Us Re-Think Our WinForms Application Skin Delivery Model

         

    As you already know by now, DXperience v2011 vol 2 will ship with a Metro-style WinForms skin named Metropolis (yes, we'll be following up with Peter Thorpe who originally suggested the name so we can get him some DX swag). Because this new skin might be a frequently used theme, it makes total sense to add it to the assembly that is automatically referenced by all WinForms apps that use our Controls. This means we need to extend Utils.dll, which already includes numerous skins…

    The need to extend Utils.dll forced our team to re-evaluate the way in which we package WinForms Skins.

    Presently, we have three separate assemblies – Utils, BonusSkins and OfficeSkins. Only the first is referenced by default when you drop our components onto a form. This means that to apply an Office 2010 style, you have to reference an additional assembly. Some of you know that when we add a new skin, it gets placed in the BonusSkins assembly and as a result, the new skin may never be used if your application does not reference the BonusSkins DLL.

    To make things more straightforward, we are going to place all the latest and most frequently-used skins into to the Utils assembly so that these skins are available in every application by default. "Frequently-used” themes refer to those that emulate the latest Microsoft apps – including Office 2010, Windows 7, Visual Studio 2010 and, the newly-implemented Metro look and feel.

    The following image shows what you can expect in Utils.dll v2011 vol 2.

    WinForms Skin Assembly

    All other skins will be available via the BonusSkins assembly. We'll thus go from 3 to 2 assemblies.

    The upside is a better organized and lighter default assembly. The obvious disadvantage of this change is that you might need to check your project when upgrading to v2011 vol 2 to make certain that the appropriate DLLs are referenced.
                                                   

  • ASP.NET CheckBox List Control (coming in v2011 vol 2)

         

    There are only so many things you can do on a flight…my favorite being to sleep.  Before I pass out on my way to NYC for our Mixer, here’s one more new DevExpress control for ASP.NET.

    One of the objectives of our ASP.NET team in this release cycle was to develop a few “real-world” demos…among them an Outlook Style Web Mail Client.

    Even though we had previously implemented multi-select via checkboxes in the ASPxListBox, during development of these demo applications, it became evident that we needed to create a new Control - the ASP.NET CheckBox List Control.

    Similar to our ASPxRadioButtonList, this new control uses check boxes instead of radio buttons and like the ASPxRadioButonList, it supports RepeatLayout (Table or Flow), RepeatDirection (Horizontal, Vertical), and can arrange items across multiple columns (RepeatColumns).

    ASP.NET CheckBox List

     

  • MVC Pivot Grid Control (coming in v2011 vol 2)

         

    If you are using our Business Intelligence Controls and Libraries, then you know that our award-winning Pivot Grid Control presently supports the WinForms, ASP.NET Web Forms, and WPF Platforms. With the release of DXperience v2011 vol 2, we'll extend support to both Silverlight and MVC.

    The following is a few of the features you can expect once we ship our new MVC Pivot Grid Control:

    • Transform Table Data into Cross-Tab Reports
    • OLAP Data Source Support
    • Integration with DevExpress MVC Charting Extension
    • Data Grouping
    • Hierarchical Data Display
    • Automatic and Manually Calculated Totals
    • Sort Data and Display Top Rows
    • Integrated End-User Data Filtering
    • Data Export Options

    MVC Pivot Grid Control

     

  • New WPF and Silverlight Themes (coming in v2011 vol 2)

         

    DXperience v2011 vol 2 will bring those of you targeting the WPF Platform a brand new Theme Editor and 2 new WPF Themes - emulating the Windows 7 and Office 2010 Black Look & Feel. As always, a picture is worth a thousand words...

    The DevExpres Seven Theme 

    WPF Theme - Windows 7 
    WPF Data Grid Control
    WPF Theme - Windows 7
    WPF Rich Text Editor
    WPF Theme - Windows 7
    WPF Dock Window Library

    The Office 2010 Black Theme 

    WPF Theme - Office 2010 Black
    WPF Data Grid Control
    WPF Theme - Office 2010 Black
    WPF Rich Text Editor
    WPF Theme - Office 2010 Black
    WPF Dock Window Library

     

     

  • Two Days @ BASTA!

         

    It's day four at BASTA!, which for exhibitors is the day three and also the last day. Thanks for stopping by to chat with us and view all the great features coming in DXperience v2011 vol 2. (Sorry we didn't learn German before coming here :-) ) To those interested, I've been showing our not-yet-published What's New in v2011 vol 2 file and you still have time to take a look. If you can't make it, some of the information is already posted in our blogs.

    Our second DXperience Universal raffle has drawn even more attention than the first, including the cameraman - so the footage is not going to be only on our website, but I guess somewhere on BASTA.net as well.

    The evening expo receptions have included some Germany's best beer and saugages...Thanks to the Basta Team for a great event. We had great time here and we are looking forward to our return to Germany.

     

    And by the way, if you need a localized UI, don't forget that a lot of our products have already been translated to different languages and we have localized assemblies published on our website. This link just helped one of our customers to translate his entire application into German with one simple re-build. 

    Thanks for your continued support. See you @ BASTA! next year!

     

  • Join Us in NYC

         

    DevExpress Developer Mixer at La Pomme in New York CityDave, Azret, Rachel and I are flying into NYC and will be hosting our DevExpress Developer Mixer on Thursday, September 29th @ 8pm. If you have not yet registered to join us at the Mixer, click the image to the right to be directed to the event registration page...We look forward to seeing all of you there to discuss our plans for DXperience v2011 vol 2, Win8 and the Metro UI and of course to hear about your business, requirements and needs.

    Over the weekend, Azret and Rachel Reese will stay in town for the NYC Code Camp. If you are not able to attend our Mixer, make sure you catch up with us at the Code Camp.

    See you in NY!

  • Silverlight Report Designer and End-User Report Wizard (coming in v2011 vol 2)

         

    With the upcoming release of DXperience v2011 vol 2, XtraReports for Silverlight will feature a new WYSIWYG End-User Report Designer for in-browser report editing.

    Silverlight End-User Report Designer 

    The report designer will allow your users to:

    • Edit static content.
    • Re-position controls via drag & drop.
    • Change control size using the mouse.

    In addition to the WYSISWYG Report Designer, v2011 vol 2 will ship with a new Silverlight Report Wizard...allowing your end-users to create new reports using a straightforward wizard interface.

    Silverlight Report Wizard

    Here are a few screenshots of the Silverlight Report Wizard in action...Obviously, one of the steps involves selection of the Table or View to use as the basis of the Silverlight Report...

    Silverlight Report Select Table or View

    Users must then choose the columns to display within the report. 

    Silverlight Reports Select Columns 

    They'll then move to creating the groups...

    Silverlight Report Wizard Create Groups

    Choose the appropriate Report Layout

    Silverlight Report Wizard Layout

    And after the Report's Style and  Title is specified, they'll be able to render the Report within the browser ...

    Silverlight Report in the Browser 

     

     

  • ASP.NET Outlook Style Demo Application

         

    In the next release, we'll be providing all of our ASP.NET users with a few new demo applications - among them will be a new Outlook Style Web Client. Hopefully you'll be able to use and or extend the capabilities of these applications in your next project...Here are a few screenshots of this app...(I'd give you a link to the actual demos, but we still have a bit of work remaining).

    ASP.NET Outlook Style Email Client

    ASP.NET Outlook Style Scheduler Client 

  • Silverlight Calendar and Date Navigator Control (coming in v2011 vol 2)

         

     We'll be describing some of the capabilities of our upcomingn Silverlight Scheduler Control shortly, but in the meantime, here's a short description of another new control for the Silverlight Platform - The DevExpress Silverlight Calendar.

    I won't get into explaining what you can do with the control, as I think that is obvious, but we have prepared a short animation to describe some of its features (view animation

    Silverlight Calendar Date Navigator Control 

    Here are a few of the features you can expect from the DevExpress Silverlight Calendar Navigator Control once we release DXperience v2011 vol 2: 

    • Multiple On-screen Monthly or Yearly Calendars (you can explicitly specify the numbmer of calendar rows and columns)
    • Multiple Calendar Views (Month, Year and Range of Years)
    • Navigation Pane (displayed at the top allowing you to move forward and back through months/years)
    • Three Built-in Selection Modes (single day, multiple day or Outlook style selection)
    • Week Numbers
    • Holidays and Special Days
    • Current Date Indication
    • Optional Today Button
  • WinForms Pivot Grid Control Enhancements (coming in v2011 vol 2)

         

    With this release, we'll be extending the capabilities of our WinForms Pivot Grid with the following new features:

    To improve easy-of-use, filter drop-downs within the DevExpress WinForms Pivot are now able to ignore field values that cannot be displayed because of filters applied to other fields. (view animation to learn more)

    WinForms Pivot Grid and Table Control 

    To facilitate and improve the way in which end-users construct filters, the WinForms Pivot Grid will include a toolbar designed to unify control over all aspects of the filter. This includes settings and commands you may be familiar with (like filter type setting or invert filter command), as well as the newly introduced Display Only Available Items.

    WinForms Pivot Grid Filter Toolbar
     

     

  • WinForms Picture Edit Enhancements (coming in v2011 vol 2)

         

    This release of DXperience v2011 vol 2 will include minor additions to our WinForms Picture Edit control.

    Scrolling Large Images - this new feature allows you to activate scrollbars within the Picture Edit and or enable image scrolling via mouse drag:

    WinForms Picture Image Edit Scrollbars

    Zooming Large Images - this new feature allows you to zoom into and out of an image via the CTRL+Mouse Wheel shortcut or the context menu:  

    WinForms Picture Image Edit Zoom 

     


     

     

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