Thinking Out Loud

Over the years, many of you have asked us to introduce Rich Text Editing capabilities within the XtraGrid Suite for WinForms.

The good news is that we snuck this feature into DXperience v2009 vol  1.3 (the bad news is that none of us blogged about it)

If you've not yet had the opportunity to review its capabilities, feel free to kick it around and as always provide us with feedback and let us know if it will address your business requirements.

I wanted to briefly show you a few of the things we're developing for AgRichEdit and XtraRichEdit (DXperience v2009 vol 2)...In particular, the ability to open and save HTML documents and Save to docx format.

WinForms File Open Dialog (note the HTML file import option)

Windows and Silverlight File Save Dialog (note the ability to save to both HTML and docx formats)

On a side note - here's an image of the our Silverlight Rich Text Edit running outside the browser.

Finally, many of you will ask...we plan on introducing "field" support in v2009 vol 2 which will move us closer to supporting mail merge functionality. Table support is also planned (read only in v2009 vol 2 and full support in vol 3).

In our continuing effort to address your business needs, we will be introducing a number of new Skins/Themes in the next major release of DXperience.

They will include the following:

The Darkroom

Windows 7

High Contrast

Something we call "Sharp"

Something we call "Foggy"

If you have any questions regarding these new themes or any we currently ship with our products, feel free to write to us - info@devexpress.com or support@devexpress.com

In the coming days, we'll be announcing a beta for the QuantumTreeLIst v5 with the following new features/capabilities...

Significant Performance Improvements

(examples of these improvements are 50 times faster full node expansion in smart load mode)

New Layout Capabilities

Nested Bands

Customizable Expansion Button Location

Quick Band Visibility Customization (like the QuantumGrid)

Quick Column Visibility Customization (like the QuantumGrid)

Multiple Fixed Bands (no longer limited to one on each side of the TreeList)

Group Summaries

Multiple Summaries

Built-in Context Menus (like the QuantumGrid)

Summary Footer Context Menu (like the QuantumGrid)

Numerous other features will be introduced in the product but I will leave this to our beta announcement.  On a final note - our goal is to allow for easy migration from v4 to v5, therefore, the new QuantumTreeLIst provides implicit streaming compatibility.

>>Don't forget to vote for your favorite DevExpress product: http://devexpress.com/aspnetPro2009<<

Over the years, we've met a number of you guys at tradeshows and been able to offer you DevExpress swag and the like...

For those who don't make it out to events such as TechEd or PDC but still want to get some swag or win a gift card or two, make sure to follow us on Twitter. We've been giving away a few things of late including today's $100 Morton's Steakhouse giftcard.

http://twitter.com/devexpress

>>Don't forget to vote for your favorite DevExpress product: http://devexpress.com/aspnetPro2009<<

Mike has just completed our newest Application-Wide Theme for Windows Forms - SpringTime. The following 2 images should give you a sense of what it will look like.

Those of you who have been asking us about our Docking Control for WPF will already know that it did not make the first beta of DXperience v2009 vol 1. We are still planning to release it once DXperience v2009 vol 1 officially ships.

DXDocking for WPF will ship with the following capabilities:

Microsoft Visual Studio style glyphs used during drag and drop operations. These glyphs serve as drop targets and thus provide an intuitive way in which to dock windows.
Dock windows can be organized into tabbed containers.
Built-in close buttons allow end-user to hide unnecessary windows.
Float state is supported.
Automatically created splitters allow you to resize dock windows placed side-by-side.

If you need more information or need further assistance, feel free to drop me a note.

Earlier today, we announced the availability of DXperience v2009 vol 1 (RC). To learn more about this release including new features/capabilities please visit:

http://www.devexpress.com/Products/NET/DXperience/WhatsNew2009v1/ 

We've also published a comphrensive what's new list - you can read that here:

http://www.devexpress.com/Support/WhatsNew/DXperience/files/9.1.0.xml

As always, we welcome your feedback, thoughts, and suggestions. Write to us at support@devexpress.com or submit your case via our Support Center.

I wanted to let everyone know that we are sponsoring a few major events in the coming months.

MIX 2009 at the Venetian in Las Vegas as both a Silver and Bronze sponsor and TechEd 2009 at the Los Angeles Convention Center as a Platinum sponsor in May.

Though MIX does not have an exhibit floor - if you are planning to attend, drop us a line if you want to meet members of our Silverlight team. Like PDC in October, we'll have a massive presence at TechEd 2009 so make sure to drop by our booth if you plan on being in LA.

We look forward to seeing you there.

Last week Julian blogged about the new DevExpress date filtering feature to be made available with the next release of the XtraGrid Suite (v2009 vol 1). I wanted to post a few images of how this new feature has evolved after internal and external feedback.

Notice the tooltip as you hover over a checkbox - this was implemented in the last couple of days to help end-users view the criteria prior to filter execution.

Based on feedback, Mike updated this new feature- unlike the first variant, the shipping version will allow you to specify filter criteria based on specific business needs (notice the checkboxes below the calendar)

In DXperience v2009 vol 1, we've implemented an extensive API for the XtraRich Editor including:

Text and RtfText properties
Save and Load content using different formats
Enumerating document paragraphs
Read/modify paragraph properties
Read/modify section properties
Read/modify text range properties
Insert text at a specified position
Text Deletion

Throughout this coming year, we expect to continue refining our XtraRichEdit Control and implementing requests made by our user community. Major features we will introduce include:

Extended Printing Support
Headers and Footers
Field Support
Table Support
HTML Save/Load Support
Ability to Host Objects (including .net objects such as a grid)
Text Flow Enhancements
Open XML Save/Load Support

The importance of the Rich Editor in our long term development plans will become more clear over this year - but hopefully the ability to host .net objects gives you a bit of a clue as to where we hope to take this product.

Yesterday, Julian blogged about WPF products we expect to deliver in 2009. I wanted to take a minute to discuss our plans as they relate to scheduling/calendars for WPF.

I guess the easiest way to do this is just to say - yes. Yes, we plan on delivering DXScheduler for WPF this year.

Events like PDC are great at many levels - among them is catching up with old friends. Over the last few days, we spent a fair amount of time with Nick Hodges, Michael Swindell, Anders Ohlsson, and Allen Bauer.

Clearly, everyone at Embarcadero is excited about the future of Delphi and we are looking forward to seeing the progress the product makes under Embarcadero's leadership. We are also excited about the opportunities this affords companies such as ours and by extension our loyal customers.

Needless to say, we will be putting our heads together to make sure to offer the Delphi community the very best and most innovative tools possible as we proceed forward.

Ten days ago, Jeff and Amanda published a video describing some of the skins we ship with our Application Wide Skinning Engine (http://tv.devexpress.com/SkinsPromo1.movie). In that video, she previewed our upcoming Pumpkin Skin. As always, people can't wait to get their hands on our new skin designs and have been requesting more info on what it's actually going to look like...

And...I know, we are a bit late on this one. Even though the skin wont be released in time for halloween, the skin is fun and your end users just might like using it in November...

First and foremost, my apologies to those customers who are not attending PDC and are feeling a bit frustrated that we are not previewing some of our upcoming releases on video but instead at PDC. A few of you have voiced your concern to me via Email...please rest assured that we will have videotaped coverage of activities at our booth and will be publishing them on the same day just as we did at TechEd this year. In addition, we will be producing numerous introductory videos and tutorials of DXperience v2008 vol 3 prior to product launch.

Ok, with that said - perhaps one of the most anticipated product releases from Devexpress is our RTF (Rich Text) control. Tony and his team have been busting their behinds and are pushing as hard as they can to deliver the very best product they possibly can.

Here are a few images of our PDC demo application...Enjoy

Rich Text Editor with the DevExpress Ribbon Control

RTF Control Find and Replace

RTF Control with integrated Spell Checker Control

P.S. If you are going to be at PDC, dont forget to be at booth 501 at 7pm on Monday night...surprises await you....