The 2nd major DXperience release of 2008 is just around the corner. This three (major) releases per year cycle is very useful. Each major release means new features, controls, functionality, etc. And in the 2008 Volume 2 (aka v8.2) release there are some great features from the ASP.NET team. Read below for the full list. This post also ties in with the other announcements about the v8.2 release:
Common Changes Across All ASP.NET Controls
Useful Class for Client-side Scripting
A new ASPxClientUtils class allows you to easily perform some typical client-side actions such as:
- Determine web browser type
- Work with arrays
- Access an object's parent or child object
- Obtain event parameters
Enable/Disable Controls and Control Elements on the Client Side
Previously, enabling/disabling a control or a control element required a round trip to the server. In 2008 vol 2, the controls from the ASPxEditors and ASPxperience Libraries allow you to change their enabled state or the state of their elements (tabs, menu items) on the client side. This reduces the number of round trips to the server and increases web site responsiveness.
Distinguish Between Callbacks and Postbacks
A new server-side IsCallback property has been added to our web controls. This property allows you to find out whether a control takes part in callback processing.
Native Rendering for Data Editors
Some controls from the ASPxEditors Library (ASPxTextBox, ASPxMemo, ASPxListBox, ASPxComboBox and ASPxButton) can now be rendered as HTML INPUT elements of the appropriate types. This allows you to enable native rendering for these elements thus providing Windows® style UI in your web site. Native rendering results in less HTML code which improves an application's overall performance.
ASPxHtmlEditor
Integrated Spelling Checker
The ASPxSpellChecker is now integrated into the ASPxHTMLEditor which enables spelling validation in the editor's Design View. To check spelling, end-users can now simply press a built-in toolbar button.
Predefined Styles for Text Formatting
Previously, every toolbar button performed a very basic formatting operation – for instance, applying bold or italic formatting, changing background color, etc. Now you can create buttons that change multiple style attributes at once. This is extremely useful if end-users need to highlight multiple text fragments using the same style settings.
To enable this functionality, all you need is to create a custom CSS style and expose it via a toolbar's specially designed dropdown editor.
Responding to Focus Changes via Client-side Events
Newly implemented client-side events allow you to respond to the focus event being received or lost by the editor's Design View. For instance, this enables you to implement client-side user input validation when an end-user tries to leave the editor.
Complete XHTML compliance
HTML code entered into the editor's HTML View can be automatically validated and transformed into XHTML 1.0 Transitional compliant markup. As the result, the editor's content is always kept safe, since the editor removes all potentially harmful code - unknown tags and attributes, script elements, client-side event handlers and URLs with script content. Automatic validation also helps to keep HTML code validity by correcting invalid tag hierarchies and changing invalid attribute values.
The ASPxHtmlEditor exposes several options to control which automatic transformations are required. You can also update HTML code manually by overriding an event.
ASPxperience Suite
Obtaining Settings from Data Fields
Some controls like the ASPxNavBar, ASPxMenu and ASPxTabControl, now expose properties which allow you to specify data fields from whose items settings are to be obtained. Examples of settings that can be fetched from a data table are item tooltips, navigation URLs, image URLs, etc.
Data binding, an entirely new feature in this release, is now supported for the ASPxTabControl. Prior to v2008 vol 2, it could only work in unbound mode.
Easily Transmit Any Data onto the Client
All AJAX-enabled controls in the ASPxperience Suite now allow the same easy data exchange with the web server as in the ASPxGridView Suite. The Controls expose the CustomJSProperties event, which enables you to declare custom properties for the client control. You can specify these properties' values on the server side and then access them on the client, as you would do with built-in properties.
New Media Formats for Object Container
The list of allowed video and audio types has been extended with QuickTime Video and QuickTime VR (virtual reality) types.
ASPxCallbackPanel Improvement
The panel's content can now remain visible during callback processing. This behavior is optional – a loading panel is displayed by default.
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