DevExpress 2011 roadmap published!

Any chance of smooth scrolling for the grid based controls?  Our customers are begging for this, and the lack of it is starting to make the grids feel a bit dated.

In a nutshell, I think 2011 appears to be a bit boring with lots of bits and pieces being done to try and achieve nothing of any great importance in any particular field.

I'm sure there are probably some tidbits in there to make a few people excited but for me it will be more consolidation of my programming skills in the area of the current Winforms controls and coming to grips with XPO and the new MVC3. I doubt whether Silverlight will ever raise it's head in my roadmap, WPF still seems something I will probably have to tackle eventually (2012-13), with the rest not really getting a shoe in. The charts, graphs, gauges in the current line-up already provide a staggering choice and more than adequately meet my foreseeable needs.

The subject has been done to death elsewhere but the lack of a decent XtraMessageBox control for Winforms (and I guess ported to Silverlight/WPF) has been on my wish-list for years. I can't believe this would be a difficult control to introduce particularly considering the excellent XtraWizard control is almost a multi-paged XtraMessageBox already.

Winforms must now be officially classed as dead as far as new controls are concerned so perhaps by the time I move to WPF, there may be a WPF messagebox control.

I should mention that my last post was regarding the winforms controls.

Yes! Yes! Theme builder!!! Theme Builder!!

It is sad to see Winforms pushed back so much. WPF is still too slow on most computers for major apps and SL is not mature enough for a complete ERP app.

So, how about a TreeListEditor... It has been asked for years now. How about splitting MDI tabs like in Visual Studio, also requested for years now and I'm sure WPF and SL could benefit from this too.

I agree with Sigurd... for huge applications WPF and SL are  not suitable. And the TreeListEditor is really a missing piece in the controls collection (Winforms and Web).

Thumbs up for HTML5 and CSS3! Only don't forget old suggestions.

Hello DX guys,

good plan :) XAF is the best!

I'm not really impress with thew roadmap.  There is not alot of meat here.  It looks more like a maintenance map.

I was waiting more features to the ExpressPivotGrid of VCL. For example "expression fields", like "Data summary expression editor" in WPF and WinForms.

...sad, no mention of SL Windows Phone controls

Totally agree with Sigurd!

TreeListEditor is missing...

Sorry guys, but with this roadmap I will not extend my subscription. I use only WinForms and ASP.NET and I'm not interested in WPF/Silverlight - WPF at this time for me is not suitable for my kind of applications (larger business Apps). Silverlight in my eyes is a dead technology - HTML5 is the future for rich internet applications.

What is your problem with WinForms? It is stable, fast, easy to use - do you really have no ideas to push this technology? So here are a few suggestions for you:

- support HTML-Markup in ALL Constrols (for Example Button-Captions, Menu-Items etc.)

- support Colors in HTML-Markup for ALL texts

- support UserControls in Ribbons

- something like 'row templates' (like in ASP-Grid) for WinForms-Grid

- Office 2010 Color-Pickers (like the WPF/Silverlight one)

- Checkbox in 'SliderButton-Style' (like IPhone slider buttons)

- complete (!) Backstage-Support for Office2010-Ribbons

- support BackColors in TabPages if skin is used (alternativ to the skinned Background)

- support mit Tab-Styles (like colored Tabs as in OneNote etc.)

- support adding MenuItems like in GalleryDropDown also for StandAlone Gallery and - much more important - for popupcontrol container (and if is enough time for all other dropdown popups in editor controls - for example ImageEdit, ComboboxEdit etc.)

- support a themed 'TaskDialog' for extended MessageBoxes (someting like Windows Task Dialogs)

- support themed Basic Dialogs for FileOpen, FileSave etc.)

...

feel free to contact me if you need more ideas ;-)

There is so much that can be done for WinForms...

What happened to the report server that was mentioned it last years roadmap?

Overall, I like the suite very much, but it seems really like a maintenance map. I can't see any real improvements on XtraReports for example. I have suggestions and track some other's suggestions for years now and some of them are really useful and can't be so complicated to implement. XtraReports lacks many important features to allow the creation of complex reports and I don't see nothing on this roadmap to ease this.

What I would like to see is support for printing in DXScheduler.  I would love to use DXScheduler, because most of our applications are WPF, but without printing support, we have to use XtraScheduler instead.

Heiko is totally right on this subject. You can contact me as well if you want more features to be added to WinForms.

Some items I'm following in 'Issues', all of them 'Accepted to be done':

- XtraTabbedMDIManager - implement a mechanism to separate tab list either vertically or horizontally (2006!!!)

- Add an ability to use multiple Appointment Edit forms simultaneously  (2007)

- Add the ability to produce an Office 2007 (Outlook) compatible HTML content  (2008)

- Add the ability to use only one scroll bar for a grid with multiple master/detail levels (2008)

- Brick - Support gradient background filling (2009)

- Gantt (edit/view)

- Master/Detail mailmerge for RichEdit

- Barcodes in RichEdit

I believe that you should put more resources on the WinForms controls for 2011. Winforms is here to stay for many years, especially for the companies who want to support existing Winfroms applications. Currently it is impossible to port WinForms applicaitons to Silverlight and very difficult to port WinForms applications to WPF.

Here are some feature requests based on our customer requirements and personal experience:

1. The ability to synchronize the XtraScheduler appointments with Google Calendar

www.devexpress.com/.../ViewIssue.aspx

2. We are getting many requests from users who want to run our application in iPad and Mac. Please try to make the WinForms controls compatible with Mono. We would love to target the Mac in the future.

3. The LookupEdit is a great control. However it lacks of two important fetures:

a. Based on the control EditValue we cannot get the actual datarow object

www.devexpress.com/.../Q259844.aspx

b. There is no simple method to add items to the list that do not belong to the datasource.

c. The autocomplete feature should mimic the autocomplete functionality of google chrome or firefox url textbox where the "delete" key, deletes the entered or suggested text.

I would suggest some importants features:

1. Line spacing in report controls

2. Html formatting support

3. Ability to handle schema updates in XPO (before update, after update..., for example, when it is needed to move data from one column to another...)

4. Visual XPO objects designer (like that of Telerik OpenAccess or ASP.NET entities...)

I was very excited with the WinForms-Suite the last years. But it started in 2010:

1. Before 2010, i always see something like '...new feature xyz in XtraReport' on the homepage. Since 2010, the most news are about '...video how to do xyz..' and '...see us at code camp xyz..'.

2. I also miss many features for WinForms, especially XtraReport. So many important issues are open for long time, some of them are open for years in the status 'accept to be done'! XtraReport is a crucial part of our application.

3. For me, it looks like you put many resources on XAF. We are building a complex application with WinForms. We do not need XAF.

We have a look at WPF and silverlight, but today there is no need to change to these technologies. With WinForms, we have a robust and broad platform with quite a few components from many vendors.

Please change the roadmap and give us more features in WinForm, first of all for XtraReports. And not to forget: Enhance the ExpressionEditor with the ability to create custom functions. This would be a great extension!

Dear Mike,

of course i have read this pages. And there are a few cool features in the new version. But there are also many issues which i miss - like the others who commented this discussion.

I was very glad to see the TreeList for WPF will be finally added, this was a 'deal-breaker' for moving to WPF.

I'm also glad that WPF chart is giving more focus and would like to recommend that the focus will be in the field of performance rather than in adding more features. Much faster graphs is a must before I even consider using the chart module.

Gilad, I'm happy for you, but what's the meaning of much faster graphs if my customers use Citrix and Terminal Services... This is where WPF and SilverLight fail to deliver and why we need further improvements on WinForms too.

There's just not enough Winforms development on the roadmap for it to be worthwhile renewing my subscription when it is due in May.  It wouldn't take much to be worth keeping the winforms subscription, but, sadly, there just isn't anything on the horizion worth keeping it for.  I've already worked around the bugs/issues that have affected me (and yes there are many 'accepted' that sit around for years without being addressed), so why would there be any need for a winforms developer to renew their subscription?  I'd like to have someone convince me, but right now I just can't see it.

still no Silverlight PivotGrid...

Seems like Winforms will be almost forgotten in the future :-(

Just have a peek in the request pool, there are a bunch of suggestions, some mentioned here above.

No, all hands on deck for XPO, Silverlight, WPF...

Just because there are no more controls added does not mean that existing ones can't be improved with added functionality, like support for HTML text and so on.

Come on, I left one type of controls to learn yours for your support and involvement in Winform controls. Now it's starting to decrease, not a good indicator :-(

I have to agree to the comments on WinForms.

SL and WPF are not ready for real business applications. WinForms is a robust and well understood platform and has broad support.

I think you have to put more resources on WinForms development.

Me too I'm disappointed with the plans for WinForms.

Yesterday I extended my subscription, and I was not sure if this would be worthwile. I really appreciate the work of DevExpress, I think they offer the best tools. But I am sure not to extend the subscription the next year, if there isn't an improvement. I really would regret it.

One of the most missed features for me in XtraReports is the lack of the possibility to have lookup-Controls. This feature was promised since years. Sure, you can realise it with a script. But how do you want to offer scripts to the enduser with quiet conscience?

I am glad to see  (2D) Heatmaps mentioned on the DevExpress roadmap, we really need those.  I would be great if they make it this year.  Heatmaps provide such a nice condensed format to show a lot of information.  

Regarding the Winforms plans, I do understand (and partially share) the feelings from above comment.

On the other hand, DevExpress commercially needs to position itself as pioneers in the market if they want to survive.

I'm sure when Winforms first came along, DevExpress heavily invested on this emerging technology and it is only thanks to this commitment that the DeveXpress Winforms components kick-ass today.

Secondly, I really dig the visionary approach of the Analytics part. It is still a bit vague and I hope Julian will elaborate a bit more on the matter in the near future (and for the Winforms people, I'm sure that this analytics-path will finally bring some of the long request features in the pivot). On topic, I'd like to put my most important feature request in the spotlight as well (it is actually already partially mentioned by Holger Kammerer as custom functions in the expression editor):

The ability to use Summary functions in the Pivot expression editor (www.devexpress.com/.../ViewIssue.aspx).

I restate what I already stated in the peer-to-peer discussions. If DevExpress is anywhere serious about providing a runtime-analytics tool , the possibility to use summary and non-summary values in the expression editor is a must.

Can we get more information on the compact layout and the improved Excel export for the VCL PivotGrid?

Hi,

We have really BIG issue with missing support for Coded UI Tests in VS 2010. Our company buy your products as full supported for VS 2010 and with missing this part of support we cant use it as we planned. In this issue: www.devexpress.com/.../Q296992.aspx u promised release support in January update, but nothing, nor even reply to issue and update your promisses. This part of testing is CRUCIAL for us.

If u will search your issues u will find out that its not only my problem. Can u explain why this is missing in your Roadmap?

I'm a Winform developper, and I really am happy with this roadmap.

"With regard to the Windows Forms controls, it is most likely that there will be a large number of smaller enhancements and new features rather than any large complex new control."

The way I understand it, is that DX plans to focus on enhancing the controls I already use and love instead of trying to sell new ones, and likely, reducing the "accepted - release TBD" list's size in support center.

How can this NOT be caring about existing customers?! How "a large number of smaller enhancements and new features" could possibly means bad news?!

Hi Julian,

I like your roadmap re the document server component, reporting parameter support and other noted additions as these are addressing direct business needs.

What I miss are more detailed informations about the named features, which you will add.

Are you going to make such a detailed issue?

Regards,

Klaus-Dieter

- please this suggestion

- Right to Left support RighttoLeft  in winforms controls spaciest in xtragride

-  support full Arabic  localization

please this suggestion

- Right to Left support RighttoLeft  in winforms Layout  controls especially in xtragride

-  support full Arabic  localization

++Mono support.

Or a mono-subset, at least? GridControl, TabControl, Combo, Menu, a few layout controls would be fine for a start.

i definitely second mrjoltcolas comment:

Mono-compability would really help a lot!!!!