DevExpress v14.2 beta 1 is now ready for download

Just in time for the weekend and all that spare time you thought you’d have, we have released beta 1 of Universal v14.2. The beta is open to all active DXperience and Universal subscribers. To get it, all you need to do is login to devexpress.com, click on the Download Your Products link at the top of the page, and look for and click Universal Subscription. Cunningly we present the latest released version by default, so click on the down arrow to select the version you’d like to download and the beta is shown in red in the dropdown list.

Although I drew the short straw to write this blog post – just kidding! – I was allowed to choose the most significant features in this beta that I felt had the most bang for the buck. So here goes for a baker’s quartet:

1. WinForms, ASP.NET  & WPF Grid Controls: New Excel Data Export – this is HUGE. An completely rewritten Excel export engine that has more features and is, like, 10 times faster than before. I doff my hat to this one. There’s also a lot of other spreadsheet-y news dotted around the What’s New as well, so if your bag is spreadsheets (that’s me being hip), you’d better check it all out.
2. PDF Control: Interactive Forms and Annotations – the first step to full support for forms in PDFs with our PDF Control. This has been a much-requested feature ever since we released the first version of the PDF Control.
3. ASP.NET Adaptive and Responsive UI Support – perhaps this has been some time coming, but it’s here now. Create ASP.NET pages with our controls that look optimal with different browser window sizes.
4. On the data analysis and reporting side (avoiding the spreadsheet stuff, I just mentioned), there are almost too many new features to review. One, two, three, four.
5. Lots of new features and widgets for our HTML5/JS product, DevExtreme. One, two, three, four. I love me new client-side web stuff.

I must sound a small word of caution here: this is beta 1 of v14.2, not the release. (That’s coming at the beginning of December, plus or minus.) There is likely to be a beta 2, for example. Use within production code at your own risk.

If you’ve let your subscription lapse and you are intrigued by some of these new features, you really should renew and try them out instead of just reading our posts about them. Screenshots are all very well, but nothing beats actually using a new feature or control in your app. Contact our Client Services team today (clientservices@devexpress.com): they are ready with some great deals on your renewal.

Of course, if you are an existing single platform subscriber (that is, WinForms, ASP.NET, WPF) and would like to obtain access to this beta as well as begin using all the other products we ship inside DXperience and Universal, please contact our client services team to learn more about the upgrade pricing available to you.

Above all, once you’ve installed and tried out the beta, please let us know what you think of these new features. We love feedback. It also goes without saying that our support team are ready to help you with issues you may have with the beta, so contact them in the usual way if you need to.

Aside: If you’re a VCL subscriber, fear not, your beta and release comes some two weeks or so after the .NET one, as usual. I’ve been checking out what’s new there, and I think you’ll be well pleased. I’ll start blogging about it all after this other release is done.

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