WinForms UI Templates — Active WinForms and DXperience Subscribers Can Now Install the Early Access Preview (EAP)

As you may already know, last Fall we published a preview of our new WinForms UI Templates (our first EAP was only available to active DevExpress Universal subscribers). These refined/ready-to-use 'templates' were designed to jump start the form design/development process. With this product,  you can create/deliver ready-to-use UI solutions and address a variety of line-of-business (LOB) requirements in a timely manner (and eliminate the need for routine UI customizations when using DevExpress WinForms controls). For more information or to get started, visit our online documentation and watch our YouTube videos: 

• UI Templates for WinForms - Jump Start Form Design Process (4 min)
• Customize UI Templates for WinForms - Display a Character Counter in the Edit Box (3 min)

Based on initial feedback, our Universal customers rated the following WinForms UI Templates as the most valuable:

• Address, Country, Email Editors and Forms
• Login and Password Recovery Forms
• Add Payment Card, Card Editor, and Card Payment Forms
• Chip & Toggle Buttons, various Single and Multi-Select Chip Groups
• Signature Editor, national Social Security Number Editors, as well as support for localized address forms (for instance, US addresses and phone numbers are formatted differently than those of  Germany) remain at the top of the wish-list.

WinForms and DXperience Subscribers Can Use the WinForms UI Templates as well

We recently made our WinForms UI Templates available to all active WinForms and DXperience Subscribers. Active Universal, DXperience, and WinForms subscribers can download these templates as VSIX via the DevExpress Download Manager.

Technical support for our WinForms UI Templates is still available if you own an active DevExpress Universal Subscription. As always, everyone is welcome to submit bug reports/suggestions via the DevExpress Support Center.

Our WinForms UI Templates are available as an EAP. The goal of this EAP is to gauge demand, understand support requirements, and learn more about specific usage scenarios. Once we collect additional feedback, we will be in better position to comment on future availability.

Developing for Other UI Platforms?

Based on survey results, DevExpress customers asked us to extend our UI template collection to other platforms: DevExtreme, Blazor, and .NET MAUI are among the top picks after WinForms. The following list includes information on “UI template-like” support we’ve introduced for other UI platforms over the years.

JavaScript/DevExtreme

A set of responsive UI templates (for both desktop and mobile devices) for CRM, Project/task management/planning, BI and analytics dashboards.

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Blazor Server/WinForms

Our Cross-Platform .NET App UI (XAF) allows you to generate ASP.NET Core Blazor Server and Windows Forms application templates in minutes with a ready-to-use backend and UI layers. XAF-powered line-of-business apps support both XPO and Entity Framework Core ORM for .NET 6+ and a dozen or so popular must-have modules such as audit trail, validation, security system, reporting, scheduler, dashboards, localization, etc.

.NET MAUI (iOS/Android)

Project Templates (ready-to-use forms with data grid and editors, charts, scheduler, etc) + additional examples coming in v23.1 such as  Data Grid & Collection View CRUD, Mail Merge Templates based on our Office File API, and much more. Please track the Featured Scenarios section in our online documentation as well.​​

Cross-Platform/Common

Our Web API Service product ships ready-to-use backend API templates for both XPO and Entity Framework Core ORM. You can take our backend API powered by ASP.NET Core Web API/OData and Swagger, and bind any UI client to secure data  - primitive actions such as CRUD operations, authentication, RBAC authorization will be supported automatically for you. The bottom line is this – you simply need to modify your UI client and configure/tune the necessary business logic on the backend.

Refer to the .NET MAUI (iOS/Android), Blazor WebAssembly, and JS Svelte examples for more information about UI integration with our backend API. The GitHub repo contains other examples for JS/DevExtreme, Blazor Server, WinForms, ASP.NET Core MVC as well.

Your Feedback Matters!

Please take a moment and review the following survey questions. Your feedback will help us refine our development plans and deliver UI Templates that meet and exceed expectations.

Thanks,
Dennis
Principal Product Manager
dennis@devexpress.com 

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