WPF — June 2024 Roadmap (v24.1)

In this post, I'll outline WPF controls/features we expect to ship in our next major update (v24.1). If you'd like to share feedback about the features outlined herein, feel free to submit your thoughts/comments using the surveys below or create a Support Center ticket. We’ll be happy to follow-up. 

Accessibility and UI Automation

Inclusive application design is becoming more important every day. With v24.1, we will enhance accessibility-related capabilities including keyboard navigation and screen reader support. Since assistive technologies and UI Automation tests rely on the same automation tree, enhancements in this area will help you address numerous UI test usage scenarios.

Font Icon Images

Once we released font con support in our most recent WinForms product release (v23.2), many of you asked us to introduce this same capability in our WPF product line. With v24.1, you will be able to use font icons (Segoe MDL2 Assets in Windows 10 and Segoe Fluent Icons in Windows 11 fonts) in DevExpress WPF controls (ImageSource objects).

Data Grid - Excel Export with Images Incorporated into Cells

In previous version of Excel, you could only add images as floating objects. As such, our data-aware export option did not support image export.  Excel now supports images within data cells. We are currently exploring ways to export images displayed in Data Grid cells and hope to release this feature in mid-June.

Data Grid – Filter by Color

As you may know, Excel allows users to filter tables by values and by colors specified via formatting rules. While our Data Grid already allows you to filter based on conditional formatting rules, this feature may not be discoverable. We expect to enhance our WPF Grid's UI elements to improve overall discoverability/usage. 

Data Grid - Aggregate Functions within the Filter Editor

In our next major update (v24.1), you will be able to filter WPF Data Grid collection properties using functions such as Count, Sum, Average. For example, if you display records within a Master-Detail Data Grid, you will be able to find master rows where the number of detail rows is greater than a specific number.

Bar Search Item

We expect to implement a Microsoft Office-inspired Ribbon Bar Search item in our next major update. Bar Search will allow users to quickly locate a Ribbon Bar Item within your application. 

Word Processing Document API and Rich Text Editors

Math Equations

With our next update, we expect to support mathematical equations within Word documents. You will be able to import documents with equations using our Word-processing components and save these documents to supported Word formats without content loss.

Gutter and Mirror Margin Page Settings

To improve document rendering, printing and export accuracy, we plan to support Gutter and Mirror Margin page settings for Word documents. Gutter is the space added to the page margin to accommodate binding or folding, while Mirror Margins enables mirrored document layout for double-sided printing.

In v24.1, we'll add new APIs to manage Gutter and Mirror Margin settings in code and enhance the Page Setup dialog for our WPF Rich Text Editor (to change page layout using User Interface elements).

Image Export API

In v24.1, we will introduce new APIs to export Word documents to various image formats. With this functionality, you will be able to create document thumbnails and previews, visualize documents in Web and Mobile applications. The new APIs will allow you to modify target image settings to obtain desired output in both Windows and non-Windows environments.

PDF Document API and PDF Viewer

Signature Info Panel

To improve the user experience when working with signed PDF documents, we plan to implement a new Signature panel for our WPF PDF Viewer. The new panel will offer an intuitive interface to view signature information (such as signer, signing time, and additional data associated with the signature).

Layers

Managing Optional Content (Layers) in PDF documents offers a flexible way to organize document content and control its visibility. This feature is invaluable for applications that deal with complex documents requiring content organization (such as architectural plans, layered maps, diagrams, and multi-language documents).

In our next major release, we will design a new Layers panel for our WPF PDF Viewer (to control layer visibility in the user interface).

Spreadsheet Document API and Spreadsheet UI Controls

Sort and Filter by Color

Our next major update will include sorting/filtering cell range support in a worksheet based on cell font color and cell background color. This functionality will include new APIs and UI elements to manage ranges sorted or filtered by cell color. 

Justify and Distributed Horizontal Text Alignment

We plan to enhance Excel document rendering and support Justify and Distributed horizontal alignment for cell text. New alignment types will also affect print output and PDF-exported documents.

Property Grid Row Style

Some of you have asked us to provide an easy way to change Property Grid row formatting based on a cell value or other condition. In our next release, we will add a RowStyle property allowing you to change row background/foreground (and other properties) using a data trigger.

Use Theme Palette Colors in XAML

When creating your application UI, you may need to access colors used by DevExpress themes. We’re working on extending our ThemeResource class so you can effortlessly apply a color from our theme palettes.

<Border BorderBrush="{dxci:ThemeResource ThemeKey='Brush.Window.Background, 
Win11Light=Brush.Window.Alt.Background'}}" />

DevExpress Reporting

New Expression Functions

We will add new expression functions to our criteria language syntax. These functions will offer greater flexibility in shaping and displaying data within DevExpress Reports. New functions will include:

• The ability to retrieve the value of the previous column/row
• The ability to retrieve the value of the next column/row
• The ability to retrieve the current group index
• The ability to retrieve the current row index within a group.

SVG Pictures Export

When you add SVG pictures to a report, they will be exported using a vector format (SVG) natively (to maintain image quality). This enhancement affects PDF, Excel, and Word export formats.

Parameter Groups Title Localization

With our built-in DevExpress Reports localization feature, you will be able to localize the titles of parameter groups displayed in the Parameters Panel across all supported platforms.

SqlDataSource Enhancements

First, we'll enhance the user experience in our Data Source Wizard to address the following security-related changes introduced by Microsoft for the MS SQL Server: The certificate chain was issued by an authority that isn't trusted - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn. This will allow you to avoid the "The certificate chain was issued by an authority that is not trusted" error while binding a report to MS SQL Server database if you do not have access to set up the MS SQL Server differently. To achieve this, we will introduce two new options in our Data Source Wizard:

• An option that will allow you to turn on/off the MS SQL Server encryption (to specify the Encrypt=No value in the connection string).
• An option that will allow you to trust the MS SQL Server certificate without validation (to specify the TrustServerCertificate=True value in the connection string).

Second, we'll add support for the Postgres data driver v.7.0. This will enable you to bind DevExpress Reports to stored procedures introduced starting with v7.0 of the database engine.

JsonDataSource — Transition to System.Text.Json

We have made the decision to revamp the source code of all DevExpress products so that they no longer reference the third-party Newtonsoft.Json assembly. Instead, we will use functionality from the System.Text.Json assembly/NuGet package, which is a part of .NET. During this release cycle, we will be conducting research to identify methods for migration with minimal impact on existing functionality and applications. Our preliminary findings suggest that discrepancies do exist. Our decision is mainly influenced by the security risks associated with the third-party library, as well as the improved performance offered by Microsoft's own library. 

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