WPF Studio 2009.2 released
We just shipped WPF Studio 2009.2 in time for the holidays.
This major new version is the culmination of several months of work.
Many of our WPF products have had big features added, most of which are described below in this newsletter.
This version also is the first one to support designer functionality for Visual Studio 2010 and
Expression Blend 3.
If you are an existing customer with an active WPF Studio subscription, you can request a free upgrade from your
Organization Purchases page.
Otherwise, download a free evaluation from our web site to see the new features that have been added.
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Recent SyntaxEditor for WPF features
The product with the most enhancements in WPF Studio 2009.2 is SyntaxEditor.
We continue to expand the text/parsing and UI capabilties of the product
with features you won't find in any other competitor.
Tagging is an exciting new feature area that allows any text range in a document to be “tagged” with custom data.
This data could be anything from custom classifications to something that indicates a squiggle
line should be drawn when the text is rendered.
Built-in squiggle line rendering is now provided.
The new adornments features allow any custom UI elements to be inserted into the text area surface.
This is one of the most exciting feature areas added to SyntaxEditor since it
opens up the doors for providing amazing visualization customizations to end users.
Our favorite demo of adornments is the sample that shows how to make animated smoke puff near the caret as you type.
We've made other syntax language service enhancements and have added new samples.
There are now about 55 distinct full source samples that ship with SyntaxEditor for WPF.
We've also expanded our documentation and added some significant new information to existing topics,
especially in the language creation walkthrough topic.
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SyntaxEditor coming to Silverlight
We posted a question on our blog asking if there was interest in a Silverlight version of SyntaxEditor
and the response has been tremendous.
Thus we have been spending time lately porting our SyntaxEditor for WPF code over to Silverlight 3.0.
There are still a number of WPF features used in our codebase that aren't available in Silverlight.
Thus a good chunk of our codebase porting has been implementing missing framework code, such as routed commands/events,
etc. so that our codebase can be as close as possible in both WPF and Silverlight.
At this point, the SyntaxEditor text/parsing library converts 100% to Silverlight.
The SyntaxEditor UI library converts 70% or more.
To sum up, nearly all syntax language oriented code written for the WPF version will work with no
changes in Silverlight, even the new tagging and adornment features.
However there are several missing UI feature areas that won't make a preliminary release, such as
IntelliPrompt.
We are still porting code and are working on building up a Silverlight product framework.
Once those pieces are in place, we'll announce a request for alpha testers on our blog.
Keep an eye out for that in early 2010.
SyntaxEditor for WinForms .NET Languages Add-on supports C# 4.0 / VB 10.0
The latest release of the SyntaxEditor for WinForms control includes updates to the
.NET Languages Add-on so that it can parse C# 4.0 and VB 10.0 syntax.
These new language versions by Microsoft have exciting constructs and features associated with them.
And now SyntaxEditor can parse them!
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Floating Documents in Docking/MDI for WPF
The WPF Studio 2009.2 release includes some huge new features for the Docking/MDI product,
including floating documents, maximizing rafting windows, and custom rafting window chrome.
The biggest new feature is the ability for tabbed documents to be able to be dragged outside of the MDI area
into a floating state, where they can be placed on a second monitor if desired.
In the screenshot, the WelcomeDocument.rtf docking window is a document window.
It can be docked anywhere in the tabbed MDI area or can be floated such as it is shown.
Note the document’s icon even appears in its titlebar.
Rafting windows are containers for docking windows that are in a floating state.
Now all rafting windows can have the ability to toggle between maximized and restored states.
You can see the maximized button on each of the rafted windows in the screenshot.
All rafting window titlebars and borders in version 2009.2 will have a custom chrome
that matches the current application theme.
In the 2009.1 version, rafting windows let the system draw the titlebars and borders.
By having the rafting windows be themed, they truly match the application’s theme.
This is especially useful for our built-in themes like the Office blue, silver, and black ones.
The rafting window in the screenshot that contains the Solution Explorer and Class View shows the new chrome,
in this case for Aero theme.
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ZoomContentControl in Navigation for WPF
Need a control that provides an intuitive interface for navigating around large content?
The new ZoomContentControl has what you need.
It is extremely configurable, and allows for easy animated zooming/panning and other operations.
This sort of control is perfect for browsing around content such as large pictures, maps, reports, designers, and more.
Custom buttons (like the Open Image button above) or other controls can be easily embedded in the UI.
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Recent Editors for WPF features
The WPF Studio 2009.2 release added several controls to Editors.
A new AnalogClock control is now included that can render a clock with hour, minute, and optional second hands.
The hands can be dragged to set new time values.
The popular DateTimeEditBox control has been updated to display a time entry section on its dropdown
when a date/time or time-only value are edited in it.
The DateTimeEditBox will automatically toggle whether a month calendar and/or clock are available in the dropdown
based on the date/time format used for the control.
The new EnumEditBox control is an editor implementation that has a dropdown with an EnumListBox, also a new control.
Both focus on allowing end users to set enumeration values.
EnumEditBox displays the currently selected enumeration value.
EnumListBox makes it extremely easy to pick between enumeration values using checkboxes or radio buttons, depending on if the enumeration has a Flags attribute.
Both controls can render alternate display text for enumeration values based on Description attributes.
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What's next?
As we draw near to the end of 2009, we first would like to wish you and your families
a happy holiday season and new year.
Thank you for supporting us and allowing us to continue doing what we love, which is developing quality software products.
In 2010 you'll see us continue to expand our product offerings and enhance our existing products.
We plan on updating Ribbon soon to support the newer Office 2010 user interface style.
We'll continue driving forward on SyntaxEditor for WPF feature areas, knocking out outlining, ASTs,
etc. so that we can get to a point where we can port over the add-ons that are in the WinForms version.
We have some ideas for brand new products as well.
You'll also see us start to focus on some Silverlight development.
We already have been working on building up a platform for supporting Silverlight products.
The first one we have planned is SyntaxEditor.
In spite of the down economy, 2009 was a successful year for us.
We hope to continue the trend into 2010 by building on what we have and
adding more great new user interface functionality for our customers.
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