In our last post, we announced that incremental search result highlights werecoming to SyntaxEditor for WPF, WinRT/XAML, and Silverlight in the next maintenance release.  These are highlights that show where each match of the incremental search text is within the document, making it easy for the end user to see the matches without having to iterate through each one.

We also are making this feature available for those who have search panes in their apps and want to be able to highlight matching results as the user enters find text in the search pane.

How It Works

Each editor view now has a new property on it named HighlightedResultSearchOptions that can be set to any ISearchOptions value.  When it is set, a worker thread searches the document for matches and highlights them.

In the screenshot above, we type in a TextBox and in the TextBox.TextChanged event handler, update the value of the view's HighlightedResultSearchOptions property.  Highlights then appear for the find text matches, which is "doc" in this case.

Summary

The search result highlights help the end user quickly see where matches are without the need to cycle through them, and can be wired up to any search pane.  This feature is coming in the next maintenance release.

In our last post, we announced that incremental search features were coming to SyntaxEditor for WPF, WinRT/XAML, and Silverlight in the next maintenance release.

We are working on an ancillary feature to that, which we hope to also have completed soon.  This feature automatically highlights matching results when doing an incremental search.

How It Works

To start incremental search mode, press Ctrl+I and start typing some characters. The characters will be accumulated into a find text string and used to search the document for the next instance of the find text, which will be selected.  For this sample, I have pressed Ctrl+I and then "r".

All of the instances of the letter r in the editor have been highlighted.  Now I will continue to type out the full word "random".

All of the instances of the word random are now highlighted.  The first instance is selected.  Pressing Ctrl+I at this point would move the selection to the next highlighted instance..

Summary

The search result highlights help the end user quickly see where matches are without the need to cycle through them.  We hope to have this feature in the next maintenance release.

Another new feature is coming to SyntaxEditor for WPF, WinRT/XAML, and Silverlight in the next maintenance release: incremental search.

What is Incremental Search?

Incremental search is a way for the end user to quickly search for text in a document without needing to interact with search dialogs or panes.  With a couple keyboard strokes, the end user can instantly start searching for text.

How It Works

To start incremental search mode, press Ctrl+I and start typing some characters. The characters will be accumulated into a find text string and used to search the document for the next instance of the find text, which will be selected.

Press Ctrl+I to move to the next match, or Ctrl+Shift+I to move to the previous match. Continue typing characters to append to the find text. Backspace can be used to remove characters from the find text. Esc can be used to deactivate incremental search mode.

The WPF and WinRT versions are capable of showing custom cursors while incremental search is active, enabling the end user to have a visual indicator of the current mode.  Silverlight unfortunately doesn't allow for custom mouse cursors.  It is recommended that all platforms also show some sort of status bar indicator.  In the screenshot above, you can see how the StatusBar is updated as I type to show the current find text.

Summary

Incremental search is already available in SyntaxEditor for WinForms and will now be in the other SyntaxEditor platforms after the next maintenance releases.

We just wanted to post a quick reminder that all of our latest versions of WPF, WinRT/XAML, Silverlight, and WinForms controls support the new Visual Studio 2013 version.

If you haven't tried VS 2013 yet, we urge you to download it from Microsoft's site.  It features a more refined design than VS 2012, and is a pleasure to use.  In particular, we love using the new Team Explorer tool window and peek definition editor feature.

Also, in case you haven't heard, Microsoft is hosting a Visual Studio 2013 Virtual Launch event on November 13.  The event will consist of a keynote speech and they will be going over the new features in subsequent technical sessions.  Be sure to check it out.

Code Writer v2.1, our free text/code editor app, is now live in the Windows Store.  This version focuses on adding full support for new features in Windows 8.1, along with adding some other great updates as well. 

Are you interested in adding code or text editing abilities to your own Windows Store apps?  SyntaxEditor for WinRT/XAML was just released, allowing you to build apps just like Code Writer.  Download a free evaluation to try it out.

Check out all the new features added to Code Writer…

Editing Multiple Lines of Text

We just posted an in-depth blog entry on updates coming to SyntaxEditor that allow for multi-line editing via block selections.  These features just launched in the WinRT/XAML version of SyntaxEditor and are part of today's Code Writer release as well.

In this screenshot, you can see how a block selection spans multiple lines (it's a selection line after the s in lines on each line) and as I type, the characters appear on each line.  Tab (indent), Shift+Tab (outdent), Del (delete next character), Backspace (delete previous character), Shift+Del (delete to next word start), and Shift+Backspace (delete to previous word start) also work.

Windows 8.1 App Resizing Support

Windows 8.1 allows apps to resize to various small widths, not just the former "snapped" mode width from Windows 8.0.  In previous Code Writer versions, the app bars and Advanced Editing gallery were disabled in snapped mode.

In the new Code Writer version, the app properly resizes itself and still allows full access to app bars and the gallery.  See the screenshot above for an example showing how the app bar buttons collapsed down to a compact size, which still providing app functionality.

Tappable App Bar Hints

To help aid in making app bars on various app screens more discoverable, we have added app bar hints to all screens that contain app bars.  We've used the standard ellipses indicators and have made them as unobtrusive as possible.

Here we see the main Editor screen.  Tapping the statusbar area will show the app bar.

Here we see the bottom right of the Add Document screen.  Tapping the app bar hint will show the app bar.

Large Live Tile Support

Our live tile implementation tells you all the open documents and whether they have been saved or not.  We have added support for the new large live tile size in Windows 8.1.

Take a look at this previous blog post that provides more detail on how the live tile works.  The new large live tile is capable of displaying up to 18 open document names.

Miscellaneous

Numerous miscellaneous improvements have also been made:

• Improved image for Windows 8.1 small tile size.
• codewriter://reset-settings URL restores app settings defaults.
• Improved the syntax highlighting of PHP code in HTML attributes.
• Improved all icons to render crisper.
• Improved the editor's touch-based selection gripper hit testing.
• Improved the validation of custom file extensions in Settings.

Summary

Be sure to grab this latest update if you have Windows 8.1.  Or if you haven't tried Code Writer yet, go to the Windows Store to download it, and help us by tweeting about the app!

You can also download a free evaluation of our SyntaxEditor control for WinRT/XAML, which lets you add advanced code and text editing to your own Windows Store apps.