This massive release contains our new Bars product with modern ribbon, toolbar, menu and related control implementations that allow you to replicate Office-like user interfaces, right in your Avalonia applications.  Numerous enhancements were made to add support for template-based icons in our controls.  And finally, the Actipro native control themes were updated to be compatible with Avalonia v11.2.

See the related announcement post for the detailed list of enhancements and updates.

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Here’s a look at some of the new features.

Ribbons, ToolBars, Menus

Ribbon Variant Sizing

Ribbon consolidates all commands into a single location, which is easy to use and scales well, thereby providing fast access to all commands regardless of window size. The entire layout of child controls can be tailored to ensure the most important commands are prominently available. Through the use of variant layout phases, you can achieve nearly any dynamic layout that you find in Office.

Ribbon Classic and Simplified Layout Modes

Classic layout mode uses a taller ribbon with a combination of large buttons and multi-row groups of controls and is ideal for large applications with lots of commands. Whereas Simplified layout mode is a modern refinement that uses a single row of controls and supports overflow. Ribbon can instantly toggle between the two modes.

Color Galleries

Show color palettes using the many available gallery display options. Colors can be categorized, and color shades can be generated.

Other Galleries

Galleries can appear on ribbons or menus, and can custom render items to show anything from bullets or symbols to text styles.

Screen Tips

Screen tips are advanced tool tips with a standardized layout for bar controls, and intelligently display below the ribbon.

Key Tips

Key tips provide easy keyboard access to any control on the ribbon or in its popups, even on backstage.

Backstage

The ribbon File button's backstage consists of application-wide commands such as for file operations and other functionality like printing.

UI Density

The user interface can switch between compact (seen here), normal, and spacious densities. Spacious densities are more touch friendly.

Standalone Toolbars

A standalone toolbar control is flexible enough to be used in several contexts and can host any of the galleries or controls that are used in a ribbon. Overflowed controls display in a popup.

Complete MVVM Support

Optionally create the entire ribbon user interface via MVVM. An open-source companion MVVM library is available that provides a full set of view models and related UI bindings for all bar controls.

Icon Updates

Avalonia has several icon libraries available where the icons are implemented via an Object and IDataTemplate pair instead of via a single IImage. Using these sorts of icons in our Avalonia controls in the past was difficult due to some of our icon properties being declared as IImage.

We’ve added a new IconPresenter control that is now used in control templates throughout our products.  IconPresenter supports Object-based icon data and an IDataTemplate that can render that icon data.  This mechanism is customizable so that it can work with any third-party icon library.  All our controls have been updated to support these kinds of icons, while still supporting IImage-based icons out of the box.

Avalonia v11.2 Compatibility

The recent Avalonia 11.2 version made several breaking changes to their native control templates.  The free Actipro Themes for native Avalonia controls have been updated to adapt and be fully compatible with those changes.

This version contains an enormous number of updates across the WPF control product line.

See the related announcement post for the detailed list of enhancements and updates.

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Here’s a look at some of the major new features.

Bar Code

QR Code ECI Support

The QR Code symbology has been updated to support Extended Channel Interpretation (ECI), which allows encoding of all UTF-8 characters.

Bars

Ribbon Group Labels

Ribbon group labels are always visible in Classic layout mode and in the past have always been hidden in Simplified layout mode.  A new option allows for keeping group labels visible in Simplified layout mode, which provides an interesting new appearance option.

Hiding Ribbon Tabs

For small ribbons with a single tab and no need of an application button, tabs and the app button can be hidden, saving a row of space.

ComboBox Inline Images

The combobox control can now optionally show inline images next to the text.

Many Other Enhancements

A massive number of updates have been made to various Bars controls and features.

Docking/MDI

Bars Integration Sample

A new Bars Integration sample shows how Ribbon and StandaloneToolBar can be used on a main Window without changing the active docking window when there are floating docking windows.

MDI Always On Top

A new option allows for any floating windows with MDI to always remain on top of the main window.

Open Documents Menu Path Tips

The tabbed MDI open documents menu now includes the document’s path as a tooltip on menu items.

SyntaxEditor .NET Languages Add-on

Doc Comment Remarks

IntelliPrompt tips now include documentation comment remarks sections, if available.

Themes

WindowChrome Mouse Activation Over Toolbars

A new WindowChrome option can prevent the containing Window from being activated on click over any toolbar control.

This version adds several great new controls and makes a number of updates across the WPF control product line.

See the related announcement post for the detailed list of enhancements and updates.

Download Buy Now

Here’s a look at some of the major new features.

Views

Settings

Most applications contain a window or view where end users can configure settings.  Actipro now provides several controls for displaying grouped and optionally expandable card-based editors for settings that are presented in a consistent, easy-to-use way.

• Consistent Appearance - Cards have a uniform design, and related cards can be grouped together. Each setting card can optionally have an icon, header, description, and content.
• Card Contents - A setting card's content is generally an editor for the setting. The content may be left blank, and the card itself can be made into a clickable button.
• Flexible Editors - Each setting card can contain any kind of editor control. Switches, sliders, combo boxes, and text boxes are commonly-used editor controls.
• Expandable Sections - Some settings have numerous child settings. These indented settings may be hidden under expandable cards that animate the contents when opened.

Application settings have never looked so good!

Shared Library

Card

The new Card control presents visually grouped information for a single subject, using optional cover, thumbnail, header, and footer sections.

Cards can optionally be actionable and even support built-in integration with badges.

InfoBar

The new InfoBar control displays essential information to a user without disrupting the user flow. Messages can display with optional severity, action, and more.

Bars

Many updates have been made to the Bars controls to further improve features and functionality.

This version adds a new Visual Studio Blue renderer, makes major improvements to SyntaxEditor’s ability to support light and dark themes, improves the SyntaxEditor .NET Languages Add-on, and much more.

See the related announcement post for the detailed list of enhancements and updates.

Download Buy Now

Here’s a look at some of the new features.

Renderer Updates

Some of the renderers for the various WinForms controls have been refactored with a more modern appearance, such as with glyphs for the status bar gripper and menu item checks.

A new Visual Studio Blue renderer has been added that mimics the look of the Visual Studio 2022 Blue theme.

SyntaxEditor Light and Dark Themes

It’s easier than ever to support switching between light and dark themes in SyntaxEditor.  A new class helps orchestrate updating SyntaxEditor UI elements, highlighting styles, and icon sets when toggling between light and dark themes.

All Actipro-provided syntax languages now include both light and dark highlighting styles, and we automatically convert many popular light-themed colors to appropriate dark-themed colors for custom languages that have yet to be updated with explicit dark styles.

SyntaxEditor Highlighting Style Updates

The current line number is now highlighted in a different style than other line numbers, so the default line number colors have been updated to better suit this feature.

When using multiple carets while editing, the primary caret now has a more distinctive appearance than secondary carets.

Several other highlighting styles have also had their default values tweaked.

SyntaxEditor .NET Languages Add-on Updates

The C# parser grammar has been updated to support C# 9.0 syntax, including everything from top-level statements to records and improved pattern matching.

Resolver support has been improved for local functions.

Documentation comments display in IntelliPrompt now supports <para> and <br/> tags for paragraph and line breaks.

Sample Browser

The Sample Browser application has been updated to use an SDK-style project and target .NET 6.

We’ve been hard at work with several new features for v24.1 of our WPF and WinForms products and are asking for beta testers to work with preview builds of what is coming to help ensure a smooth transition.

Beta testers will get an early look at the new features and can give us valuable feedback to influence any necessary development and/or bug fixes prior to the final release.  See the notes at the end of this post for details on signing up as a beta tester.

SyntaxEditor Native Dark Theme

SyntaxEditor now has built-in support for switching between light and dark themes. Previously, only UI element brushes were updated for dark themes, but the highlighting styles and icon sets had to be manually transitioned.

Now, a new SyntaxEditorThemeManager class and individual light/dark color palettes for a highlighting style registry allow for any change in the global theme to be automatically reflected in SyntaxEditor.

All Actipro-provided languages have been updated, as appropriate, with both light and dark highlighting styles, and we automatically convert many popular light-themed colors to appropriate dark-themed colors for custom languages that have yet to be updated with explicit dark styles.

SyntaxEditor Highlighting Style Updates

A new feature enables the current line number to be highlighted in a different style than the other line numbers, so the default line number colors have been updated to coordinate with this new feature.

When editing with multiple carets, distinct colors can now be defined for the primary and secondary carets.

Several other highlighting styles have also had their default values tweaked.

Theme Updates (WinForms Only)

A new Visual Studio Blue theme is available that mimics the Visual Studio 2022 Blue theme.

The renderers for Metro Light and Dark have been updated with a more modern gripper for the status bar and more subtle checked icons for checkable menu items that do not provide their own icon. Several classic renderers have also been renamed for clarity.

Beta Testers

We are looking for beta testers who:

• Will actively use supplied preview builds to help ensure the beta is stable.
• Will report suggestions for improvement of new features.
• Will report confusion or missing information from conversion notes.
• Will report any bugs that are encountered.
• Ideally are signed up in our Slack workspace, as it’s easiest to communicate through that during testing phases.

Please contact our support team privately via a ticket to sign up for beta testing:

Contact Our Support Team to Sign Up

Please indicate the following in your message:

• Your name and e-mail address.
• If you are already an existing customer, and if so, your license key.
• The platform(s) you’d like to test.
• If you are already signed up in our Slack workspace.

Thanks for your help and we look forward to working with our testers.