Our v2017.2 WPF, Universal Windows, and Silverlight controls have all been updated with new maintenance releases that are now ready for download. 

Let's take a quick look at some of the more notable features that were added.

Charts

Bar Customization

The series style selector's method for picking each bar's style in a bar chart has been updated to be passed bar index and count, allowing for individual bars to be customized.

Docking/MDI

UIA Updates for Better Coded UI Test Support

The docking window container UIA hierarchy has been updated to better support Coded UI Test.  These changes should now allow Coded UI Tests for controls in docking windows to record and play back successfully.

Keeping Auto-Hide Popups Open For Dialogs

There is now a property that can be set temporarily to prevent an auto-hide popup from closing when WPF keyboard focus is lost from it, which can happen if a dialog window is opened from a button on the docking window.  In this scenario in the past, the button could be clicked and the auto-hide popup might slide back.  The new option allows the popup to remain open when the dialog is open.

Improved Dragging Over Nested Linked Dock Sites

Updated docking window logic now shows dock guides by default for linked dock sites at the same nesting level, when there are multiple dock sites nested.  If there are multiple linked dock sites covering the same drag location, the Shift key can be held to switch dock guides to an alternate dock site.

Editors

MaskedTextBox Input Improvements

Logic has been updated to block some input that would trigger a shorter match.

NaN and Infinity Support Added to Multiple Edit Boxes

The CornerRadiusEditBox, PointEditBox, RectEditBox, SizeEditBox, ThicknessEditBox, and VectorEditBox controls now all have properties that can be set to allow NaN and infinity component values.

Gauge

Improved Digital Gauge Segment Rendering

The distance between digital gauge segments for the 7-segment (normal) and 14-segment (normal) character sets has been reduced, making the digital gauges easier to read at certain sizes, and more like most real readouts.

SyntaxEditor

Free Sample C#/VB Syntax Language Updates

The free language definition files now support C# 6 and VB 14 enhancements.

XML Start Tag Self-Closing

The XML auto-completion logic in the Web Languages Add-on will self-close start tags if a '/' is typed.

Summary

There were also a large number of smaller improvements made throughout the products.  See the announcement posts for the detailed list of enhancements and updates:

• WPF Controls announcement
• Universal Windows Controls announcement
• Silverlight Controls announcement

Our v2017.2 WPF, Universal Windows, and Silverlight controls have all been updated with new maintenance releases that are now ready for download.  It is highly recommended that you get these new builds since many products received numerous minor enhancements and bug fixes. 

Let's take a quick look at some of the more notable features that were added.

Docking/MDI

The mouse wheel can now scroll document tabs when in an overflow situation and using certain tab overflow behaviors.

Editors

Updated the color pickers such that the end user can tap and drag anywhere in a hue ring or saturation/brightness square to change color attributes, and not just on the thumb.

Added a new drop-down to ColorPicker that allows switching between RGB and HSB text input modes.

Added new features for adding custom inline UI elements within edit boxes, like the "Now" button in the TimeEditBox below.

Improved the DateEditBox and TimeEditBox default formats to better support parsing of entered text values that lack part delimiters.

Grids

Added the TreeListViewColumn.SortDirection property and related ColumnSortDirection enumeration that can be used to indicate that a sort glyph should appear in the column header when paired with a custom sorting mechanism.

Improved TreeListBox to better handle property updates from view-models on other threads.

Improved TreeListBox selection tracking performance.

SyntaxEditor

Improved numerous edit actions to retain their final selection after the action goes through an undo/redo process.

Improved how Tab indenting is handled when there is a block selection.

Improved the Cut Line to Clipboard edit action to support multiple lines.

Improved the .NET Languages Add-on's logic for selecting the best IntelliPrompt parameter info member overload when typing a comma at the end of an argument list.

Improved the XML line commenter in the Web Languages Add-on to comment the entire line text when there is no selection.

Summary

There were also a large number of smaller improvements made throughout the products.  See the announcement posts for the detailed list of enhancements and updates:

• WPF Controls announcement
• Universal Windows Controls announcement
• Silverlight Controls announcement

We're happy to announce that the 2017.2 versions of our WPF, Universal Windows, and Silverlight controls have been released.  These versions include some new controls, new features, and a lot of minor updates and bug fixes.

See all the details on the 2017.2 releases in the various announcement posts:

• WPF Controls announcement, and additional maintenance release announcement
• Universal Windows Controls announcement
• Silverlight Controls announcement

SyntaxEditor

Intra-Line Adornments

Full support for intra-line adornments is now included.  These allow whitespace to be reserved above and/or below view lines, and adornments rendered in that space.

A first new sample shows implementation of a Visual Studio-like Code Lens adornment with info display and hyperlink. 

A second sample shows a Visual Studio-like Peek Definition (embedded editor) display.  This is accomplished using a second SyntaxEditor within an adornment of the outer SyntaxEditor.

Vertical Scrolling

Vertical scrolling logic has been refactored to better handle view lines of various sizes.

Code Outlining

A couple new code outlining commands have been added: apply default outlining expansion and expand all outlining.

.NET Languages Add-on Roslyn Extensions

A new optional assembly is available that has Roslyn extensions for loading IBinaryAssembly instances that can be referenced by a project assembly, instead of using normal .NET reflection.

.NET Languages Add-on IntelliPrompt

IntelliPrompt completion is now available for object creation expression initializer member names.

Docking/MDI (WPF/UWP)

Floating Windows

A new property can be data-bound to your VM to float or restore a docking window.  The default location request event allows for specifying that a docking window should open in a floating dock host.  Docking windows that were closed while floating now support more precise restoration later.  Dragging standalone floating docking windows by their tabs now has a better experience.

Contextual Indicators

The read-only contextual indicator for documents now uses a separate display mechanism from the custom contextual indicators, allowing both to show at the same time.

Editors (WPF/UWP)

AutoCompleteBox

A new AutoCompleteBox control has been added that allows text entry and provides suggestions for auto-completion.

This kind of control is ideal for use in search query and quick launch kinds of scenarios.

DateEditBox

Clicking a date on the popup calendar now closes the popup.

Grids (WPF/UWP)

Drag/Drop

The TreeListBox item adapter has been updated with a method that fires when hovering over an item during a drag, allowing you to determine whether it should be expanded.

New adapter methods have also been added that are called immediately before and after a drag, allowing for custom adornments to be displayed while dragging.

Shared Library (WPF/UWP)

AdvancedTextBlock

A new AdvancedTextBlock control has been added that can show a tooltip when overflowed and can highlight spans of text based on captured text ranges (i.e. filter match results).

Our WPF Docking/MDI control product allows you easily add docking tool windows and a MDI (multiple document interface) to your app, one that mimics Visual Studio.  We have two built-in MDI options: tabbed and standard.  Tabbed is similar to the style that current Visual Studio versions use.  However some customers still prefer to use the classic windowed style of MDI that we call "standard MDI".

There is no built-in standard MDI mechanism in WPF, but we provide a complete implementation in Docking/MDI with all the functionality like cascading and tiling that you would expect.

We just had a customer ask how they could animate a standard MDI window into place when it's first loaded. 

We did a quick experiment in our 2016.1 version using a simple implicit Style and it worked great.  Here's the results:

The animation we defined quickly fades in the window and "pops" it into place.  This animation matches the animations we use elsewhere in the product such as when dock guides appear while dragging docking windows around.

Here's the code that you can place in your app's Resources to get the animation above to appear:

<Style TargetType="docking:StandardMdiWindowControl">
    <Setter Property="Opacity" Value="0" />
    <Setter Property="RenderTransformOrigin" Value="0.5,0.5" />
    <Setter Property="RenderTransform">
        <Setter.Value>
            <ScaleTransform ScaleX="0.8" ScaleY="0.8" />
        </Setter.Value>
    </Setter>
    <Style.Triggers>
        <EventTrigger RoutedEvent="docking:StandardMdiWindowControl.Loaded">
            <BeginStoryboard>
                <Storyboard>
                    <DoubleAnimation Storyboard.TargetProperty="Opacity" To="1" Duration="0:0:0.2" />
                            
                    <DoubleAnimation Storyboard.TargetProperty="RenderTransform.(ScaleTransform.ScaleX)" To="1" Duration="0:0:0.2">
                        <DoubleAnimation.EasingFunction>
                            <BackEase EasingMode="EaseOut" />
                        </DoubleAnimation.EasingFunction>
                    </DoubleAnimation>
                    <DoubleAnimation Storyboard.TargetProperty="RenderTransform.(ScaleTransform.ScaleY)" To="1" Duration="0:0:0.2">
                        <DoubleAnimation.EasingFunction>
                            <BackEase EasingMode="EaseOut" />
                        </DoubleAnimation.EasingFunction>
                    </DoubleAnimation>
                </Storyboard>
            </BeginStoryboard>
        </EventTrigger>
    </Style.Triggers>
</Style>

Download our WPF Controls and give it a try!

Today we published a WPF Controls maintenance release v2016.1 build 635.  The updates are described in detail in this post.  It is highly recommended that you download this maintenance release since it fixes several issues that popped up with the Docking/MDI product and makes several other minor enhancements as well.

We are now at a stage where we are about to start prepping our codebases for the upcoming 2017.1 version.  Over the past few months, we've been working on an array of new and revised controls for that version, and will begin merging all that in over the coming weeks.  Look for a beta testing request announcement in very early 2017. 

Everyone, please have a wonderful holiday season and happy new year!