Last month we posted that we were beginning development of a new TreeView replacement control that addressed the many shortcomings of the native WPF TreeView, and were asking for input at that time.  We've been working on this control for both WPF and UWP and have made very good progress.

Feature Progress

Thus far these features have been completed:

• Fully customize the appearance of each node.
• UI virtualization, allowing for hundreds of thousands of nodes to be loaded into a tree very quickly.
• No scrollbar jumpiness as seen in other virtualized tree controls when scrolling vertically.
• Use your own custom data models as the source for the tree, with no dependencies on UI or our interfaces.  An adapter class is used (and can be fully customized to fit your model) to communicate between the UI and the model for things like expansion state, getting children, etc.
• The adapter can be coded with bindings in XAML (convenient, yet can be slow in very large trees) or via method overrides (slightly more work but lightning fast).
• Events for expansion.
• Events for selection.
• Single or multi-selection, with Ctrl and Shift-based selection options.
• Filter selection such as only allowing sibling nodes to be multi-selected, or nodes of the same depth.
• All common tree hotkeys supported including special ones for expanding and collapsing entire branches.
• Select or ensure nodes are visible by path.
• Double-click and Return key default action handling.
• Optional checkboxes within the data templates.
• Intelligent text searching so when you start typing while the control has focus, it will auto-focus the item that matches the typed text.

Sample Usage

Here's a screenshot of a recent sample being put together for the control:

In this sample, we have two levels of nodes.  The top-most level is folders (whose icons actually toggle with the expand/collapse state), while the inner level has checkboxes and buttons that allow for a dialog to be displayed when clicked for further configuration.

Double-clicking a folder item will toggle its expansion state, while double-clicking a checkable node will toggle its checked state.  This sample also shows usage of a DataTemplateSelector to pick which DataTemplate to use for each node.

Summary

The control is coming along really nicely and our goal is to match general features found in the VS Solution Explorer.  The features above are implemented for both WPF and UWP.  We still have more features planned before we open up a beta. 

If you have any other suggestions, please either write our support address with your feedback or join our Slack discussion on the topic and chat right with us.  The benefit of the chat option is that we are posting screenshots and asking for feature input right during development.  It gives you an opportunity to give direct feedback and help guide features.

WPF Controls 2016.1 build 631 has been released and is now available for download.  This build contains numerous minor features, updates, and bug fixes across the various WPF control product range. 

It is highly recommended that v2016.1 customers upgrade to this build since it fixes all issues that have been discovered in the major Docking/MDI control updates that were part of the first 2016.1 release.

The first 2016.1 release added new Metro themes that have accent colors, like in the screenshot below.

The QAT buttons on the upper left of the window were originally wider in Office 2016, matching the width of the system minimize, maximize, and close title bar buttons.  However in the most recent Office 2016 update, the QAT button width was reduced and we've updated their size in this build to match.

See the announcement post for the detailed list of enhancements and updates in this build.

Do you want to chat with us about what we're working on next?  Register to join our Slack team and help guide our future development efforts!

New maintenance of the 2014.2 versions of our WPF, Silverlight, and WinRT/XAML controls have been released and are now available for download.

Major new features are described below.  See the announcement posts for the detailed list of enhancements and updates, including many items not listed below:

• WPF Controls announcement
• Silverlight Controls announcement
• WinRT/XAML Controls announcement

ISO 3166-1 Alpha-3 Codes Added (WPF, WinRT only)

The Country class, which contains ISO country data and is utilized by our CountryComboBox control, now also includes the 3-character alpha code data for each country.

This is in addition to the existing data of 2-character alpha code and name.

Handling of Root Objects Improved (WPF only)

We've improved how the PropertyGrid handles properties on the root SelectedObjects that have a custom type converter.

Handling of Immutables Improved (WPF only)

We've also improved support for handling immutable objects and determining how to interact with their properties.

Custom Factory Sample Updated (WPF only)

The Custom Factory sample has been updated to show a property with a non-string type.

This is a great example of showing how to implement a custom data factory and merge properties from various object sources.

Backstage Tab Navigation Improved (WPF only)

We've improved keyboard navigation in the TaskTabControl control, which is generally used within Backstage tabs.

Contextual Tab Layout Refined (WPF only)

The logic for the sizing of contextual tab groups and their tabs always has had some minor issues when resizing the containing window to be thinner.  The issue didn't often manifest itself unless multiple contextual tab groups were displayed.

We spent a while tracking these issues down and fixing them so that all layout sizing is now perfect, as seen in the screenshot above.

Read-Only Regions Added

We've added support for read-only regions of text via the new IReadOnlyRegionTag tag.  This feature has been highly requested by customers, so we're happy to deliver it.

There is a ReadOnlyRegionTag implementation class that supports classification so that read-only regions can be rendered with an alternate background, such as gray in the screenshot above.  A new Read-Only Regions QuickStart that demos the new features is now in the Sample Browser.

Move Selected Lines Up/Down Commands

Another highly-requested set of commands for moving the selected lines up (via Alt+Up) and down (via Alt+Down) have been added.  The SDI Editor demo's menu has been updated to show off the new editor commands.

IntelliPrompt Completion Performance Enhancements

We did a lot of performance profiling related to IntelliPrompt completion lists and we able to make numerous performance enhancements in the areas of item matching and filtering.  These enhancements will really help performance when displaying large completion lists.

Drag and Dropped Text Reselection Option Added (WPF only)

A SyntaxEditor.IsDragDropTextReselectEnabled property has been added that can be set to false to prevent reselection of dropped text.

Data Binding Change Scroll Behavior

Views have been updated so that text changes from a data bound source (such as view model) don't scroll the view back to the first line on each update.

Line Commenter Updated

The line commenter has been updated to improve how line comment and uncomment features affect selection.  The logic that gets activated by the LineBasedLineCommenter.CanCommentEmptyLines property also has been improved.

Bi-Di Text Caret Movement (WPF only)

We've made several improvements to caret movement when editing bi-directional text.

Better Separation of UI/Document Models

All of the event ties between the UI and document models have been changed to use weak events.

.NET Languages Add-on

The ability to resolve references to nested types has been improved.

Web Languages Add-on

A completion item for closing the nearest open ancestor element, if any, has been added.  (WPF only)

Ctrl+Space after an end tag start delimiter will also auto-complete the matching start tag's name.  (WPF only)

We've also improved the editing experience when typing to not affect outlining nodes as much.

Wave and ZigZag Shapes Added

New primitive shapes have been added that can be used to create some interesting user interface elements in your apps.  The Wave shape renders a wavy line.  The ZigZag shape renders a zig-zag line.

The Shapes QuickStart has been updated with examples showing usage of the new shapes.

Our WPF PropertyGrid control is an extremely powerful way to edit the properties of any object.

Custom Property Editor Sample

While a lot of PropertyGrid usage is for basic properties such as numbers, strings, dates, etc., properties can be of any custom Type as well.  In our most recent release of the WPF controls, we created a new custom property editor sample that shows how to easily add a custom property editor for a certain Type.

The screenshot above shows how a custom enumeration named OnOffAuto was created.  The object being edited in the PropertyGrid has several properties that are of that type.  We defined in XAML a custom template that uses our HorizontalListBox control to allow for easy selection of the options.

In the case of the Security Alarm property, we made a further customized property editor template that only shows two of the options instead of all three.  This specialized template is configured to only apply to that one specific property.

While this sample shows how to make a custom property editor for an enumeration type, the same concepts can be applied to any custom type.

Other Recent PropertyGrid Improvements

In recent builds, we have further improved the editing experience when using PropertyGrid.  We added built-in property editors for font-related properties.  We added support so that double-clicking a property name will cycle through any standard value options that the property has.  In the event that the property doesn't support standard values, double-clicking the property name will attempt to focus the related editor instead and select all text if possible.

Summary

Download the latest build of our WPF controls to see this new sample and obtain the latest editing features.

The 2014.4 versions of our WPF, Silverlight, and WinRT/XAML controls have been released and are now available for download.

Major new features are described below.  See the announcement posts for the large detailed list of enhancements and updates, including many items not listed below:

• WPF Controls announcement
• Silverlight Controls announcement
• WinRT/XAML Controls announcement

Note that the 2014.2 version of the WinRT/XAML controls came out last month, introducing our Editors controls, but a new maintenance release is available today adding other new features.

We've added six new built-in chart palette options, including Retro and Sand:

Docking/MDI received numerous updates, including a new option for rafting windows to not hide when in scenario where their owner DockSite is hidden, such as if it's nested in tabs itself.  Many updates to focus handling were made, especially in relation to interop controls like WinForms/ActiveX.

Updated the Country and Currency classes with the latest ISO data.

WinRT/XAML Only

As announced in recent blog posts, our WinRT/XAML controls now have some really unique and universal (Windows Store / Windows Phone) controls for accepting input of common data types.

See our Edit Boxes Overview for a summary of the controls and some links to additional posts describing their functionality.

A new segment chart has been added that allows for visual display of an integer value within a total..

This sort of chart is great for use on dashboards, and also as an indicator of steps or progress achieved.

Another new control is the arrow indicator displayed on the left side of the stock chart below.  It's called a trend indicator and alters its UI to reflect whether a numeric value is greater than, the same as, or less than an origin value.

Six new built-in chart palettes have been added as well, including IceCream and Melon.

We've created a new custom property editor sample that shows how to easily add a custom property editor for a certain Type. 

Double-clicking a property name has been improved such that if the property doesn't support standard values, it will attempt to focus the related editor instead and select all text.

Quote auto-completion support has been added to the DelimiterAutoCompleter class, with double quote completion enabled by default.  As the user types a start quote, the related end quote will be auto-entered after the caret.  The C#, VB, Python, JavaScript, and JSON languages in our premium add-ons have been updated to support quote auto-completion.  It can easily be added to any custom languages as well.

We've added some nice new features like a ScrollIntoView method that can ensure that a text position is visible within the view, improved caret/selection movement around and delete/backspace of multi-byte characters, and improved backspace to move to the previous tab stop when auto-convert tabs to spaces is active and the caret is before the first non-whitespace character on the line.

.NET Languages Add-on

We've had a lot of requests for showing how to support ASP-style server tags, where the C# within the tags has automated IntelliPrompt.

We're happy to deliver a new full source sample (seen above) that shows how to harness our .NET Languages Add-on within server tags.

Python Language Add-on

Today's releases contain the first version of our Python Language Add-on, a new premium add-on that supports both v2.x and v3.x syntax.

We'll blog about the language in more detail soon, but you can download and start using it today.

A new triangle shape can be used in UI such as breadcrumbs, tabs, etc. 

This shape can auto-size to its container and supports strokes and fills.

WPF Only

We've added a ZoomLevelToTextFormattingModeConverter class, which can switch from Display to Ideal text formatting mode when the zoom level is increased, thereby keeping text clear in any scenario.