WPF, UWP, and Silverlight v2018.1 Maintenance Releases

by Avatar Bill Henning (Actipro)
Monday, March 11, 2019 at 8:20pm

WPF, UWP, and Silverlight v2018.1 Maintenance Releases

by Avatar Bill Henning (Actipro)
Wednesday, October 17, 2018 at 12:22pm

WPF, UWP, and Silverlight Controls 2018.1 Released

by Avatar Bill Henning (Actipro)
Tuesday, May 22, 2018 at 2:54pm

BlogPostBanner-18.1

We're happy to announce that the 2018.1 versions of our WPF, Universal Windows, and Silverlight controls have been released.  These versions include a new WPF Shell product, new features, and a lot of minor updates and bug fixes throughout the control sets.

See all the details on the 2018.1 releases in the various announcement posts:

TaskDownload TaskBuyNow

Introducing Shell Controls (WPF only)

The 2018.1 version of the WPF Controls introduces a beta of a new Shell controls product that we've been developing the past several months.

Actipro Shell controls allow for easy folder and file browsing. While the product comes packed with a pre-built implementation for the Windows shell that mimics Windows Explorer, the controls are fully customizable, allowing you to filter or change the folders/files presented. Or build your own shell service to support other files systems, such the remote side for a FTP client.

ShellControls

The ShellTreeListBox control presents a shell folder hierarchy in a tree structure. It is often paired with a ShellListView control, which shows the contents of a selected folder using column-based property display. Both controls support customizable tool tips, context menus, multiple image sizes that account for high-DPI scenarios, and in-line renaming.

All of the UI found in the Shell controls is native WPF, even the context menus. Unlike competitive products with interop-based user interfaces, the Actipro Shell controls don't have any airspace or focus issues, and every bit of UI can be fully-themed or even customized with XAML data templates.

Although these controls are still in beta, they should be stable for usage in production.  If you would like to submit suggestions for improvement, please post them in our Shell discussion forum or join our Slack workspace.  We've done a lot of planning with beta testers in the Slack #uicontrols channel.

TaskLearnMore TaskWideChatWithUs

March WPF, UWP, and Silverlight v2017.2 Maintenance Releases

by Avatar Bill Henning (Actipro)
Sunday, April 22, 2018 at 6:18am

BlogPostBanner-2017.2-Maint

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

DigitalGauge

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:

TaskDownload TaskBuyNow

WPF, UWP, and Silverlight v2017.2 Maintenance Releases

by Avatar Bill Henning (Actipro)
Wednesday, January 10, 2018 at 11:37pm

BlogPostBanner-2017.2-Maint

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.

Charts

Display Optimizations

The line charts have had optimizations in them to try and align to pixel values to reduce anti-aliasing.  While this generally improved readability, when rendering a curve like a sine wave, this can result in some jaggedness of the curve.  We added an option that allows these display optimizations to be turned off for those scenarios.

Docking/MDI

Dock Host Changed Event

A new event is raised whenever a docking window's dock host changes, allowing for knowing when a docking window transitions to a floating state and back.

Dragging Enhancements

The dragging experience for a single tab has been improved.  When dragging a docking window over a nested linked dock site, the Shift key can be used to target the outer dock host.

Interop Improvements

Numerous improvements were made to how InteropFocusTracking handles mouse clicks and focus tracking for interop controls in docking windows.

Dock Guides

Dock guides (when in non-hosted node) can now render outside of the bounds of the target dock host when necessary.  This scenario can occur if the containers in the dock host are small.

Editors

MaskedTextBox Data Binding

A new MatchedText property has been added to MaskedTextBox to allow data binding without any prompt text.

Pointer Double-Clicks

Double-clicking an edit box part now selects the entire part's text.

Color Picker Alpha Component

The ColorPicker's alpha component has been changed to be percentage-based, which is more in line with most applications.

Grids

Key Handling

The ability to customize how Enter keys are handled for various property editor types has been added.

SyntaxEditor

Read-Only Regions

Read-only regions have been enhanced with properties that determine if editing is allowed on their first and/or last edges.

Code Outlining

The code outlining logic has been Improved to better handle mismatched outlining nodes.

JSON Parser

The JSON parser in the Web Languages Add-on has been enhanced with better error handling.

Theme Browser

We've updated the Theme Browser utility in the Sample Browser with a new textbox that allows filtering of resources.

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:

TaskDownload TaskBuyNow