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.

We've got an exciting new SyntaxEditor feature to announce that's been desired by a number of customers.  And best of all, it's coming to all our supported platforms:  WPF, Silverlight, WinRT/XAML (coming very shortly), and WinForms.

The new feature is the ability to edit multiple lines when a block selection is active, also known as column editing.  First, let's review block selections.

Block Selection

Block selection occurs when you hold Shift+Alt and press the arrow keys.  For instance if you press the Shift+Alt+Down shortcut a couple times, you create a block selection that in previous versions would end up selecting the entire three lines since its selection was zero-width (no real characters were selected).  If you then pressed Shift+Alt+Right, it would make a rectangular selection that is three lines tall and one character wide.

At this point you could extend the selection further and then copy it, move to a new location in the document, paste it, and the entire block would be pasted in place there.  This is a very handy editing feature in some scenarios.

Changes to Block Selection

In the next SyntaxEditor releases, we have altered how things work when you have the zero-width block selection.  Again this is the scenario where you start with no selection and press Shift+Alt+Down a couple times.  In the updated code, we now no longer show selection over all the lines and instead, render a thin line that displays where the block selection is.

In the screenshot above, you can see the blue lines that indicate the location of the zero-width block selection.

If we extend the block selection to the right, it become a rectangle that covers the class attributes.  We now can delete that by pressing Del.

Multi-Line Editing

Now let's get onto a demonstration of the new features coming for multi-line editing.

Again, I've created a zero-width block selection and now I'll start typing.

I've typed in the div tag again but I only did it once.  It automatically entered the characters I typed on each line that was part of the zero-width block selection.  That's pretty neat!

Not only does normal character typing work while doing multi-line editing, but 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 do.  For instance if I press Backspace to delete the last character I typed, the result is this:

The last character I typed (a >) is now gone in all three lines.

Summary

These sorts for multi-line editing features can really help increase productivity in a number of editing scenarios.  They will be included in the next releases of our WPF, Silverlight, and WinForms controls.  And they will be included in the upcoming WinRT version of SyntaxEditor as well.

WPF Controls 2013.1 build 591 has been released and is now available for download.  This build focuses on minor enhancements and bug fixes.

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

A couple weeks ago we posted a blog entry showing off a sample we created, where a hosted Windows Workflow Designer instance is integrated with our WPF Docking/MDI and SyntaxEditor controls to dramatically improve the designer UI.

Since that post, we've had a number of customers request the sample that we created, and we have been happy to pass it along.  In today's post, I wanted to announce that we've updated the sample yet some more, adding automated variable IntelliPrompt features!

In the screenshot above, two variables are declared: myText (a string) and anotherVar (a boolean).  I pressed Ctrl+Space in the expression editor (a SyntaxEditor control) to display the completion list.  The myText variable shows up properly as a string.

Next, I moved to the assignment expression (another SyntaxEditor control) and typed anotherVar. to get the members of that variable.  SyntaxEditor's .NET Languages Add-on kicks in again here and shows the members appropriate for a boolean value.

Summary

These sorts of features really improve the editing experience for your customers.  If you rehost the Windows Workflow Designer in your WPF apps and would like our example, please contact us and we'll pass it along.

For those customers who downloaded the first version, this update (along with some other tweaks) is at the same URL as before.