In the 2012.2 version of our WPF Controls, we added two Metro themes.  The Metro Light theme renders similar to VS 2012's gray window, and the Metro White theme renders similar to an Office 2013 window.

We've had several requests for a dark theme, and we've delivered one for the upcoming 2013.1 version of our WPF Controls!

Sample Screenshots

Here is the main SyntaxEditor demo with the Metro Dark theme active.  We updated the Sample Browser to show off use of dark SyntaxEditor highlighting styles for some common languages when the Metro Dark theme is activated. 

In this screen, we show a mail app using the dark theme.  Just like in the prior screen, it is a regular WPF Window but we've applied our WindowChrome on it to enable the full Metro appearance.

All of the Actipro and native controls support the new theme.  Here we see a Wizard with various text, links, and buttons all fully themed.

Easily Theme Your Entire App

Actipro has a very robust theming system that allows you to fully theme your entire WPF application with several lines of code.  We include over 10 built-in themes and they can optionally apply themed styles to native WPF controls as well.  Each theme involves almost 900 distinct resource assets, such as brushes and thicknesses, specifically designed for the theme.

In addition, our WindowChrome class lets you instantly transform a normal WPF Window to a chromed window that matches the theme.

The end result is that your windows, native WPF controls, and Actipro controls all blend well together and provide a consistent user interface for your customers.

Summary

This new Metro Dark theme will be included in the 2013.1 version, due in the next several weeks.

Today I'd like to show off another new feature coming to the WPF and Silverlight .NET Languages Add-on:  Visual Basic text formatting!

As mentioned in our previous post, a similar feature is being added for the C# language.  Text formatters beautify code, making it more readable by adjusting whitespace.

Visual Basic Text Formatting Example

Let's see an example of some messy VB code loaded up in SyntaxEditor:

After formatting the document, the result is:

That's much nicer!

Intelligent Modifications

As described in a previous post, the best part about the text formatting feature is that SyntaxEditor only adjusts ranges it needs to.  It doesn't do a mass replace of the whole document.  For instance on line 23, it tweaks the leading whitespace on the line and removes the space before the end parenthesis, but doesn't touch the rest of the line.

All of the various text change operations involved in the formatting are merged into a single atomic text change that is added as a single undo stack item.  This makes it easy for the end user to quickly undo any formatting changes that were made.

Summary

These features will be in the 2013.1 versions of the WPF and Silverlight SyntaxEditor .NET Languages Add-on.

Today I'd like to show off a new feature coming to the WPF and Silverlight .NET Languages Add-on:  C# text formatting!

Text formatters beautify code, making it more readable by adjusting whitespace.

C# Text Formatting Example

Let's see an example.  Here is some messy C# code loaded up in SyntaxEditor:

When we format the document, the result is:

That's a lot more readable!  The text formatter also has an option for whether open curly braces appear on the same or next line.

Intelligent Modifications

The best part about this feature is that SyntaxEditor only adjusts ranges it needs to.  It doesn't do a mass replace of the whole document.  For instance on line 7, it does a tweak of the leading whitespace on the line but doesn't touch the rest of the line.

All of the various text change operations involved in the formatting are merged into a single atomic text change that is added as a single undo stack item.  This makes it easy for the end user to quickly undo any formatting changes that were made.

Summary

These features will be in the 2013.1 versions of the WPF and Silverlight SyntaxEditor .NET Languages Add-on.

We just published new maintenance release of both the WPF and Silverlight controls.  These new builds fix a SyntaxEditor problem that we introduced in the previous maintenance release, and also have several other minor SyntaxEditor tweaks and fixes in them.

Update details are described here:

• WPF Controls
• Silverlight Controls

We recommend that you get these latest v2012.2 maintenance releases.

We're working on new features for our 2013.1 control releases and today I'd like to show off a new feature coming to the WPF and Silverlight .NET Languages Add-on in that version.

C# Var Quick Info

As seen in the screenshot below, hovering over var keywords will now show the resolved type.

In this case, the resolved type for the randomNumbers variable is List<int>, which we aliased to Int32List above in the usings.

Visual Basic Dim Quick Info

Similar features have been added for the Dim keyword in VB.

In this screenshot, the j variable is being assigned an Int32.

Summary

These features will be in the 2013.1 versions of the WPF and Silverlight SyntaxEditor .NET Languages Add-on.