In the previous post for our Micro Charts product (currently available for WPF, Silverlight, and WinRT XAML), we talked about the minimum and maximum functionality of the new MicroBoxPlot control. In today's post, we'll look at the many ways to customize the control's appearance.

Orientation

Part Appearances

Each part of the MicroBoxPlot control has a style that can be set to customize the size and colors of the chart. The box is rendered as a rectangle and therefore a fill and stroke brush can be specified to alter the color. The median, mean, and whiskers are all rendered as paths, provide options for stroke color, stroke thickness, and other options, such as dashed lines.

As mentioned in a previous post, the whisker extent is dependent upon the IQR multiplier. Whiskers can be removed entirely by setting the IQR multiplier to zero. The size of the perpendicular whisker end lines can be customized using the whisker ascent property, which commonly accepts percentage and pixel values. If the whisker ascent is set to zero then no end lines will be displayed. The examples above show a few of the many options for MicroBoxPlot appearance customization.

Tool Tips

Tool tips can also be used on MicroBoxPlots. They can be custom formatted and can display all the part values and the minimum and maximum properties.

The maximum and minimum values will display the actual minimum and maximum of the data, meaning the minimum and maximum of the chart can be custom set and the tool tip will still accurately represent the data.

Summary

The MicroBoxPlot control is currently available in the Micro Charts product, which ships in our WPF, Silverlight, and WinRT XAML control sets.  This concludes our series on the MicroBoxPlot control.  Watch for more micro chart-related posts soon.

In the previous post for our Micro Charts product (currently available for WPF, Silverlight, and WinRT XAML), we introduced the new MicroBoxPlot control. In today's post, we'll look at the minimum and maximum functionality of the control.

Minimum and Maximum Display

The minimum and maximum of the chart are auto-calculated if they are not given a value. The minimum and maximum are set to the smallest and largest displayed values respectively.

If outliers are not displayed than the whisker values will be the minimum and maximum values. If outliers are displayed, then the minimum and maximum of the values given will be the minimum and maximum of the display. Alternatively, the minimum and maximum can also be set to specific values.

Use in Dashboards and Reports

As shown below, setting the minimum and maximum chart values can be useful for putting group of box plots into the same context.

This allows all the charts to display the same range and makes it easy to compare several data sets. The box plots can then be placed directly above each other, or side-by-side to produce a comprehensive, easy-to-read report.

Summary

The MicroBoxPlot control is currently available in the Micro Charts product, which ships in our WPF, Silverlight, and WinRT XAML control sets.

In our next post in this series, we'll take a look at the chart's appearance customization options.

In the previous post for our Micro Charts product (currently available for WPF, Silverlight, and WinRT XAML), we looked at various features of the MicroBulletGraph control. In today's post, we'll introduce a different type of chart with the new MicroBoxPlot control.

Introduction

Box plots are excellent tools for creating charts that show statistical distribution in datasets. They are particularly useful for displaying distributions of a group in a compact way. This is good for creating charts that compare a group of data such as the performance of salespeople, heights of a group of people, temperatures along a latitude, and more.

This example shows how box plots can illustrate the distributions of salaries paid to employees based on how long the employee has been with the company.

Box Plot Parts

Box plots are designed to display the statistical distribution of a dataset. They display a set of data through five major values: the lower whisker value, the lower quartile value, the median, the upper quartile, and the upper whisker value.

The median is the value found directly in the center of the data when it is sorted, meaning half of the data lies above it, and half lies below it. The median is displayed as a perpendicular line to the chart. The lower quartile is the median of the lower half of data, resulting in a quarter of the data being less than it, and three-quarters being greater. The upper quartile is the median of the higher half of data, resulting in three-quarters of the data being less than it, and a quarter being greater. The upper and lower quartiles define the edges of a box drawn on the chart, resulting in the middle half of the data being contained within the box. The whiskers are displayed as "T" bars that extend from the edges of the box to their respective values and are designed to hold the majority of the remaining data, leaving only the outliers outside.

In the example above all the parts of the control are displayed and labeled. The spacing between the different parts of the box plot help indicate the degree of spread in the data.

Inter-Quartile Range Calculation Logic

The difference between the upper and lower quartiles is known as the Interquartile Range (IQR). The product of the IQR and the IQR multiplier (normally a value of 1.5) is then subtracted from the lower quartile value to get the lower whisker value and added to the upper quartile value to get the upper whisker value. The IQR multiplier can be set to any value greater than or equal to zero to customize the extent of the whiskers.

Summary

The MicroBoxPlot control is currently available in the Micro Charts product, which ships in our WPF, Silverlight, and WinRT XAML control sets.

In our next post of this series, we'll take a look at the minimum and maximum display values.

WPF Controls 2012.2 has been released and is now available for download!  This version adds a number of new controls, some great new SyntaxEditor functionality, a new Metro light theme, and other theme updates.

Major new features are described below.  See the announcement post for the detailed list of enhancements and updates.

Bullet Graph

A bullet graph is a special kind of bar chart used to display a single value and make comparisons to one or more related values, such as last year's mark, a goal or target, or a projected future value. 

Examples could include annual income or expenses data, sales data, and performance ratings data.

Box Plot

A box plot is a chart used to visualize major statistical values, such as the mean, median, and quartile values, of a data set. The mean and median can be shown as bars perpendicular to the chart. The upper and lower quartile values form the edges of a box that contains the middle half of the data.

The spacing between the different parts of the box plot help indicate the degree of spread in the data. Box Plots are particularly useful for displaying distributions of a group in a compact way. This is good for creating charts that compare a group of data such as the performance of salespeople, heights of a group of people, temperatures along a latitude, and more.

Candlestick Chart

Candlestick charts are used to visualize price movements over time, such as changing stock or currency values.  The edges of the box define the opening and closing values, with the wicks extending to the highest and lowest values reached. 

The box is shaded differently depending on if the close was higher than the open.

IntelliPrompt Code Snippet Selection Session

In the 2011.2 version, we added code snippet template session functionality where snippets of code can be inserted into the editor.  The snippets may contain editable fields that the end user can tab between and modify.

In 2012.2, we've added a new code snippet selection session that allows an end user to display a popup containing all the available code snippets. 

They can type in what they are looking for or can use the completion list as appropriate to locate a snippet.  Once a snippet is selected, a template session begins for it.

Structure Matchers

Structure matchers are a new language service added that allows a language to locate matching delimiter sets.  This is a feature that is harnessed by other SyntaxEditor editing functionality such as move/select to matching bracket and delimiter highlighting.  A built-in implementation is included that makes it easy to match common bracket pairs for a language.

Move/Select to Matching Bracket

When the caret is next to a delimiter that is part of a delimiter set (as identified by a structure matcher), the end user can choose to move or select the caret to the matching bracket via built-in edit actions.

Delimiter Highlighting

Delimiter highlighting checks the text next to the caret to see if it is part of a delimiter set (as identified by a structure matcher).  In cases where a delimiter is found, it and its related delimiters can be highlighted so that the end user can easily identify the code block.

This highlighting commonly includes brackets (parentheses, curly braces, etc.) but can also include more advanced highlights such as #if…#else…#endif blocks.

.NET Languages Add-on Support for C# 5.0 / VB 11.0 Syntax

The latest official C# 5.0 and Visual Basic 11.0 language specifications have added some new keywords and functionality to the languages.  Both languages add asynchronous procedure support (via async/await) and VB adds iterators. 

The latest .NET Languages Add-on parser is set up to properly parse the new syntax, and the resolver is able to work with async results for supporting automated IntelliPrompt.

.NET Languages Add-on Resolver Improvements for Anonymous Function Results

The .NET Languages Add-on's resolver can now examine anonymous functions to try and derive the Type of their result.

This helps further improve the resolver's ability to provide accurate automated IntelliPrompt when working with LINQ and other scenarios.

New Metro Light Theme

A complete new theme for the Metro style appearance, inspired by the latest Visual Studio and Office versions, is included in 2012.2.  It is optional and is shipped in its own assembly, similar to our Office themes.

As with our other themes, you can activate native control theming so that all the controls in your app, whether they are the built-in Microsoft controls or Actipro controls, will render consistently and with a great new Metro-like appearance.

WindowChrome Class

We have a new chrome class that can be used to alter the appearance of any normal WPF window.  At the moment it's designed for use only when the new Metro Light theme is active, and has these features:

• Ability to convert any Window to use a custom chrome like above when the Metro theme is active.
• Window border color (when active) that matches the StatusBar color.
• Semi-transparent outer glow effect for window border.
• Window resizing via the outer glow effect area.
• StatusBar background, window border, and glow effect colors can all be changed based on app state.
• Full Aero snap support.
• Ability to render interop (WinForms, etc.) controls properly, even though transparency is used.

We plan on expanding the chrome class with more features in the future too.

Assets Added for Making Rounded Editors

We've added several new resource assets and updated all our themes so that it's possible to achieve rounded corners on any edit-related control, such as TextBox, SyntaxEditor, DateTimeEditBox, etc.

As seen in yesterday's post, delimiter (bracket) highlighting is coming to the WPF and Silverlight SyntaxEditor controls in the 2012.2 version (due very soon). 

A new language service that was described yesterday was a structure matcher service.  This allows delimiter sets to be located.  When one of these is registered on a language, SyntaxEditor automatically gains a new feature:  move/select to matching bracket.

UPDATE:  Version 2012.2 is live and available for download now.

Select to Matching Bracket Example

Let's take a look at how this all works.  Say we have this scenario in SyntaxEditor where the caret is next to a parenthesis. 

Notice that the bracket highlight is not visible because the caret is on the inside of the parenthesis and the highlights for this language are told to only show when the caret is on the outside of a parenthesis.

Now we press Ctrl+Shift+] and voila, the structure matcher returns the nearby delimiters to SyntaxEditor, and the full delimiter range is selected.

So you may be asking, how did that work, when delimiter highlighting didn't register the parenthesis as a valid delimiter?  We designed the structure matcher so that an option can be passed asking it to be more liberal in its matching algorithms.  So while the delimiter highlighting matching logic for a language may have very specific locations a match can occur, other features like move/select to matching bracket can find matches that are anywhere next to the caret.

On a side note, the hotkeys for moving (Ctrl+]) and selecting (Ctrl+Shift+]) to the matching bracket only work in WPF since Silverlight doesn't allow us to watch for that key sequence being pressed.  However you can still provide this functionality to customers via a menu item in Silverlight.

Summary

Move and select to matching bracket is some handy functionality when editing code blocks.  We're excited to offer it in the 2012.2 version.