WPF Controls v25.1 Released

by Avatar Bill Henning (Actipro)
Thursday, May 15, 2025 at 2:17pm

This version adds major new dockable/floating toolbar and advanced main menu functionality to Bars, adds new SyntaxEditor features, implements a huge update in the .NET Languages Add-on to support the latest C# 13 syntax, makes large improvements in C# interpolated string editing, and much more.

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

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Here’s a look at some of the new features.

Bars

Dockable Toolbars

Toolbars docked on the top and side of an app, and a floating toolbar

Visual Studio-like toolbars are now available that can be dragged to and docked within any side of a host control. Multiple lines of toolbars are supported in each host side, and multiple toolbars can appear in each line. Toolbars can optionally be floated and moved to other screens as well.

Toolbar visibility options

End users can toggle which toolbars are visible.

Main Menu

An Edit menu showing how screen tips can display even for menu items

An advanced main menu control supports easy MVVM creation, key tips, and screen tips, similar to other Bars controls.  The main menu control pairs well with the new dockable toolbars.

SyntaxEditor

Intra-Text Adornment Location

Elapsed time adornment shown at the end of a line

Intra-text adornments can now optionally appear after the tagged text range instead of before. This allows for features such as AI suggestions or contextual information to appear past the last character in a line.

Outlining Margin Modernization

Outlining margin glyph updates

The rendering of the outlining margin has been modernized and now matches the latest Visual Studio code editor appearance.

SyntaxEditor .NET Languages Add-on

C# 13 Syntax Support

Parameters showing in IntelliPrompt from C# primary constructors

The .NET Languages Add-on’s C# parser previously only supported C# 9 syntax. The updates in this version now support all C# features up to and including C# 13.

C# Interpolated String Expressions

IntelliPrompt working in interpolated string expressions

The .NET Languages Add-on’s C# syntax language now syntax highlights interpolated string expressions. It also fully supports IntelliPrompt features within the expressions, making interpolated string editing much better.

Docking/MDI

Tabbed MDI Single Tab Layout Behavior

A new option allows for tabbed MDI tabs to be hidden when there is a single document in a container.

Tab Key Access

Updated access keys to jump directly to tabs based on their index number. The Ctrl+9 key will now jump to the last document in the tabbed MDI container, regardless of its index.

Shared Library

User Prompt Resizing

A resizable user prompt

The UserPromptBuilder now has an easy way to configure a user prompt to be resizable.

Miscellaneous

.NET Requirements

All assemblies now have a target for .NET 8. Prior .NET Core 3.1 targets were updated to .NET 6 instead, which can be used by those not yet moving to .NET 8.

WPF Controls v24.1.5 Maintenance Release

by Avatar Bill Henning (Actipro)
Tuesday, March 18, 2025 at 6:07pm

This version contains a large number of updates across the WPF control product line.  The largest being a new ShellListView Columns QuickStart with examples on adding checkable items and inserting a custom column, TreeListBox performance and selection updates, and many other various improvements to nearly all products.

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

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Avalonia Controls v25.1.1 Release

by Avatar Bill Henning (Actipro)
Thursday, January 16, 2025 at 9:55pm

This version contains a number of updates across the Avalonia control product line.

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

Download Buy Now

WPF Controls v24.1.4 Maintenance Release

by Avatar Bill Henning (Actipro)
Tuesday, December 17, 2024 at 9:28pm

This version contains an enormous number of updates across the WPF control product line.

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

Download Buy Now

Avalonia Controls v25.1 Released

by Avatar Bill Henning (Actipro)
Thursday, November 7, 2024 at 6:46pm

This massive release contains our new Bars product with modern ribbon, toolbar, menu and related control implementations that allow you to replicate Office-like user interfaces, right in your Avalonia applications.  Numerous enhancements were made to add support for template-based icons in our controls.  And finally, the Actipro native control themes were updated to be compatible with Avalonia v11.2.

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

Download Buy Now

Here’s a look at some of the new features.

Ribbons, ToolBars, Menus

Ribbon Variant Sizing

Ribbon consolidates all commands into a single location, which is easy to use and scales well, thereby providing fast access to all commands regardless of window size. The entire layout of child controls can be tailored to ensure the most important commands are prominently available. Through the use of variant layout phases, you can achieve nearly any dynamic layout that you find in Office.

Ribbon Classic and Simplified Layout Modes

Classic layout mode uses a taller ribbon with a combination of large buttons and multi-row groups of controls and is ideal for large applications with lots of commands. Whereas Simplified layout mode is a modern refinement that uses a single row of controls and supports overflow. Ribbon can instantly toggle between the two modes.

Color Galleries

Show color palettes using the many available gallery display options. Colors can be categorized, and color shades can be generated.

Other Galleries

Galleries can appear on ribbons or menus, and can custom render items to show anything from bullets or symbols to text styles.

Screen Tips

Screen tips are advanced tool tips with a standardized layout for bar controls, and intelligently display below the ribbon.

Key Tips

Key tips provide easy keyboard access to any control on the ribbon or in its popups, even on backstage.

Backstage

The ribbon File button's backstage consists of application-wide commands such as for file operations and other functionality like printing.

UI Density

The user interface can switch between compact (seen here), normal, and spacious densities. Spacious densities are more touch friendly.

Standalone Toolbars

A standalone toolbar control is flexible enough to be used in several contexts and can host any of the galleries or controls that are used in a ribbon. Overflowed controls display in a popup.

Complete MVVM Support

Optionally create the entire ribbon user interface via MVVM. An open-source companion MVVM library is available that provides a full set of view models and related UI bindings for all bar controls.

Icon Updates

Avalonia has several icon libraries available where the icons are implemented via an Object and IDataTemplate pair instead of via a single IImage. Using these sorts of icons in our Avalonia controls in the past was difficult due to some of our icon properties being declared as IImage.

We’ve added a new IconPresenter control that is now used in control templates throughout our products.  IconPresenter supports Object-based icon data and an IDataTemplate that can render that icon data.  This mechanism is customizable so that it can work with any third-party icon library.  All our controls have been updated to support these kinds of icons, while still supporting IImage-based icons out of the box.

Avalonia v11.2 Compatibility

The recent Avalonia 11.2 version made several breaking changes to their native control templates.  The free Actipro Themes for native Avalonia controls have been updated to adapt and be fully compatible with those changes.