Code Writer v2.5, our free text/code editor app, is now published to the Windows Store.  Please note that the new version may take several hours to show up in the Store.

Are you interested in adding code or text editing abilities to your own Windows Store apps?  SyntaxEditor for Universal Windows allows you to build apps just like Code Writer.  Download a free evaluation to try it out.

Check out all the new features added to Code Writer…

Accessing App Settings

See the Summary section for info on our future plans to give the app a UI refresh designed for Windows 10.  In the meantime, we've made the app's Settings easier to access in Windows 10.  It can be done in two places:

The first is from the hamburger menu on the upper left of the app window.

The second is from the bottom app bar that shows when you press Windows+Z or click the status bar ellipses ("…") to show the app bars in the Editor screen.

Browse Picker

The Browse picker's 'All Files' file type filter can now open unregistered file types.  It comes up by default allowing *.* files to be opened.

If you drop down the file type filter, all file extensions are now sorted alphabetically.

Move Selected Lines Up/Down

Alt+Up and Alt+Down can now be used to move the selected lines up and down.

New Font Options for Eastern Character Display

New options for Eastern fonts are now available in the Editor settings flyout.

HTML Improvements

A HTML5 doctype is now added by default to the HTML, PHP, and ASP new document templates.

HTML auto-completion for void elements will no longer self-close certain tags like <br>.

Miscellaneous

Several other updates are included:

• codewriter://close-all URL closes all open documents, losing any unsaved changes.  If you have a troublesome document that might be preventing the app from loading, try this command.
• Print settings for syntax highlighting, line number margin, and whitespace are now saved.
• Indentation guide contrast has been increased.
• Fixed a bug where the Save As dialog didn't select the document's current file type by default.
• Fixed a bug where the CSS file type wasn't syntax highlighting media queries correctly.

Summary and Future Windows 10 Plans

This update adds several features that have been requested by our users.  It will likely be the last version released for Windows 8.1.  Now that our Universal Windows Controls are released, our goal is to get Code Writer upgraded to the Universal platform and give it a UI refresh that is better designed for windowed usage.

Have any suggestions for a refreshed Windows 10 UI?  Now is the time to post them in the app's discussion forum.

You can also download a free evaluation of our SyntaxEditor control for Universal Windows, which lets you add advanced code and text editing to your own Windows Store apps.

We're pleased to announce that our Universal Windows controls have officially been released and are ready for use in your Windows 10 apps!  Download a free evaluation today and start building your apps with them.

Let's take a quick glimpse at some of the samples that ship with the product and show off the controls:

The focus of this first release was to port our older WinRT XAML controls up to the Universal Windows platform.  Look for plenty more updates and controls added in the future.

The final 2015.1 version's maintenance release of our WinRT XAML controls has been released and is now available for download.  This build remains on the 2015.1 version since beginning in the 2016.1 version, our new Universal Windows controls set that targets Windows 10 replaces the older WinRT XAML controls.

This version contains several updates to SyntaxEditor and its add-ons.  See the announcement post for details.

The 2016.1 version of our Silverlight controls has been released and is now available for download.

This version contains several updates to SyntaxEditor and its add-ons.  See the announcement post for details.

A while back, we created a sample for showing how a hosted Windows Workflow Designer instance could be integrated with Actipro WPF controls within a custom WPF application to provide a very elegant interface for end users.

With the release of the 2016.1 version of our WPF controls, we've updated the sample again.  Note how it now takes advantage of one of our new Office-like themes announced in yesterday's post:

Our Docking/MDI product is used to provide the tool window and multiple document interface.  Our SyntaxEditor code editor control, in single line edit mode, is injected as a custom expression editor.  When you combine SyntaxEditor with our .NET Languages Add-on, you are able to have it support powerful IntelliPrompt completion lists.  For instance, in the screenshot above, you can see the itemCount variable is showing up in the completion list since it was declared below.  Our Themes product is used to provide a modern Metro style for all Actipro and native WPF controls.

When you put it all together, it's very easy to integrate Actipro WPF controls with rehosted Windows Workflow Designer instances in your applications.  It only takes a few minutes to get up and running, and once you do, the result is well worth the time.

Summary

If you rehost the Windows Workflow Designer in your WPF apps and would like our example, please contact us and we'll be happy to share it with you!

For those customers who downloaded either of the prior versions, this update is at the same URL as before.