Silverlight Controls Moving to Silverlight 5 in v2013.1

by Avatar Bill Henning (Actipro)
Friday, February 22, 2013 at 12:42pm

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We're currently hard at work on finishing up the 2013.1 versions of our products.  We should have more details soon on what's new.

One change we're making to our Silverlight controls is that they will be moving to the Silverlight 5 framework instead of Silverlight 4, as in previous versions.  Silverlight 5 was released well over a year ago and is plenty stable at this point.

Text Rendering Improvements in SyntaxEditor

A main reason for this change is so that we can support TextFormattingMode options in SyntaxEditor.  In the past, if you changed your Silverlight 5 app's root visual to use TextOptions.TextFormattingMode="Display" then hit testing and some rendering in SyntaxEditor would be incorrect unless you set it back to "Ideal" on the SyntaxEditor instance.

Along with the general switch for our control projects to be compiled targeting Silverlight 5, we went through all the text rendering code in SyntaxEditor and updated it to adhere to the current TextFormattingMode setting.

In this new version, regardless of which setting your app uses, it will render properly.  Let's see a comparison:

TextFormattingMode

This screen shows a SyntaxEditor with a completion list and description tip display.  The left side uses the default "Ideal" mode and the right side uses the new "Display" mode option.  You can see the text clarity is a bit better with the new "Display" mode.

Summary

These enhancements will be in the 2013.1 version of the Silverlight controls, due in the next several weeks.

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WPF Controls Getting New Metro Dark Theme

by Avatar Bill Henning (Actipro) - 2 comments
Tuesday, February 5, 2013 at 11:03am

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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

SyntaxEditor

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. 

Outlook

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.

Wizard

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.

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SyntaxEditor .NET Languages Add-on - VB Text Formatter

by Avatar Bill Henning (Actipro)
Wednesday, January 30, 2013 at 8:24pm

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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:

VB1

After formatting the document, the result is:

VB2

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.

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Code Writer v1.5 Released

by Avatar Bill Henning (Actipro)
Tuesday, January 29, 2013 at 3:36pm

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We just published v1.5 of Code Writer, our free text/code editor app, to the Windows Store.  This version adds touch-based text selection, new and improved file types, and more.

Touch-Based Text Selection and Context Menus

Past versions of Code Writer had support for the soft keyboard and touch-based scrolling in the editor.  But the editor was still missing the last couple pieces of desired touch functionality:  text selection and context menus.

TouchSelection

Version 1.5 adds complete touch-based text selection features to Code Writer, allowing you to fully edit files without a hardware keyboard!

Tap on a character to display the selection gripper.  Tap and drag the gripper to extend the text selection in either direction.  Once more than one character is selected, two selection grippers will be visible, one at the start of the selection and one at the end.  Both can be manipulated to alter the selection.

You also can tap and hold, tap the selection, or tap a selection gripper to show a context menu with common editing features like Cut, Copy, Paste, Undo, etc.  The context menu is intelligent and only shows applicable commands.

Live Tile Badge Notifications

Version 1.5 adds live tile badge notifications to the Windows start screen.

LiveTile

The notification is the number on the lower right part of the tile.  It tells you the number of unsaved documents that are currently open, helping you know when there is work left to be done.

New File Types

Asp.targetsize-48     AspNet.targetsize-48     Ini.targetsize-48

Several new requested file types have been added in this version:  ASP, ASP.NET, and INI.

Improved PHP File Type Features

Php.targetsize-48

We've improved the PHP file type to support full syntax highlighting of HTML, CSS, and other script blocks.  PHP also now supports color previews.

Startup and Memory Improvements

Numerous other minor enhancements have been made to aid in improving startup time and reducing memory usage.  In addition, the app now recovers better if an error occurs during startup.

Summary

With the addition of full touch support for text editing, this new version makes Code Writer the go-to solution for any kind of mobile text editing need.

Go to the Windows Store to download it, and help us by tweeting about the app!

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SyntaxEditor .NET Languages Add-on - C# Text Formatter

by Avatar Bill Henning (Actipro)
Wednesday, January 23, 2013 at 11:07am

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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:

CSharpFormatter1

When we format the document, the result is:

CSharpFormatter2

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.

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