UI Controls v22.1 Maintenance Releases

by Avatar Bill Henning (Actipro)
Wednesday, June 1, 2022 at 6:56pm

These maintenance releases for our WPF, WinForms, and UWP Controls focus on making many minor improvements across all the products.  In addition, WPF's WindowChrome now allows it to render a backdrop with Mica or Acrylic materials when on a Windows 11 system.

A WPF Window with a WindowChrome Acrylic backdrop applied

See the related announcement posts for the detailed lists of enhancements and updates:

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WPF Controls v22.1.1 Maintenance Release

by Avatar Bill Henning (Actipro)
Tuesday, March 15, 2022 at 6:30pm

This version adds several exciting new features for SyntaxEditor, along with making numerous improvements to the control and its add-ons.  Other minor updates are made to Docking/MDI, Editors, Grids, Ribbon, Shell, and Themes.  Finally, Visual Studio 2022 designer support has been improved.

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.

SyntaxEditor

File Comparison Sample

Many customers have asked how two SyntaxEditor instances could be configured to work side-by-side for comparing files. We've included a new QuickStart that demonstrates comparing two files and highlighting differences in both editors. 

The new sample showing how to use SyntaxEditor to implement file comparisons

Differences are updated in real-time as a file is edited. Our sample is built using simple interfaces to represent the file differences so that any difference engine could easily be adapted to work with the sample.

Column Guides

Use the new column guides feature to designate where line breaks should occur within a file to stay within any readability guidelines your company may have.  For instance, a column guide might be set at column 80 or 120.

An example of editing COBOL code

Other syntax languages like COBOL may also require that certain data is at certain character positions and column guides provide a visual way to ensure code is positioned properly.

IntelliPrompt Completion Performance

We've done some more tuning in the completion item matching logic to squeeze out some additional performance gains.

WinForms Controls v22.1.1 Maintenance Release

by Avatar Bill Henning (Actipro)
Monday, March 14, 2022 at 7:54pm

This version adds several exciting new features for SyntaxEditor, along with making numerous improvements to the control and its add-ons.

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.

SyntaxEditor

File Comparison Sample

Many customers have asked how two SyntaxEditor instances could be configured to work side-by-side for comparing files. We've included a new QuickStart that demonstrates comparing two files and highlighting differences in both editors. 

The new sample showing how to use SyntaxEditor to implement file comparisons

Differences are updated in real-time as a file is edited. Our sample is built using simple interfaces to represent the file differences so that any difference engine could easily be adapted to work with the sample.

Column Guides

Use the new column guides feature to designate where line breaks should occur within a file to stay within any readability guidelines your company may have.  For instance, a column guide might be set at column 80 or 120.

An example of editing COBOL code

Other syntax languages like COBOL may also require that certain data is at certain character positions and column guides provide a visual way to ensure code is positioned properly.

IntelliPrompt Completion Performance

We've done some more tuning in the completion item matching logic to squeeze out some additional performance gains.

UWP Controls v22.1 Released

by Avatar Bill Henning (Actipro)
Thursday, March 3, 2022 at 7:20pm

This version includes many improvements for SyntaxEditor and its add-ons, along with updates to other UWP products.

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

Download Buy Now

WPF Controls v22.1 Released

by Avatar Bill Henning (Actipro) - 1 comment
Tuesday, December 14, 2021 at 4:03pm

This version includes new controls, new WindowChrome features for Windows 11, many improvements for SyntaxEditor and its add-ons, updates to nearly all WPF products, and now includes .NET 5 assemblies in the NuGet packages with validated .NET 6 compatibility.

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.

Shared Library

User Prompts

Added a rich API that can create modern, themed dialogs for anything from simple messages and confirmations, to more advanced scenarios like exception notification dialogs or file copy dialogs.

An example exception dialog with multiple optional sections, all of which can be configured to any custom content

We even include a ThemedMessageBox object with static methods that match the native WPF MessageBox API.  Our themed version of the MessageBox uses a chromed WPF Window instead of Win32 dialogs (as the default WPF MessageBox does), along with fluent icons.  This is important when your app is in a dark theme because it allows all message/confirmation dialogs to match the theme.  You can instantly modernize all message box display in your app to our implementation with a single line of code too.

ToggleSwitch

Added a new control that is often seen as a replacement for a traditional CheckBox in modern user interfaces.

The three available states in the default ToggleSwitch style

It's easy to customize the appearance of ToggleSwitch to support other styles as well.

PopupButton

Made numerous updates to PopupButton to improve focus handling, tooltip display, key handling, and knowing when to close itself.

Themes

WindowChrome Windows 11 Support

WindowChrome has added support for Windows 11 where it will use rounded corners and system-rendered drop shadows.  In addition, hovering over the title bar's Maximize or Restore buttons will show the Windows 11 Snap Layout menu.

WindowChrome now renders Windows 11 windows with rounded corners, system drop shadows, and supports the Snap Layout menu

SyntaxEditor

Synchronization QuickStart

A new sample demonstrates synchronizing the scroller and splitter of one editor instance with another.

Drag and Drop

Improved drag/drop interaction and related scrolling in several scenarios, and add a new Drag and Drop QuickStart sample.

Single-Line Mode QuickStart

Added a formula example with alternate style for nested parentheses.

Styles that highlight nested parentheses

Editing and Caret Movement

Made many small improvements in the areas of editing and caret movement, especially in certain special contexts.

IntelliPrompt

Improved popups to reposition themselves as the editor is scrolled.

Multiple IntelliPrompt popups

Vertical Scrolling

The vertical scrollbar has been updated to handle collapsed regions more smoothly.

SyntaxEditor .NET Languages Add-on

C# Parser

Updated to support C# 8.0 syntax.

Go To Definition QuickStart

A new sample that demonstrates using an IResolver to navigate to the source of a reference.

C# Outlining

The outliner will now create nodes for code-level constructs such as block statements by default.

Code outlining now works on blocks, like 'for' statements

SyntaxEditor Web Languages Add-on

JavaScript Parser

Updated to support ECMAScript 2021 (12 Edition) syntax.

JSON Syntax Language

Added a constructor for whether the language should support JavaScript style comments, as in Microsoft’s JSONC variant.

Optional JavaScript comment support in JSON

SyntaxEditor Python Language Add-on

Python Parser

Updated to support Python v3.9.5 syntax.

Python Resolver

Updated to support namespace packages.

Grids

FilterApplied Event

Added a FilterApplied event that is raised after the current filtering state has been applied to all of the control's items, generally occurring when DataFilter is changed, or filtering is enabled or disabled

TreeListBox Updates

Added a new item adapter method that can improve performance in large trees when searching for a tree node, and improved focus tracking and filtering.

Editors

Commit Trigger Changes

Updated edit box commit triggers so that commit on focus loss is now optional.

Improved Cultural Support

Updated the numeric edit boxes to support input of Full-width and Arabic-Indic digits.

Charts and Micro Charts

New Aggregation Kinds

Added SignedMaximum and SignedMinimum aggregation options that compare against absolute values while retaining the sign of the original value; e.g., -5 is greater than 4.

.NET 5 Assemblies Added to NuGet Packages

The WPF Controls NuGet packages on nuget.org now contain compiled product assemblies that target:

  • .NET 5
  • .NET Core 3.1
  • .NET Framework 4.5.2

Projects that target .NET 5 or later will use the .NET 5-based assemblies, and projects that target .NET Framework 4.5.2 or later will use the .NET Framework 4.5.2-based assemblies.

.NET 6 Support

We’ve also validated that our assemblies work great in .NET 6 applications.