Code Writer v2.3, our free text/code editor app, is now live in the Windows Store.

Are you interested in adding code or text editing abilities to your own Windows Store apps?  SyntaxEditor for WinRT/XAML was recently released, allowing 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…

Mouse Context Menus

Mouse users have been asking for context menus to be added to the editor so that they can quickly access clipboard and undo functionality without having to use keyboard shortcuts.  This version delivers that functionality.  Now when you right-click over the editor surface, a context menu will be displayed:

This begs the question, how do you access the app bars that used to display on right-click?  There are several ways to show them:

• Mouse right-click at top/bottom of the screen.
• Left-click the status bar on the lower left, where the ellipses show (see screenshot below).
• Press the Windows+Z keyboard shortcut.

And if you'd like to restore the old functionality where mouse right-click always showed the app bars?  We've got you covered there too!

A new option on the Editor page in Settings lets you determine whether context menus are enabled for right-click or not.

JSON File Type Added

JSON is a very popular data serialization format that is widely used in web technologies these days.  We just finished work on a new JSON syntax language for our SyntaxEditor control, and have added a new JSON file type option to Code Writer as well.

The new file type has everything from syntax highlighting to code outlining and even syntax error squiggles.  This makes Code Writer an ideal app to view/edit JSON files.

JavaScript Completion Lists

Completion lists have been added to the JavaScript file type.  The completion lists work similarly to other popular editors where all the identifier symbols that are located in the current document are presented in a list in response to Ctrl+Space being pressed.

As you type, the list filters down to only show matching items.  This makes entering identifiers much faster since you can easily auto-complete instances of already-inserted identifier names.

Keywords are also included in the completion lists.

Per-Document Character Encoding Option

In past versions, you could set an option in Settings that would affect the character encoding used for all documents.  In this update, we have changed that setting so that it only affects new and opened documents.  From that point on, each document tracks its own character encoding setting, which can be altered from the Document Properties pane:

This allows for different documents to be saved in different character encodings.

Miscellaneous

Numerous miscellaneous improvements have also been made:

• Improved delimiter auto-completion logic.
• Block indent mode retains whitespace after the caret when Enter is pressed.
• General settings option for analytics (error/anonymous usage stats) reporting.
• .log and .srt files open with text file type.
• .ass and .ssa files open with INI file type.
• Fixed bug where documents saved with char encodings may not completely clear old file contents.

Summary

This update adds several features that have been highly requested by our users, and we're excited to get it into your hands.

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

We recently posted that the advanced JavaScript syntax language implementation in our SyntaxEditor Web Languages Add-on (WPF, Silverlight, and WinRT/XAML versions) is getting IntelliPrompt completion lists in the upcoming 2014.1 version.

In today's post, I'd like to announce that a brand new JSON syntax language is coming to the add-on as well!

Features

JSON is a lightweight data-interchange format that is a subset of JavaScript syntax, and is commonly used with many web technologies.  With the new syntax language, you'll be able to provide a great editor/viewer for JSON data.  Here's a screenshot:

The JSON syntax language has these features:

• Syntax highlighting
• Abstract syntax tree (AST) generation
• Automatic code outlining based on AST structure
• Reporting and automatic squiggle display of errors for invalid syntax
• Mouse hover quick info for syntax errors
• Smart indent
• Code block selection
• Delimiter (bracket) highlighting and auto-completion

Summary

This new syntax language will be available when the 2014.1 WPF, Silverlight, and WinRT/XAML versions are released in the next couple weeks.

We're including a helpful new control in the upcoming 2014.1 version of our WinRT/XAML Controls:  The AppBarHint control.

What is an App Bar Hint?

The AppBarHint control makes it easy to inject an ellipses (three dot) area at the bottom of an Windows Store app page that can be tapped by the end user to display the page's app bars.  Here's a screenshot showing what it looks like:

Just dock the AppBarHint at the bottom of the page, set a background, and that's all there is to it.  The control automatically opens the app bars when it is tapped.

AppBarHint is also a ContentControl so that custom content can be inserted to the left of the ellipses if desired.

Real-World Usage

We already use the AppBarHint control in our free Code Writer app.  You can see it here in the lower left.

In this usage scenario, we insert the line/column information as content within the AppBarHint control.  Then when the user taps anywhere inside of the green hint, the app bars display.

Summary

This new control will be available when the 2014.1 version of our WinRT/XAML Controls versions are released in March.

Last year we added an advanced JavaScript language implementation to the SyntaxEditor Web Languages Add-on.  This language implementation (available in the WPF, Silverlight, and WinRT/XAML versions of the add-on) includes features like syntax highlighting, parsing with AST generation, syntax error reporting, code outlining, etc.

In today's post I'd like to announce that we have added a simplistic completion provider to the language that should help end user coding productivity.

Completion Provider

The new completion provider displays a completion list when Ctrl+Space is pressed:

The concept is similar to completion lists found in other popular IDEs like Sublime, where the list includes JavaScript keywords and identifiers found throughout the document.  The list has been set up to accept acronym and shortcut item matchers, meaning that any loosely-matched text will select items.  The list also auto-shrinks to only show matching items.

Summary

One feature that several customers have asked for is the ability for SyntaxEditor to automatically resize itself based on its text contents.  We didn't originally have this feature since it can be time-consuming (relatively speaking) and when editing huge documents, we didn't want to add any performance hits.

That being said, in the upcoming 2014.1 version of SyntaxEditor for WPF, Silverlight, and WinRT/XAML, we have added a new SyntaxEditor.IsViewLineMeasureEnabled property that can be set to true to activate view line measure behavior.  This means that you now can use SyntaxEditor in a layout scenario where its measured size will have an effect on its arranged size.

Multi-Line Editing Example

Let's check out an example of this in action.  Here we have a SyntaxEditor that has an XML language loaded and the new view line measure features enabled.  It's resizing itself vertically according to the number of lines in it:

Now if we press Enter a couple times, it auto-sizes to a larger height:

You can see how this would be useful when SyntaxEditor is hosted in controls like a StackPanel.

Single-Line Editing Example

We've also enhanced our single-line edit mode with a neat new feature.  Now if you set word wrap mode on and also have the view line measure features enabled, the single line will grow to render on multiple lines but will still not allow Enter to be pressed or inserted via pastes, etc.

This sort of feature is useful for scenarios where you want to allow a single line snippet of text to be edited but for the entire text to be visible.  Let's have a look:

Above we have a SyntaxEditor in single-line mode, with word wrap on, and view line measure enabled.  Let's type some more text:

Even though the text is still a single line (no line feeds are allowed in single-line mode), the word wrap caused the editor to grow taller.

Summary

These great new features will be available when the 2014.1 WPF, Silverlight, and WinRT/XAML versions are released in March.