DXperience DXv2 WPF

What’s New in DXv2 WPF?

• Metro Inspired Touch Controls WPF Tile - The DevExpress Layout Control has been extended with a new Tile Layout option, allowing you to replicate the look, feel and behavior of Windows 8 and thus target next generation devices with ease. Whether using WPF or Silverlight, the Tile Layout Control allows you to re-imagine the way in which an application interacts with end-users and build dashboards that are ultra-efficient and fully customizable.
• Custom Themes and Skins - Available in DXv2, the new WPF Theme Editor provides total control over the look, feel and appearance of all WPF Controls that ship as part of the subscription. This sample application demonstrates how a standard theme can be customized to meet the exacting needs of a touch enabled app.
• Fully Customizable WPF Ribbon - The DXRibbon ships with new end-user customization and integrated MDI merging options, so you can deliver flexible business solutions to meet the needs of your most demanding customers.
• Hybrid WPF Tree-List - Whether used as a standalone control or embedded as a view within the DXGrid, the DXTreeList has been extended with key productivity features including integrated clipboard, serialization and data template support.
• All-Inclusive WPF Scheduler - With additions such as the built-in Appointment Recurrence Dialog, the DXScheduler allows you to focus on customer requirements rather than spend countless hours creating individual scheduler related forms.
• Windows Touch Support - Target new devices such as tablets by using the extensive range of touch enabled WPF Controls offered by DevExpress.
• Fast WPF Grid - From the Instant Feedback UI Mode for WCF Data Services to PLINQ data source support, the DXGrid continues to extend its market-leading performance and usability feature set.
• WPF PivotGrid - Never restricted to a single database or data access strategy, the DXPivotGrid continues its evolution with XMLA data access support.
• WPF Charting - From new chart types to multi-pane support, DXChart maintains its commitment to you and your customers: High performance and visual elegance in one comprehensive chart package.
• Elegant WPF Themes and New Theme Editor - The new Windows 7 and Office 2010 style themes help augment the already rich collection of application wide skins available in DXv2. For utmost flexibility, the new DevExpress WPF Theme Editor allows you to quickly modify themes as your business needs dictate.
• Robust Collection of WPF Editors - Most data centric applications require the use of editors and no WPF package offers a richer collection of data editors than DXv2.
• Refined WPF Gauge Controls - Compelling business intelligence and data analytics solutions require innovative ways in which to present information to end-users. The DXGauge Control helps you address a wide range of scenarios with new models and custom symbol mapping features. 

DXperience DXv2 WPF includes the following WPF products from DevExpress:

• Data Grid for WPF 
• Charting Control for WPF 
• Toolbar-Menu System for WPF 
• Dock Windows for WPF  
• Printing-Exporting Library for WPF 
• Data Editors for WPF 
• Navigation Pane for WPF 
• Carousel for WPF   
• DXGauges for WPF
• DXTreeList for WPF
• DateNavigator for WPF

Data Grid for WPF key features include:

• Fast Server-side Data Processing - Delegating memory and processor intensive operations to the Server and displaying only what is needed on-screen is the key to delivering fast WPF applications. The WPF Grid is optimized for this very thing.
• Re-designed Virtualization Engine for Better Data Visualization Effects – DevExpress have created a custom virtualization mechanism for rows and as a consequence the grid now supports hierarchical row layouts natively. The end result is better visualizations and styling points for the grid, including rounded corners for child row groups, and animations for row expand/collapse actions.
• Layout Serialization - With this feature, you can save and restore control layout and maintain layouts between application runs. This feature can also be used to provide end-users with multiple predefined layouts so that they can switch from one to another based on their business requirements.
• Full Template and Styles Support - Needless to say, with WPF templates supported throughout the DXGrid, you can design custom interfaces to satisfy your most demanding users. You'll also find that DXGrid has includes easy to use data access. Because of DXGrid's flexible internal structure, you can accomplish most tasks using XAML - without having to write code in C# or other languages.
• Instant Rendering of Printed Reports - The new WPF Printing Engine makes it possible to instantly print a grid (WYSIWG) or to export it to popular formats such as PDF, XPS, XLSX, etc.

Additional Features

• Supports both tabular and card display formats.
• Allows end-users to filter, sort and grop data against an unlimited number of columns.
• Offers unique presentation of grouped data within Card View, providing better clarity and ease of navigation.
• Delivers user-customizable group and total summaries with the ability to sort group rows by summary values.
• Ships with a Data Editors Library fully supports masked input and advanced data validation.
• Provides unbound column support.
• Supports multiple built-in skins/themes.

DXCharts for WPF - DXCharts for WPF is not a WinForms chart component ported to a new platform. It is a fundamentally new component that takes full advantage of the experience of building charting tools and exploiting the WPF framework to the maximum extent possible. Features you will discover once using DevExpress Charting for WPF include:

• Clear and Compact XAML Syntax - DXCharts for WPF provides straightforward XAML syntax for specifying things such as multiple light sources and parallel animations for individual chart elements.
• Full Support for Custom Models - By providing complete control over shapes used to represent data series, your imagination is the only limit as to what can be produced with DXCharts. A column chart doesn't have to use rectangular bars. You can use cones, cylinders or even pencils, buildings, etc. Every chart type DX provide can be customized by creating custom models for series elements.
• Element Customization Using WPF Templates - The content of simpler elements - such as diagram labels or legend items - can be fully customized using templates.
• Predefined Animation Effects and Visual Styles - While you have the freedom to fully customize animation effects and appearance settings for chart elements using standard WPF techniques, DXCharts ships with a number of readily available animation styles and appearances.
• Flexible Data Access - You can bind a chart to any source supporting IList.
• Hit-Testing Support - Determine which series point is currently under the mouse pointer and provide additional information about it when users hover or click it.

DXCharts for WPF supports the following 2D chart types:

• Side-by-Side Bars
• Stacked Bars 
• 100% Stacked Bars
• Point
• Line
• Bubble
• Area
• Stacked Area
• 100% Stacked Area
• Pie 
• Donut 
• Stock
• Candle Stick

Different Charts Types in One Diagram - Most 2D chart types can be combined within a single diagram, as shown in the following image. With this feature, you can visually differentiate series making it easier to analyze data.

Rotated Diagrams - By switching a single property, you can swap your chart's X and Y axes. This allows you, to turn a bar chart into a column chart and vice versa.

Resolving Label Overlapping  - DevExpress have ported algorithms used to address label overlapping from the WinForms Chart Control. You can use four different mechanisms to avoid label overlapping:

• Default - tries to keep a minimum offset between a label's initial position and its position when it does not overlap neighboring labels.
• Hide Overlapped - simply hides labels that overlap neighboring labels.
• Justify Around Point - moves the label around its marker to find a suitable position.
• Justify All Around Point - similar to the previous algorithm, with two differences. It does not allow series labels to overlap markers and automatically calculates optimal angles used to position series point labels.

The latter two modes are only available for 2D Area, 2D Stacked Area, 2D Line, 2D Point, 2D Bubble series.

Reflection Effect - With DXCharts for WPF you can add a mirror effect to your 2D diagrams by specifying reflection area height.

DXCharts for WPF supports the following 3D chart types:

• Side-by-Side Bar 
• Manhattan Bar 
• Point
• Bubble
• Area 
• Stacked Area
• 100% Stacked Area
• Pie
• Donut

Different Charts Types in One Diagram - Much like 2D Chart Types, 3D Charts can combine several compatible display types.

End-User Zooming and Rotation - You can allow end-users to zoom and rotate a chart via straightforward click and drag operations. In so doing, you don't have to guess which rotation angle to specify in order to make the chart's entire content visible. You simply generate the chart and end-users will be able to view it from any perspective.

Series Point Labels in 3D Charts - The WPF Charting control fully supports value labels even in 3D charts. Like other chart elements, labels are correctly positioned taking full account of the current perspective and they can overlap other labels or be overlapped by other elements, providing a true 3D experience.

DXBars for WPF - With DXBars for WPF, replicating Microsoft Office toolbar-menu interfaces is a breeze. By using just one bar manager component, you can create and manage main menus, toolbars and status bars that look and behave just like those found in Office applications. Without writing a single line of code, you have access to built-in features such as toolbar drag and drop, quick bar customization and a UI customization dialog providing full control over the navigation system. The power of a navigation system is not simply measured by its ability to emulate Office toolbars and menus, but also by the variety of element types you can embed into individual bars. With DXBars for WPF, you get everything you need in this regard - from buttons, check buttons and sub-menus to buttons with custom dropdowns and toolbar lists. With native integration of the DXEditors Library, you'll find that displaying editors within the bar/menu (like those used to specify font type/size) is simple and straightforward. The toolbar-menu system supports all the features available in the WPF Framework. These features include a set of WPF Visual Themes and the ability to save and restore toolbar layout to persist end-user customizations.

Toolbars - Toolbars are the main building blocks of your navigation system. They are also the base for main menus and status bars (specialized toolbars). The primary benefit of a "universal" building block is that you can get up to speed with DXBars quickly once you learn to handle one toolbar type, you don t need to learn anything else. After you’ve created all commands (toolbar items) you require, you can populate a toolbar with links to commands. There's no direct command-toolbar binding, because you may need to use the same command in multiple bar locations. For instance, the same button can be displayed in a toolbar, the main menu and a context menu. Since you have the same command object bound to several toolbars or menus, you can change the command s settings in one place and all toolbars will be automatically updated.

When you create a toolbar system with DXBars for WPF, the following features are available to you:

• Automatic toolbar drag and drop - You can dock a toolbar to any container edge or make it float.
• Customization Window - Microsoft Office style dialog allowing you to create new toolbars and manage toolbar content.
• Hot customization - You can rearrange commands within toolbars by dragging them while holding the ALT key.
• Quick Customization menu - Microsoft Office style customization menu allowing you to change command visibility or invoke the Customization Window.
• Fitting to container size - By default, toolbar size depends upon its content. If you want to stretch a toolbar to fit within a container, simply toggle one option.
• Small or large images - If two images are specified for each command - large and small - you can use a toolbar option to switch between these display styles.

Main Menu - Main menus are special types of "toolbars" and are customized in the same manner and support the same features. They usually have a different painting style (based upon the currently applied Visual Style) and sub-menu items don t display dropdown glyphs when in main menus. There are also a few differences in default settings main menus are initially stretched to fit container size and they don t display the drag thumb.

Status Bar - Much like main menus, status bars are specialized "toolbars". They support the same features and customization mechanisms, but have a few differences in default settings. When you change a bar type to "status bar," it is automatically stretched to fit the container's size and hides the drag thumb and customization button.

Context (Popup) Menus - DXBars for WPF allows you to create context menus. As you might expect, you can bind popup menus to any control on a form. Visual consistency with other DevExpress controls is not the only reason to use the context menu controls. Like toolbars and menus, popup menus can contain any built-in item type - not just buttons. As such, you can build context menus that have items with check boxes, sub-menus, built-in editors, etc.

• Toolbar/Menu Items - The WPF Toolbar-Menu system ships with the following built-in bar button types:
• Button – simple push button.
• Check Button – This is a button that can remain in a pressed state and can be added into a radio group.
• Split Button – this button is divided into two parts - one button executes a default action, while another invokes a dropdown with a menu or custom controls.
• Sub Menu – allows you to create nested menus.
• Editor – allows you to display any editor from the DXEditors Library.
• Static Text – displays text and borders - useful for status bars.
• Link Container – allows you to re-use a group of bar item links.
• Toolbar List – automatically lists all toolbars as check buttons thus allowing end-users to control toolbar visibility.

Bar items provide settings allowing you to specify glyph and text visibility, glyph alignment and size.

DXDocking for WPF - DXDocking for WPF allows you to build applications with dockable window interfaces similar to those found in Microsoft Visual Studio and Microsoft Document Explorer. Dockable windows help you create flexible and fully customizable interfaces with ease...End-users can temporarily hide unnecessary controls and drag & drop panels to build a more efficient environment for their business needs.

DXPrinting - DXPrinting System is a universal printing and export library for WPF. You are not limited to specific controls that can be rendered by the library nor do you have to write a lot of code to print or export your data or control. With DXPrinting, you can print anything. Simply define the XAML and off you go. This is obviously nothing new for WPF developers since the standard FixedDocument and FlowDocument classes can do the same in combination with the DocumentViewer. Unfortunately, this similarity only applies to tabular reports (multiple data records in a specific format) and that's where DXPrinting provides you with real options going forward. If you're using the FixedDocument class, you'll have to manually split your document across multiple pages. If you're using FlowDocument, you won't be able to control page breaks and thus a feature like displaying headers on each page cannot be properly implemented. Both these classes don't allow you to export your documents to data files in XLS, PDF, HTML and other popular formats. All these limitations in Microsoft's implementation are overcome by the DXPrinting. Among the main features implemented is the ability to automatically split documents across multiple pages (based on specific rules). As such, if you need column headers on every page or you want a page break before a group value - the Printing engine will deliver it for you.

DXPrinting Key Features

• Banded reports with grouped data
• Multi-column label reports
• WYSIWYG Printing for the DevExpress WPF Grid Control
• Export reports to all popular data formats
• Immediate print preview
• UI Consistency

DXEditors Library - The DXEditors Library offers you a collection of advanced WPF data editors available for use within data entry forms, option editors and data-aware controls. The editors provide seamless integration with the rest of the DX product line, including data grid and toolbar-menu controls. The following describes some of the features available to you when using DXEditors for WPF.

• Support for DevExpress WPF Visual Themes - When using DevExpress UI Controls, you can deliver visually consistent look and feel, regardless of products used within your application.
• Embeddable Data Editors - The editors can be used on a standalone basis within data entry forms and for in-place editing within container controls such as DXGrid or DXBars for WPF.
• Masked Input - The WPF Data Editors provide the same masked input features as the WinForms controls collection. Not only are you able to construct simple masks with ease, you can generate masks that can address even the most complex data entry scenario (because DX provide you full Regular Expression support).
• Advanced Input Validation Mechanism - Just like the masked input, DevExpress have ported advanced validation mechanisms from the WinForms platform. You can control value validity and restrict value acceptance until it conforms to specified rules.
• Display Value Formatting - Easily apply numeric or date/time formatting to edit values to increase the usability of your applications.

DXNavBar - Providing easy and intuitive navigation options within an application is the goal of every software developer. The DevExpress Navigation Bar for WPF gives you everything you need to create easy to use applications which have incredible sophistication and elegance. With DXNavBar, you get multiple layout styles used for switching application modules, controlling application functionality or providing action lists for your application. The following layout styles are included:

• Outlook style Side Bar
• Windows style Explorer Bar
• Office 2007 style Navigation Pane

Each view type includes numerous customization features, such as horizontal or vertical group layout, multiple item arrangement styles, embedded controls, and more.

DXCarousel - The DevExpress Carousel for Windows Presentation Foundation allows you to introduce stunning navigation and data browsing capabilities into your next WPF application with ease. Wherever you need an image or movie gallery, contact library or other list allowing quick and elegant navigation with advanced animation effects, try the DXCarousel.

DXCarousel Key Advantages – The WPF Carousel provides a few fundamental advantages giving you unique capabilities for appearance and behavior customization.

Animate ANY Representation Aspect - You can specify any number of "parameters" for your Carousel and specify how these parameters change along the path. Once you've done this, you can bind parameters to any representation aspect. For instance, you can enable a 3D-like Carousel view by customizing element sizes and locations to achieve a perspective view effect.

Transition Animations - DevExpress Carousel for WPF allows you to avoid value duplication that results in overwhelmingly complex XAML. DevExpress offer you a way to specify transition effects separate from those that apply to elements along the entire path. Thus you'll have simpler code that will obviously be easier to maintain when changes are required.

Features Include

• Control how any dependency property value changes along the movement path.
• Specify additional animations for element transitions.
• All transformations are specified by providing X and Y pairs that are automatically interpolated into continuous functions.
• Total freedom in navigation path customization.
• Customizable element distribution along the navigation path.
• Easily build 3D-like Carousel views.
• Fully customizable Carousel content.
• A pre-built navigation control.
• An easy way to build advanced layouts such as a Book View or an iPod style Album Cover Flow.

DXCarousel can be used as a panel in any ItemsControl. DevExpress also provide their own CarouselItemControl to simplify typical data visualization requirements.