DXperience v2009 vol 3 released

Latest update adds Silverlight subscription, new beta WPF controls and many updates to existing controls.
Dezember 17, 2009
Veröffentlichung mit neuen Funktionen

DXperience subscriptions give you access to a range of Developer Express products including WinForms presentation components, reporting controls, IDE productivity tools and business application frameworks for Visual Studio. Additional services such as priority support and early access to new technologies are also available depending upon subscription level.

The following editions are available:

Updates in v2009 vol 3

DXCharts for WPF

  • Support for Common DevExpress WPF Visual Themes - added support for standard DevExpress WPF themes. This change allows you to create visually consistent applications when using DevExpress WPF controls. If your application’s theme is modified, DXCharts used within your application will be automatically synchronized to match all DevExpress controls used within the project.
  • Empty Points - Much like the XtraCharts Suite, DXCharts is now capable of processing data points that don't have a corresponding series value. Empty points are displayed either as gaps or as missing bars and points, depending on the series type.
  • Axis Titles - You can now display text next to chart axes.
  • Reversed Axes - Toggling this option for any 2D axis will change its direction, so that all corresponding series are also mirrored.
  • Templates for Axis Labels - You can fully customize the appearance of axis labels.
  • Custom Draw for Series and Series Points - Two newly introduced custom draw events allow you to modify individual Series and Series Points. For example, the following image demonstrates how to change bar and label color based upon the current series point value.
  • SeriesPoint.Tag Property - You can now associate any arbitrary object with a series point by placing it into the Tag property. The important fact here is that if you bind a chart to data, you don't need to manually fill the Tag property for all series points. By default, this property contains a reference to the underlying data object (e.g. DataRowView) which corresponds to this series point.
  • True Date-Time Value Axis - Previously, only numerical Y-axes were supported. With v2009 vol 3 release, you can also display charts with date-time values.

DXGrid for WPF

  • Best Fit for Columns - The DevExpress WPF Grid can now automatically adjust column width in a Table View to make a cell’s contents fully visible wherever possible.
  • Row Indicator - Table Views now display a row indicator panel. This panel allows end-users to move row focus or select rows. It also indicates whether a row's values are being or have been updated.
  • Multi-Selection and Clipboard Support -End-users can now select multiple rows or cards by using standard methods such as clicking records while holding the CTRL or SHIFT keys. Data from selected records can then be copied to the Clipboard using standard shortcuts. The data is copied in a TAB separated format that is supported by spreadsheet applications like Microsoft Excel. You can also implement grid-to-grid data transfer via the clipboard by using an event that fires when attempting to paste data into a grid.
  • Expressions for Unbound Columns  - Prior to v2009 vol 3, you needed to write event handlers to supply data for unbound columns. This task has now become much easier with expression support. Much like our WinForms Grid control, you simply specify strings like "[Price] * [Quantity]" so that your unbound column gets its data by performing calculations on other data field values.
  • Drag and Drop Column Headers to Hide Them -End-users can now hide columns without having to invoke the Field Chooser each time. They can simply drag a column header and if it's dropped far enough from the column header panel, the grid hides the corresponding column.

DXEditors for WPF

  • New WPF Memo Editor - In this version, the DXEditors Library extends its component list with a MemoEdit control - a dropdown multi-line text editor. This control is best utilized when you need to display memo information within grid cells. In addition to the text input features derived from the TextEdit control, it offers a few features related to multi-line text management.
  • Window Control - The common controls library now includes a Window control. This is a standard control descendant that features the same behavior and API, so you won't have problems replacing standard windows with our new control. By introducing full support for DevExpress WPF Themes, your title bars and window backgrounds will now match all other DevExpress controls in your application.

WPF Printing and Control Rendering

  • Automatic Page Numbering - added two new attached properties that indicate the current page number and the total page count. These properties can be visualized by any control in a page header or page footer section thus providing page numbers for your report.
  • More Options for XPS Exporting - You can now customize how documents printed to XPS. This means that you can specify a page range to be exported, select the compression level, and also specify various attributes of resulting XPS documents.
  • Print Preview Window Enhancements - several enhancements to the Print Preview window: Page Size specific zoom modes (Page Width, Page Height, Whole Page and Two Pages) update the current zoom factor when resizing the Print Preview window. The status bar includes an editor that displays the current page number and allows you to navigate to a different page.

DXThemeWheel for WPF

  • If the standard themes shipped with DXperience do not satisfy your business requirements, you can simply use a given theme as a base and then specify color transformations in order to preserve the overall look and feel yet alter the palette used. For instance, all shades of blue in the Office 2007 Blue scheme can be changed to corresponding shades of Pink or Green. These color transformations can be applied using the Color Theme Editor dialog shipped with our WPF Controls. The quickest way to see it in action is to invoke it from the control demos.

Common Changes Across the Entire Silverlight Product Line: Application-Wide Theme Support

  • This release ships with two themes - one similar to the default appearance of our Silverlight controls and another replicating the Microsoft Office 2007 UI.
  • You can specify a theme for any container control and propagate the theme to all child controls, unless overridden.
  • Your applications will be visually consistent even if you use standard Silverlight controls side-by-side with DevExpress components. Skinnable standard controls include: Button, CheckBox, ComboBox, ListBox, RadioButton, ScrollBar, ScrollViewer, Slider, TextBox and ToggleButton.
  • DevExpress Silverlight themes are extensible, meaning that even if there's no style definition for a control you need to use, you can add that style definition manually, and then re-use it with the theme as required.

AgRichEdit Suite

  • Bookmarks - Both the AgRichEdit and XtraRichEdit controls allow you to create named bookmarks at the current caret position or based on the current selection. The document stores a list of bookmarks so you can select them as hyperlink targets by choosing the required bookmark from the saved list.
  • Hyperlink Support - Both WinForms and Silverlight Rich Editors now support hyperlinks. This new features allows you to embed a link to an external resource, such as a file on disk or a web page, or to a bookmark within the current document. The XtraRichEdit provides a complete end-user UI allowing you to create and edit hyperlinks. The current version of AgRichEdit only allows you to handle hyperlinks within code.
  • Support for Two More Document Formats - Both AgRichEdit and XtraRichEdit can now open and save document in the following formats: OpenDocument Format (.odt), WordprocessingML Format (Microsoft Office 2003 XML format)

AgLayoutControl for Silverlight

  • Design-Time Support in Blend 3 - XAML can be edited manually, but with this release, AgLayoutControl introduces design-time support for Blend 3 to simplify the design and layout process.

AgControls for Silverlight

  • Silverlight Tab Control - The Utility Control Library for Silverlight has been extended with a full-featured tab control.

AgEditors for Silverlight

  • Silverlight and WPF Editors Compatibility -DevExpress Silverlight Editors are now compatible with WPF Editor Controls, which means that you can use the same code when developing cross-platform applications.
  • New Silverlight Date Picker Control - This control allows end-users to enter dates while using masks to control input. An alternative way to enter dates is using our Windows Vista style dropdown date picker that allows you to browse through months, years or decades.

AgDataGrid for Silverlight

  • Improved RIA Services Support - Though data connectivity via RIA Services was possible prior to DXperience v2009 vol 3, the bound data grid was completely re-built with every data change. With v2009 vol 3, the AgDataGrid provides improved data update support when using RIA Services. This means that additional coding is no longer necessary and there are no performance issues when working in this data connectivity mode.

XtraCharts Suite

  • Swift Plot (Quick Line Chart) - This new lightweight view type has been introduced to quickly render charts with a significant number of arguments. It can also be used to create real-time charts with large data changes. These chart types support key features, including trendlines, regression lines, Fibonacci Indicators, secondary axes and multiple panes.
  • New Models for 3D Bars Representation - You can now choose a model for 3D Bar series representation: Box (default), Cylinder, Cone or Pyramid.

XtraReports Suite

  • Enhanced Report Designer - Updated themes to make auxiliary elements more subtle. This includes the grid, band headers, resizing grips, selection and focus rectangles. The Toolbox now shows only icons by default, thus providing more space for the design surface. Both left and right margins can now be customized in the editor (only the right margin was previously available). Microsoft Visual Studio style snap lines are now available for easier control alignment.
  • New Script Editor - Prior to v2009 vol 3, all XtraReports scripts were available via individual properties and were edited in individual popup windows. It was hard to review the entire script code in the editor, hard to navigate between method and maintain common functionality. To overcome these script management issues, this new version introduces a new improved script editor that provides centralized access to all event handlers for your report. To access the new editor, simply click the Scripts tab at the bottom.

XtraPivotGrid and ASPxPivotGrid Suites

  • Disable Sorting in OLAP Mode - By default, Pivot Grid controls automatically sort field values (row and column headers) in either ascending or descending order. This can be replicated functionality when working with OLAP cubes since they can define their own value order. To handle these instances, our Pivot Grid controls allow you to disable header value sorting thus keeping the value sequence defined by the data source.
  • Improved Memory Utilization - Previously, our Pivot Grid controls loaded the entire underlying dataset into the memory, regardless of which data needed to be displayed on screen. With this release, only the visible field data is being loaded which dramatically decreases memory consumption, especially for data sources with a large number of data fields (properties).
  • WinForms Control - Improved Cell Multi-selection - Prior to v2009 vol 3, you could only use this mechanism to add cells to the current selection. This feature now works both ways, allowing you to deselect arbitrary cell blocks.

XtraEditors Library

  • Automatic Editor Type Switching - With this release, all DevExpress WinForms Editor controls used on a form can be converted to another editor using the dropdown available through the control's smart tag. This procedure automatically preserves the control's size and location so as not to break form layout and copies all common settings and event handlers - freeing you from any manual modifications.

ASPxEditors Library

  • New ASP.NET Time Editor - This editor looks and behaves like our spin edit control - making it easier to display and edit date and time portions of date values. With integrated keyboard support, there are now 3 different ways to edit values.
  • New Column Types - Added two column types to our ASP.NET grid controls to simplify editing of color and date-time values. These column types correspond to the new ASP.NET editor controls implemented in this and previous releases.

ASPxperience Suite

  • New ASP.NET Splitter Control - The ASPxSplitter control allows you to build web interfaces with user-resizable panes. When you place an ASPxSplitter on a web page, you get two container panes separated by a horizontal or vertical splitter. End-users can either drag the splitter to resize the panes or they can use the expand/collapse buttons to temporarily hide the panes they don't need. You can build nested resizable layouts since the ASPxSplitter control maintains a hierarchical splitter pane structure

eXpressApp Framework

  • EasyTest Script Recorder - EasyTest now ships with a script recorder which keeps track of all actions you perform, and saves them to an EasyTest script file. This feature is available for both WinForms and ASP.NET applications.
  • Integrated Report Wizard - In this release, the report wizard used in XtraReports is now available to both XAF developers and end-users. The wizard dialog resembles that found in Microsoft Access thus providing a user experience consistent with Office applications.

CodeRush and Refactor! Pro

  • Unit Test Runner - The CodeRush Unit Test Runner executes your unit tests, navigates through tests, and facilitates test results processing.

About Developer Express

Developer Express is a software development company based in the United States. It produces coding assistance tools and components for Delphi, C++ Builder and Microsoft Visual Studio developers. The major part of its product line is VCL, .NET WinForms and ASP.NET components that replicate the UI of Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office applications. Developer Express has won many industry awards for its products.

A selection of DXperience controls including Gauge and Gantt chart.

DevExpress Silverlight

All DevExpress Silverlight controls and libraries in one package.