Actipro Gauge for WPF

What's New in Actipro Gauge for WPF 2011.2?

• App-Wide Themes - Actipro Themes includes professionally-designed themes that cover all system and Office themes including high contrast mode.  The themes apply to all Actipro controls and optionally to native WPF controls.
• Styles/Templates for Native WPF Controls - Enhanced styles and templates for all native WPF controls (TextBox, ToolBox, TreeView, etc.) are included.  These styles can be automatically applied app-wide via a single line of code.  Or you can choose to use them on specific controls only, accessible via pre-defined style keys.
• Common Asset Pool - There are well over 800 asset resources for each of the system and Office themes supported. All custom and native control styles/templates use the same assets. This ensures that controls placed next to each other always render with similar colors that complement each other.
• Advanced Tinting - Actipro Themes supports the tinting of any theme or portion of a theme towards a certain color. This means that you can take a built-in theme like the Office Silver theme, and make it a red one instead.
• Appearance Improvements - Actipro Themes includes updated menu, toolbar, and statusbar appearances that were inspired by Visual Studio 2010’s look. The simplified design uses a darker workspace area, with lighter content areas in each docking window.  This higher contrast appearance focuses the end user's eye on the content without distracting it with non-active UI elements, thus making for a more effective user interface.

What's New in Actipro Gauge for WPF 2010.2?

• Fixed exception when using DigitalGauge character casing feature with null text.

What's New in Actipro Gauge for WPF 2010.1?

• Updated interactive circular pointers to use closest value between minimum and maximum when dragging outside the sweep angle.

What's New in Actipro Gauge for WPF 2009.2?

• Version 2009.2 adds designer support for Visual Studio 2010 and Expression Blend 3.

What's New in Actipro Gauge for WPF 2009.1?

• Windows 7 Compatible
• Expression Blend Compatible
• Added DesignerSerializationVisibility(DesignerSerializationVisibility.Content) attribute to read-only collection properties so they can be properly serialized

Actipro Gauge for WPF is a control suite that implements circular, linear, and digital gauge controls for the Windows Presentation Foundation framework. Several data points can be presented on the same gauge, including averages and min/max values or build your own converter to show a custom value (e.g. median). Any UIElement, including other gauge controls, can be embedded and precisely placed inside the gauge controls, allowing for infinite combinations and looks. Also, all the controls in Actipro Gauge for WPF have numerous options for everything from the colors used to sizing and placement. Certain items, such as pointers, have several built-in types and effects. Actipro Gauge for WPF can also be bought as part of the Actipro WPF Studio.

Actipro Gauge for WPF Circular / Linear Gauge Features

Scales and Tick-Sets
Both the CircularGauge and LinearGauge support any number of scales which control the placement of the gauge elements, such as tick marks and pointers. In turn, any number of tick-sets can be specified when control value ranges and intervals, such as where major ticks should be rendered.

Ranges
To highlight areas of interest, ranges can be added with identifying colors. For example, a range with a dark red background can be added to a tachometer that encompasses 6,000 to 10,000 rpms. Ranges are supported by both CircularGauge and LinearGauge and can quickly convey information to the user.

Pointers
CircularGauge supports four distinct pointer types, while LinearGauge supports two different types. Any number of pointers can be included in a single gauge, which can present different value (either static or live). All pointers support smooth animation of value changes, providing for a more visually appealing effect.

Avg/Min/Max Converters
Using WPF data-binding, the average, maximum, and minimum values can be shown using value converters provided. The running average for all values can be calculated using only a few bytes of memory, or you can limit the number of values used for caculation.

Circular / Linear Gauge FeaturesActipro Gauge for WPF Digital Gauge Features

Character Display
Several ASCII characters and all numbers can be displayed using 7 or 14 segments, or a special trapezoid version with 7 segments. Certain characters, such as period and colon, are rendered in the space between characters. Italic characters can be replicated using built-in skew transform support.

Refresh Rate
By default, value changes are immediately reflected in the control's diplay. If there are several updates per second, it becomes difficult to read the values as they flash by. Increasing the refresh rate restricts the number of display updates and gives the user a chance to read the values as they change.

Customizable Look
Numerous options are available to change the look of the gauge and the associated elements. Choose your favorite frame and colors to use in the background of your gauge, or render your own. The same goes for most of the other elements.

Embedding Controls
Any UIElement-derived object can be embedded and precisely positioned inside any of the three gauge controls, and this includes other gauge controls. For example, a DigitalGauge can be embedded inside a CircularGauge and, using WPF data-binding, can show a textual representation of the current value.

Vector Rendering
Using the WPF rendering engine and precisely placed geometries, the gauge controls can scale to any size without losing resolution.

Actipro Gauge for WPF Common Features

Right-to-left and Localization
All Gauge UI supports right-to-left layouts and all text in the user interface may be localized to other languages.

XBAP Support
Gauge fully supports use in XBAPs (browser applications). We have specifically engineered it to operate within the bounds of the XBAP security sandbox.

Extensive Documentation and Samples
Actipro has spent a lot of time refining the design of Gauge to take advantage of WPF best practices. We realize that a good product is only part of the equation though and have also worked very hard to write detailed documentation on the product. In addition to that, Gauge ships with the full source for many QuickStart examples that each focus on learning a specific feature.