Actipro UIStudio Control Suite (for Windows Forms)

What's New in Actipro UIStudio V2.x?

• Actipro Bar Controls: Commands and Links, Dockable Toolbars, Standalone Toolbars,Popup Menus, Statusbars, Designer Support, Run-Time Customization, Keyboard Shortcuts, Application Modes, MDI Support, Clipboard Changes, Extensible Rendering

What's new in Actipro UIStudio V1.5x?

• Updated renderers for the dock and tab controls that match the look of the VS 2005 RTM release. UIStudio also adds a concept of global renderers that allow all the UIStudio controls used throughout an application to easily use the same rendering theme.
• Tool window inner-fill mode
• Next window navigation feature like in VS.NET 2005 when the Ctrl+Tab key is pressed
• Ability to resize floating tool windows at run-time
• Updated VS.NET 2005 renderers to match the Beta 2 tab design
• Tabs switch selection when performing drag/drop over them
• New help topics

Actipro UIStudio's bar controls are based entirely on a command/command link design pattern, this makes it easy to make centralized updates to a command that filters through to every instance of a related command link in the user interface. This also enables UIStudio to support complete run-time customization by the end-user, similar to the features found in Office or Visual Studio.Keyboard shortcuts have all the features found in Visual Studio, such as single-key shortcuts, chord shortcuts, the ability to be recognized only in certain application modes, and more. The bar controls have designer support which lets you design and manipulate the bar controls in the designer, and then serialize the layout to code for when the application is executed in run-time mode. Bar layouts can be serialized to a file or stream and later reloaded to restore all the same layout and customization states. The bar controls have rendering capabilities that mimic Visual Studio 2005, Visual Studio 2002, Office 2003, and Windows styles.

Actipro Dock Controls have designer support which lets you manipulate the dock controls in the designer and serialize the layout to code for when the application is executed in run-time mode. Dock controls also provide MDI support (two types of MDI, standard and tabbed). The dock controls have rendering capabilities that mimic Visual Studio 2005, Visual Studio 2002, and Office tool and document window styles. The dock controls even support the Next Window Navigation dialog found in VS.NET 2005

TabStrip provides an alternative tab-based control to the TabControl that is included in the .NET framework. TabStrip has a more robust user interface in that it supports total customized rendering, tab aligment on any side, special handling for tab overflow, control over minimum/maximum tab sizes, interactive tooltip handling, drag/drop reordering of tabs, and more. The TabStrip control has full designer support. As page buttons are clicked or pages selected in the designer's Properties window, the control updates to show the page and its contents. The page acts as a container control and can be used to host any type of child control.

NavigationBar uses buttons to control which navigation pane is selected. Panes can display data or simply act as a container for child controls.

Actipro Bar Controls Features:

• Commands and Links
• Dockable Toolbars
• Standalone Toolbars
• Popup Menus
• Statusbars
• Designer Support
• Run-Time Customization
• Keyboard Shortcuts
• Application Modes
• MDI Support
• Clipboard Changes
• Extensible Rendering

Dock Controls features:

• Dock tool windows on all sides of a central client area, in nested hierarchies
• Attach several tool windows in one container, displayed with tabs
• Tear off tool windows into floating windows
• Place tool windows in collapsible auto-hide mode to preserve client area real estate
• Global defaults for tool window capability control (CanDockLeft, CanAutoHide, CanClose, etc.) with tool window instance overrides
• Load and save tool window layouts directly to XML data files or persist layout data in some other media, such as a database
• Dynamically read and write custom XML data to layout data
• Option to turn off MDI so that a single control can be used to fill the client area
• Two styles of MDI - standard and tabbed
• Standard MDI allows for normal MDI windows that can be tiled and cascaded
• Tabbed MDI has tabstrips that allow for selection of the current document Tabbed MDI tabs can be dragged to create new horizontal or vertical tab groups Tabbed MDI containers can display a drop-down list of active documents or use scroll buttons to smoothly scroll through tabs that are out of view
• Document windows track modified states and reflect them in the user interface
• Ability to cancel the closing of tool and document windows
• Programmatically dock all tool windows anywhere in the layout
• Dynamically create new tool windows and document windows
• Built-in default context menus that may be cancelled to provide custom menus
• Detailed event model

TabStrip features:

• Align tabs to the left, top, right, or bottom
• Optional display of close and options buttons
• Three modes of tab overflow handling (normal, shrink-to-fit, and scroll buttons)
• Scroll buttons overflow mode provides smooth scrolling of tabs
• Set images and text for tabs
• Control minimum and maximum tab sizes
• Handle an event to provide tooltip text for tabs on-the-fly
• Ability to handle automatic drag/drop reordering of tabs
• Ability to cancel selected tab changes

NavigationBar features:

• Complete implementation of Navigation Bar functionality found in Outlook 2003
• Buttons can be collapsed to an overflow area, allowing for more client area real estate
• Overflow chevron button provides access to customization features and hidden buttons
• Built-in Navigation Bar Options dialog for reordering buttons and controlling which buttons are visible
• Support for large and small image sizes
• Ability to disable specific buttons
• Ability to cancel selected pane changes
• A separate NavigationBarPanel control that can act as a container and renders in three modes (normal, header, and sub-header modes)