.NET 9 WinForms News

Advance Your Data Visualizations in .NET 9 Projects

April 24, 2025
LightningChart .NET v12.2.1 adds Microsoft .NET 9 support to provide high-performance charting capabilities in the latest .NET framework.

LightningChart .NET is a high-performance data visualization library designed for .NET developers working with WPF, WinForms, and UWP applications. It offers GPU-accelerated rendering for smooth real-time visualization of massive datasets, exceeding billions of data points. This library supports a wide variety of chart types, including 2D, 3D, polar, and geographic maps, along with extensive customization options for each. LightningChart .NET is a powerful tool for developers creating demanding data visualization applications requiring exceptional performance.

​The LightningChart .NET v12.2.1 update adds support for .NET 9. This brings a significant performance and compatibility boost to developers building high-performance data visualization applications. By aligning with the latest version of the .NET platform, LightningChart ensures developers can take advantage of modern language features, improved memory management, and enhanced runtime performance. This results in faster chart rendering, lower latency in data updates, and better responsiveness in UI-heavy applications.

To see a full list of what's new in v12.2.1, see our release notes.

LightningChart .NET is available per developer in packages for either WPF, WinForms, UWP or all 3. Each package comes as a subscription license (with 1 or 2 years of limited support), or a perpetual license (with 1 or 2 years of Standard or Premium support). Floating licenses and site licenses are available upon request. See our LightningChart .NET licensing page for full details.

Learn more on our LightningChart .NET product page.

Enhance Grid Data Entry with Custom Edit Forms

April 23, 2025
Deliver flexible, data editing experiences directly within your .NET grid applications, improving usability and aligning inputs with business logic.

Customized Forms in .NET Grid components allow developers to tailor the structure and layout of data entry interfaces within grid-based controls, providing flexibility to match specific application requirements. These forms enable the addition of custom fields, validation logic, and user interface elements directly into the grid's editing workflow, enhancing the user experience and ensuring that data entry aligns with business rules. By offering control over how data is captured and displayed, customizable edit forms simplify complex data interactions, reduce the need for separate dialog windows, and support consistent, efficient data management within enterprise applications.

Many .NET Grid collections enable edit forms including:

  • DevExpress WPF Data Grid (part of DevExpress WPF) lets you design highly flexible edit forms directly within the grid, supporting complex layouts and validation logic.
  • FlexGrid for WinForms (part of ComponentOne Studio WinForms by MESCIUS) allows you to integrate customizable edit forms for efficient, user-friendly data entry.
  • Telerik UI for WinForms GridView (part of Telerik UI for WinForms) facilitates intuitive, adaptable edit form customization, enabling structured data input and validation.
  • NOV Grid for .NET (part of Nevron Open Vision for .NET) enables the creation of configurable edit forms inside the grid, supporting personalized data entry.

For an in-depth analysis of features and price, visit our .NET grid controls comparison.

Compare .NET Grid Controls

Reveal Correlations with Visual Data Points

April 17, 2025
Visually explore relationships, outliers, and data ranges with intuitive scatter charts, enabling clear understanding and informed analysis.

Scatter charts, also known as scatter plots or scatter diagrams, are fundamental visualization tools used to explore the relationship between two continuous variables by plotting data points, where each point's position is determined by its corresponding values for the two variables. This visual representation effectively reveals correlations and helps identify outliers, clusters, and the overall range and distribution of the data. The benefits of using scatter charts include their simplicity in conveying complex relationships, their ability to highlight anomalies that might be missed in tabular data, and their role as a precursor to more advanced statistical analyses like regression.

Several .NET WinForms chart controls offer scatter charts including:

  • DevExpress WinForms Chart (part of DevExpress WinForms) facilitates insightful data analysis by visualizing correlations and distributions through interactive scatter plots with rich styling options.
  • TeeChart WinForms by Steema Software allows developers to create diverse scatter series with point customization, trendline analysis, and zooming for detailed data exploration.
  • Syncfusion WinForms Chart (part of Syncfusion Essential Studio Enterprise) enables the creation of visually appealing scatter charts with features like data labels, tooltips, and multiple series for comparative relationship analysis.
  • ProEssentials by GigaSoft provides high-performance scatter charts to reveal trends, clusters, and outliers for fast, real-time, interactive data exploration and informed analytics.

For an in-depth analysis of features and price, visit our .NET WinForms chart controls comparison.

Compare .NET WinForms Chart Controls

Connect Dashboards to Azure SQL Using Entra

April 17, 2025
DevExpress BI Dashboard 24.2 adds enhanced security and connectivity by integrating Microsoft Entra authentication for Azure SQL databases.

DevExpress BI Dashboard (part of DevExpress Universal) empowers you to craft interactive dashboards for desktop, web and mobile applications. It provides a visual designer for building dashboards without writing code, allowing you to drag-and-drop various data visualization widgets onto the canvas. These widgets connect to your data sources and update dynamically, offering real-time insights to end users. The tool also supports customization through properties and events, enabling you to tailor the look and feel of the dashboards to perfectly integrate with your application's design.

The DevExpress BI Dashboard 24.2 update enhances data security and simplifies connectivity by integrating Microsoft Entra authentication for Azure SQL databases. This update allows developers to use modern Active Directory-based authentication methods, such as ActiveDirectoryPassword, ActiveDirectoryIntegrated, ActiveDirectoryInteractive, and ActiveDirectoryDefault, ensuring that access to critical data is both secure and compliant with current enterprise standards.

To see a full list of what's new in version 24.2, see our release notes.

DevExpress BI Dashboard is included as part of DevExpress Universal which is licensed per developer and is available as a Perpetual License with a 12 month support and maintenance subscription. See our DevExpress Universal licensing page for full details.

DevExpress BI Dashboard is available in the following products:

Unlock Rich Messaging with MIME in .NET

April 17, 2025
MIME support in .NET components streamlines email handling, enabling secure, multi-format messages with attachments and global character sets.

MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) in .NET communications and messaging components enables the structured creation and parsing of email messages with non-ASCII text and attachments such as images or files. It enhances interoperability, supports internationalization, and allows for rich content features like inline media and multipart formatting. Common use cases include sending automated reports with attachments or handling complex inbound messages in customer support systems.

Several .NET Comms & Messaging components offer MIME support including:

  • Aspose.Email for .NET lets you create, parse, and manage MIME messages with attachments, headers, and multi-part content.
  • IPWorks S/MIME .NET Edition by /n software enables secure encryption, decryption, and signing of MIME messages using S/MIME and digital certificates.
  • MailBee.NET IMAP by Afterlogic allows receiving and parsing complex MIME emails, including attachments, HTML bodies, and alternative content views.
  • PowerTCP Mail for .NET by Dart Communications provides robust MIME handling for encoding, decoding, and managing non-ASCII data and attachments in messages.
  • Rebex Mail Pack supports building and processing MIME messages with support for attachments, inline images, and HTML formatting.

For an in-depth analysis of features and price, visit our comparison of .NET Comms & Messaging.

Compare .NET Comms & Messaging