DevExpress WPF 18.2

New WPF Gantt Control (CTP)

• The new WPF Gantt Control is now available as a community technology preview. It's features include:
  • A tree view region with the TreeList Control (sorting, filtering, presentation options, etc.).
  • A Gantt area with time scale and associated UI elements (tasks, summary tasks, milestones, connectors).
  • Built-in scrolling and zooming.
  • Four types of dependencies between individual tasks (Finish to Start, Finish to Finish, Start to Start, Start to Finish).
  • API to configure work time, weekends and special dates as well as the ability to hide/highlight items within the Gantt region.
  • Ability to use built-in Gantt data objects or map your custom data objects to Gantt task properties.

Charting

• Pane Layout Enhancements - Add an individual title for each pane, to hide a pane by clicking its title. Panes can be displayed using a grid layout.
• Zooming and Scrolling Enhancements - The WinForms and WPF Chart controls now support keyboard navigation. New settings allow you to configure hotkeys. Hotkeys can also be used to affect the behavior of mouse buttons when zooming in/out or zooming to a rectangle. With this release, end-users can zoom a specific axis element using the mouse wheel when the mouse pointer hovers over an axis label.
• Crosshair Label Can Display Indicators - The Chart Control's Crosshair Cursor can now display Technical Indicators. The Indicator's API has been extended and made to be similar to the Series API. All settings available for a series are now available for an indicator.

Data Grid and Tree List

• New Data Filter Editor (CTP) - This release includes a new Filter Editor control and offers the following advantages over its predecessor:
  • A list of fields is displayed with a search box.
  • You can select one of the values within the data source as a filter value.
  • The Filter Editor displays record count next to each filter value.
  • You can define and use named filters in the Filter Editor.
• Custom Cell Editor Support -  The Grid and TreeList controls now provide an API to implement keyboard navigation and support data validation for non-DevExpress editors used in cell templates. It also provides two additional templates for grid cells - CellDisplayTemplate and CellEditTemplate. These templates make it easier to define cell display for Display/Edit modes individually.
• Filtering UI Blocks (CTP) - v18.2 introduces Filtering UI Blocks - separate controls allowing you to filter data in the Grid and TreeList controls. Simply connect a filter element to a supported control and specify the fields to filter against.
• Row/Cell Hover Highlighting - To help improve usability, the WPF Data Grid and Tree List controls can highlight rows and cells when a user hovers them with the cursor. To enable hover highlighting, activate the 'HighlightItemOnHover' option. You can also change default appearance settings (e.g. foreground and background colors) and display custom elements within a hovered row/cell.
• Filtering Enhancements - The Excel-inspired Filter Dropdown ships the following new features:
  • Display record count next to distinct values
  • Named filters
• Check Column - Columns with Boolean values can now display a check box within the header to toggle the check state of all rows.
• Miscellaneous Enhancements
  • Custom cell styles automatically inherit visual settings from the selected theme. With this release, you don't need to use the BasedOn property.
  • The PrintRowIndentWidth property allows you to set or remove indentation before printed/exported child rows.
  • The ShowRibbonPrintPreview method allows you to display the Print Preview dialog with a Ribbon instead of Toolbars.
  • Vector-based icons for Conditional Formatting rules are now available.

Diagram

• Pan and Zoom Window - You can now pan and zoom by using the Diagram Control's Pan and Zoom window. The blue box indicates the region of the page that is shown in the drawing window. Resize the blue box by dragging a side until it fits the area that you wish to magnify. To pan the diagram, drag the blue box over the section you want to view.
• Splitting the RightAngle Connector - When the DevExpress Diagram Control calculates routes for RightAngle connectors, it tries to find the closest route from start to finish. This can result in overlaps when multiple connectors originate from the same point. Many of you have asked us to deliver an alternative solution to help reduce confusion. In v18.2, the Diagram Control allows you to split connectors and define the minimum acceptable distance between them.
• Diagram Viewer - With this release, you can switch to "view only" mode and disable all operations that can affect the diagram itself. New options allow you to define which operations are allowed and hide the rest.
• Item Selection Modes - The Diagram Control's selection modes now include:
  • None - Item selection is disabled.
  • Single - Only one item can be selected.
  • Multiple - Multiple items can be selected/deselected via the mouse.

Docking

• New Panel Dragging Mode - With this release, a dock panel can temporarily hide its content until a user drops it at a desired location. The new DockLayoutManager.ShowContentWhenDragging property specifies whether to display panel content while dragging a panel. By default this option is enabled. For complex panels, this options should be deactivated.
• Light Mode - To help create a more "lightweight" UI, the new Light mode merges borders between dock panels.
• Miscellaneous Enhancements
  • Floating panels now display their image and caption in the taskbar preview. You can also use the FloatGroup.WindowTaskbarTitle and FloatGroup.WindowTaskbarIcon attached properties to specify a different caption and image.
  • Panels can now display CaptionTemplate content in the Customization Window and menus.
  • DockLayoutManager can now save and restore the state of panels dragged from another DockLayoutManager instance.
  • The new ContextMenuCustomizationsTemplate property allows you to customize the context menu for panels and groups in a Style.

Editors

• Date Navigator and Date Edit Enhancements - The WPF Date Navigator ships with the following new features:
  • Min/Max dates
  • New API to specify disabled and highlighted dates dynamically
  • Ability to obtain the visible date range
  • A new Microsoft Outlook-inspired style with a compact header.
• This release also integrates the Date Navigator into the WPF Date Editor's drop-down. This expands the Date Editor's capabilities with new features like disabled and highlighted dates.
• CheckEdit - Glyph Support - The WPF CheckEdit can now display glyphs instead of a check box. You can set a glyph using the CheckedGlyph, UncheckedGlyph, IndeterminateGlyph, and GlyphTemplate properties.
• Custom Filters - With this release, the DevExpress WPF ComboBox and LookUp editors ship with a SubstituteDisplayFilter event allowing you to change your filter once it has been entered into the edit box. You can filter items based on values from multiple columns or implement custom filtering and allow for typos or replace characters with umlauts.

Mapping

• Map Editor - Vector items can now be edited by end-users. Once a vector layer has been modified, it can be saved to a file (Shapefile, SVG or KML).

MVVM Framework

• Both the BindableBase and ViewModelBase classes now offer a more simplified syntax for getters and setters.
• CompositeCommandBehavior - the new CanExecuteCondition property specifies whether the command target should be disabled when the CanExecute method of one of the commands returns true.
• The Prism Adapters library now supports Prism 7.

PDF Viewer

• DirectX Rendering - With this release, the WPF PDF Viewer supports DirectX rendering (enabled by default). Its features include:
  • High-quality text rendering (GDI uses integer coordinates for glyph positioning) and improved text antialiasing (especially for Type 1 fonts).
  • Performance gains across a broad range of usage scenarios
  • Support for all blend modes.
  • Support for all text rendering modes (e.g. using text as a clip region for a drawing).

Pivot Grid

• Unbound OLAP Fields - You can assign an OLAP Multidimensional Expression (MDX) to a PivotGrid field and create an Unbound Field for OLAP. You can also use the OLAPQueryData event to obtain an MDX query (used by the pivot grid to request data).
• Performance Enhancements - This release improves the Pivot Grid's in-memory data processing engine It also adds an OptimizeSummaryTypeCalculation option. Enable this option to accelerate data aggregation speed with int/float/double numbers in Optimized Mode.
• Data-Aware Export - The DevExpress WPF PivotGrid Control uses the powerful Excel data export engine.The following Pivot Grid features are fully supported:
  • Data Grouping (Outline)
  • Fixed Columns
  • Cell Formatting - exporting number format
  • Ability to select whether to export display text or values.

Ribbon and Toolbars

• Lightweight Templates - Office2016SE and VS2017 themes use lightweight templates to render bar items by default. This improves initial load times and merge operations (in applications that use Toolbars or the Ribbon).
• MDI Merge Performance - With this release, the WPF Ribbon control reuses visual elements for bar items, pages, and groups when merging forms. This improves MDI Merge performance when loading views with nested Ribbons or switching between document tabs.

Rich Text Editor

• RTL Support - In v18.2, you can load, print and export (to PDF) documents with the right-to-left text direction.
• Shape Support - Documents that contain shapes can now be displayed, printed and exported to PDF.
• Paragraph Borders - With this release, you can load/save, display, print and export to PDF documents with paragraph borders.
• Continuous Section Breaks - In v18.2, the WPF Rich Text Editor allows you to load, display, print and export documents with continuous section breaks. This option is available via Ribbon UI and implemented API as well.
• Paragraph Options - This release includes two new paragraph options:
  • Widow/Orphan Lines Control - prevents the first or last paragraph line from appearing at the bottom or top of a page.
  • Keep with Next - keeps multiple paragraphs on the same page.
• It also enhances the 'Keep lines together' option to mirror Microsoft Word.
• All these options are available in code and via the control's UI.

Scheduler

• Agenda and List Views - The WPF Scheduler has two new views:
  • Agenda View - a compact representation of a daily schedule.
  • List View - displays appointments exactly as they are stored in the database. Appointments are listed in a grid with integrated search, filtering, sorting, and grouping.
• Appointment Arrows - Appointments that don’t fit into the visible range can now display start and end info.
• Miscellaneous Enhancements
  • The Scheduler can now automatically synchronize scroll position and settings changed at runtime between DayView, WorkWeekView, and WeekView.
  • The Scheduler now listens to nested property changes in a data source and automatically updates linked appointments.
  • New options allow you to better configure appointments.

Spreadsheet

• Shape Rendering Enhancements - The DevExpress WPF Spreadsheet control can render shape effects (e.g. shadow, reflection, glow, and soft edges).
• Shape API - This new API allows you to create new shapes, connect and group shapes, change a shape’s fill and outline settings, add text to a shape, and remove shapes from a document.
• Sparkline Rendering - With this release, the WinForms and WPF Spreadsheet controls can display sparklines. Documents with sparklines can also be printed and exported to PDF.
• Search in the AutoFilter Dialog - The WinForms and WPF Spreadsheet controls now ship with a Search box in the AutoFilter dialog. This feature allows you to quickly locate items to use within a filter.
• Rich Text API - The updated API allows you to create and edit rich text within a cell.

Themes

• Theme Designer - Template Editing - With this release, you can locate and modify control templates, create custom themes and apply color presets.
• Additional enhancements include:
  • An effortless way to locate the required template and navigate between templates in code.
  • Automatic theme upgrade option once a new version of the WPF Subscription is released.
  • Ability to import old themes created in the Theme Editor.
• Palette Theme Keys - Modern themes with color palettes (Office2016SE, VS2017) expose their palette colors and brushes as resources.
• Themed Window Enhancements - The Themed Window can now act as a dialog window and show dialog buttons defined in XAML or code behind. This release also replaces the legacy DXMessageBox with ThemedMessageBox that matches the ThemedWindow's style. Both dialog windows (ThemedWindow and ThemedMessageBox) can be used on a standalone basis and in the MVVM services.

Tree List

• Data Sorting Performance Enhancements - Data sorting is now up to two times faster when compared to previous versions.
• Miscellaneous Enhancements
  • The CheckBoxFieldName property supports complex paths to nested properties (e.g., "Order.IsProcessed").
  • The TreeList control can now detect cross-thread operations and maintain data consistency. If data is changed from another thread, the TreeList control throws a cross-thread exception.