About Actipro WinForms Studio

Add syntax-highlighting code editors, advanced menus/toolbars, docking windows and MDI features to your applications.

Actipro WinForms Studio Suite contains all individual WinForms control products, along with free upgrades and any new WinForms products for one year. It includes advanced, customizable docking toolbars, menus, a complete docking tool window, an Outlook-like navigation bar control and a syntax-highlighting code editor control and parsing suite.

Actipro Bars
Actipro Bars is an advanced bar controls implementation that includes docking toolbars, standalone toolbars, popup menus, and statusbars. The bar controls are based entirely on a command/command link design pattern, allowing for centralized command updates to filter through to every instance of a related command link in the user interface. This also facilitates complete run-time customization support for the end-user, similar to the features found in products like 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. Bar layouts can be serialized to a file or stream and later reloaded to restore all the same layout and customization states. Powerful designer support allows you to 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.

Actipro Bars Features

  • Commands that define tasks and operations
  • Command links that represent one or more instances of a related command within the user interface
  • Command types include normal buttons, popup buttons, expander buttons, split buttons, labels, textboxes, and comboboxes
  • Command links can be placed on menubars, toolbars or menus
  • Dockable toolbars and menubars support docking on all sides of their host container, as well as floating mode
  • Ability for dockable toolbars to auto-show/hide based on what application mode is set
  • Overflow and flow dockable toolbar layout modes
  • Reset dockable toolbar functionality and Add/Remove Buttons functionality
  • Tear-off menus
  • MDI menu merging
  • Layout serialization
  • Keyboard shortcuts that support chords
  • Quick customize mode via Alt key
  • Complete run-time customization capabilities for end user via built-in Customize dialog
  • Advanced standalone ToolBar and StatusBar controls
  • Designer integration
  • Multiple themes

Actipro Docking & MDI
Actipro Docking & MDI is a complete solution for easily adding a docking window and/or multiple document interface to your Windows Forms applications. Allow your end users to drag and dock windows wherever they please, and to persist their customizations. Docking & MDI has been implemented with flexibility in mind. It supports all the types of standard layouts you find in most docking window products, as well as some extended functionality that you won't find anywhere else.

Actipro Docking & MDI Features

  • Create complex hiera
  • Layout serialization
  • Dock windows via code
  • Multiple built-in themes
  • Advanced TabStrip control
  • Designer integration

Actipro Navigation
Actipro Navigation contains a NavigationBar control similar to the one found in Outlook, which allows for navigating through different panes of data. It has an elegant user interface which uses buttons to control which navigation pane is selected. Panes can display data or simply act as a container for child controls. If screen real estate is available, large buttons can be used for pane selection. The end-user has the option of using a splitter to move the large buttons into the overflow button tray, which uses smaller buttons. If not all of the buttons can fit in that tray, they flow out into the overflow menu, accessible by the chevron button.

Actipro Navigation Features

  • NavigationBar functionality similar to Outlook
  • Multiple rendering styles for various Windows and Office themes
  • Support for custom rendering
  • Buttons provide single-click access to each pane
  • 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
  • Ability to disable specific buttons
  • Ability to cancel selected pane changes
  • Full designer support
  • A separate NavigationBarPanel control that can act as a container and renders in three modes (normal, header, and sub-header modes).

SyntaxEditor
SyntaxEditor is a powerful text editing control that is packed with features for efficient code editing, including syntax highlighting, code outlining, parsing, line numbers, block selection, IntelliPrompt UI, split views, single-line mode, custom languages, and much more. It has many of the same code editing features found in the Visual Studio code editor. SyntaxEditor is designed for use in IDE (integrated development environment) applications, however there are many other applications out there than can take advantage of such a control. Over 20 sample languages are included to get you started (such as C#, HTML, Javascript, and more), and optional premium add-ons with advanced functionality for editing C#, VB, and XML are available as well.

SyntaxEditor Features

  • Author custom language definitions, with over 20 free definitions included
  • Tokenization of text via lexers
  • Multi-threaded parsing capabilities, with support for code fragments
  • A grammar-based parser framework with AST generation and error reporting
  • IntelliPrompt completion lists, parameter info, quick info, code snippets, and smart tags
  • Block (rectangular) selection
  • Over 100 built-in edit actions like selection, indenting, transposition, etc.
  • Customizable highlighting styles
  • Split views
  • Virtual space
  • User margin for custom drawing
  • Code outlining (folding)
  • Word wrap and whitespace display
  • Line indicators and span indicators
  • Current line highlighting
  • Bracket highlighting, indentation guides, content dividers, and column guides
  • Optional single-line edit mode
  • Scrollbar visibility options
  • Flexible text search model
  • Powerful text scanning features
  • Unicode editing support
  • RTF and HTML export
  • FontDropDownList and TextStylePreview controls

Wizard
Wizard dialogs simplify the user experience of applications by taking complex tasks and breaking them up into a series of simple steps. Actipro Wizard is a lightweight control for building these wizard dialogs in Windows Forms, while conforming to the Wizard97 specifications. Its rich designer functionality and straightforward API make it easy to quickly configure wizard pages. Simply create a page, set its page type, caption, description, and start adding controls to it. Special page types are included to support welcome and finish pages. Basic sequential page navigation is enabled by default, and more complex page order sequencing can be achieved. Dynamic run-time decisions about which page should come next can be made via the handling of selected page change events. Optional page history tracking can be enabled so that pressing the back button will revisit the previous pages in the reverse order they were originally visited, even when complex sequencing was used.

Wizard Features

  • Multiple built-in page types: welcome, interior, exterior
  • Captions and descriptions that automatically display in page headers
  • Several options for updating a parent Form's title
  • Control over button visibility/enabled states
  •  Full control over page sequencing and navigation
  • Selected page change notifications, allowing for cancellation or rerouting to other pages
  • Feature-rich design time functionality, along with a helpful New Page Wizard

Actipro Shared Library
The Actipro Shared Library contains a number of useful controls and components, along with the base framework used by the other WinForms control products.

Actipro Shared Library Features

  • Base UIControl and UIElement types that allow for easier development of custom controls
  • Background fills that support gradients, images, hatch marks, and solid colors
  • Common border rendering options
  • Double-buffering
  • UIColor object that supports powerful color manipulations
  • Built-in color schemes
  • ColorListBox - A ListBox that can render a collection of colors
  • ColorPalettePicker - A palette used for color selection
  • MarkupLabel - A rich-formatted label driven by mini-HTML markup
  • Owner-Draw Menus - A modern appearance for standard menus
  • ScrollBar - A scrollbar control that supports custom rendering
  • StandardColorPicker - A color picker that combines multiple forms of color selection