Released: Nov 8, 2018

Updates in 18.2

Features

New Sunburst Control

• This release includes a new WinForms Sunburst Control - designed to visualize hierarchical data in an elegant and compact manner. Its features include:
  • Ability to represent hierarchical data sets and flat data tables
  • Built-in coloring algorithms
  • Advanced highlight behaviors
  • Tooltip support

Charting

• Pane Layout Enhancements - You can now add an individual title for each pane and hide a pane by clicking its title. Panes can be displayed using a grid layout.
• Drill Down Chart - The WinForms Chart Control now supports nested Series Templates - allowing you to implement drill-down enabled charts with ease. You can create endless drill-down levels and use the control's integrated Breadcrumb navigation option to move across your data hierarchy.
• Performance and Memory Usage Improvements - This release includes improved performance and memory consumption when displaying a large number of data points.
• 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. It also extends the Indicator's API and made it similar to the Series API. All settings available for a series are now available for an indicator.

Data Grid

• Find Panel - Search Mode - The Grid's Find Panel ships with a new Search mode. When used, search results are highlighted within the view and scrollbar.
• Scrollbar Annotations - Inspired by Visual Studio, the WinForms Grid Control now supports scrollbar annotations - colored markers arranged along the vertical scrollbar.
• Excel-inspired Group Filters - Excel-inspired group filters were first introduced in May 2018 for the WinForms Pivot Grid and TreeList controls. This update addsthis capability to the WinForms Grid control. Filter dropdowns can now group filter items from two or more columns, and present results as a hierarchical checked list.

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.

Editors

• Calendar Control - New Fluent View - The new FluentUI View for the Calendar Control supports Acrylic and Reveal Highlight effects and allows you to mirror the appearance of the Windows 10 calendar.
• CheckEdit - New SVG Check Styles - CheckEdit check styles have been extended. New SVG check styles are more attractive and support all the benefits that come with the use of vector-based icons (scaling without quality loss, automatic color adaptation based on the current skin and palette).
• Filtering UI Context Enhancements
  • The ResetBinding/ResetBindings methods allow you to manually refresh editor values.
  • The AddField method allows you to add custom editors bound to desired data model fields.
  • Items can be customized in Filtering Events via the WithDataItems method. For instance, you can now assign custom HTML Text to display item images.

Navigation UI

• Office Navigation Bar - Tab Navigation View - With this release, you can easily create tab navigation options like those found in Microsoft Outlook and Visual Studio – user experiences with a modern appearance and borderless tab headers.
• NavBar to Accordion Converter - The DevExpress WinForms Accordion control extends the capabilities found in the NavBar control. If you are still using the NavBar control and want to replace it with the Accordion while preserving customization settings and paint styles, click the 'Convert to AccordionControl' smart tag. Note that event handlers are not converted. You will need to handle all item interaction events manually.

PDF Viewer

• DirectX Rendering - DirectX rendering was first introduced in May 2018 as a community technology preview (CTP). This update marks its official release. DirectX Rendering is now used as the default rendering engine.

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 - The Pivot Grid's in-memory data processing engine and now support the following features in Optimized Mode:
  • Custom Types
  • Custom Totals
  • CustomSummary event
  • CustomGroupInterval event
  • CustomFieldSort event
  • Legacy TopN
  • Summary Filter
  • FileDataSource
  • CustomUnboundFieldData event
  • Case-sensitive data binding.
• This release also adds an OptimizeSummaryTypeCalculation option. Enable this option to accelerate data aggregation speed with int/float/double numbers in Optimized Mode.
• In-Cell Data Editors - With this release, the Pivot Grid is a descendant of the EditorContainer class - this means you can assign editor Repository Items in the same manner as you would with the WinForms Data Grid, Tree List, and other data-aware controls. Invoke the Pivot Grid designer and switch to its “In-place Editor Repository” tab to create and modify individual editors. To assign these editors to data fields, go to the Fields section and specify a field's FieldEdit properties.
• Miscellaneous Enhancements
  • HTML Formatting - format field values and row headers via HTML tags.
  • Enhanced customization form.
  • Ability to customize the Filter Editor before it is displayed by handling the FilterEditorCreated event.
  • Ability to show/hide the loading panel (the LoadingPanelVisible property).
  • The Excel Style Filter popup can now retrieve filter values in a background thread, allowing the entire application to remain responsive while this operation is in progress.
  • Interval Grouping via a Group's Context Menu - Use the 'OptionsMenu.ShowDateTimeGroupIntervalItems' option to specify which interval grouping items (day, month, year, etc.) to display within the group context menu.

Ribbon, Bars and Dock UI

• Office 2019 Style - This release replicates the look and feel of the latest version of Microsoft Office. The Office 2019 Style includes new tab styles, animation effects, and the ability to minimize the Ribbon to a single-row tabbed toolbar.
• Right-Aligned Page Groups - With this release, Ribbon page groups can be aligned to the right (the Alignment property). Group alignment is supported by all Ribbon styles except TabletOffice.
• Ribbon Caption Bar - The DevExpress WinForms Ribbon Control now provides the CaptionBarItemLinks collection that hosts item links, displayed in the caption area of a corresponding Ribbon Form.
• Performance Enhancements - The engine used by the Office and Excel inspired controls has been changed to auto-generate a Microsoft-inspired Ribbon UI (Rich Editor, Spreadsheet, Analytic Dashboards, etc).
• Miscellaneous Enhancements - You can now hide maximized MDI form buttons by setting the BarManager's AllowMdiChildButtons property to 'false'.

Rich Text Editor

• RTL Support - With this release, you can load, display, 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 - The WinForms Rich Text Editor allows you to load, display, print and export documents with continuous section breaks. This option is available via the control's Ribbon UI and its API.
• 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

• Google Calendar Syncronization - The WinForms Scheduler can now automatically synchronize appointments with Google Calendar. Data can be synced in both directions, which means that all changes made in your WinForms application will be automatically reflected in Google Calendar.

Skins and Vector Icons

• New SVG Office 2019 Colorful Skin - v18.2 ships with a new vector-based skin and associated color palettes - Office 2019 Colorful.
• Advanced Design-Time Image Picker - As you know, when an application includes multiple forms with a large number of controls, changing icons (replacing raster graphics with vector images) may be quite time consuming. The new Image Picker makes this process much easier. It allows you to drag-and-drop icons onto controls. Integrated smart search allows you to quickly locate the desired icon.
• 7 New SVG Palettes - The Bezier Skin
• High-contrast palettes:
  • High Contrast White
  • High Contrast Black
• Visual Studio-inspired palettes:
  • VS Light
  • VS Dark
  • VS Blue
• DevExpress palettes:
  • Twenty
  • Twenty Gold
• Skin Colors - You no longer need to hunt for a perfect hue to match an existing application theme when you set a custom background/foreground color for UI elements. Skin Colors remain consistent with the currently applied application theme. Skin Colors is a set of predefined colors that match the current skin and/or skin palette.
• Vector Image Gallery This release improves the SVG image gallery by adding new SVG graphics, advanced filtering and search capabilities.
• Extended SVG Support - This release replaces bitmap icons in the data editors, dialog windows and forms. It is also possible to specify a vector-based icon for each state of context buttons, BackstageViewControl and RecentItemControl items (normal, hovered, pressed, etc.). If you need to display a grayed-out icon when a button is disabled, and a highlighted icon when the button is pressed, specify SVG for the Normal state only. The graphics engine will automatically re-paint it when required.
• Miscellaneous Enhancements
  • Lightweight Custom Skins: Custom skins now store only differences from the source (template) skin. This makes them 90% lighter.
  • Custom skins no longer store the parent’s skin version. You do not need to upgrade your custom skins with the Skin Editor. Create a custom skin once and it will automatically obtain all updates from its parent skin whenever you upgrade your application to a new version.
  • The 'External Application Preview' feature allows you to preview custom skins in any C#/VB application.
  • The Palette Editor allows you to preview custom palette colors before you confirm changes by clicking 'OK'. To invoke the editor press F7.

Spreadsheet

• 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.

Tree List

• Breadcrumb Navigation - The TreeList and BreadcrumbEdit controls can now interact with one another and share data. This allows you to reproduce the Windows File Explorer UX with ease.
• Performance Enhancements - In the last release, DirectX hardware acceleration support was introduced which boosted TreeList rendering on High DPI devices. In v18.2, the rendering engine has been improved and made the control significantly faster. Enhancements have been made to common usage scenarios including like repainting, batch updates, the processing of large amounts of data, etc.
• Hierarchical Data Binding - The DevExpress WinForms TreeList allows you to bind to hierarchical data sources (for example, a list of lists). It will automatically traverse through the entire hierarchy and build the corresponding tree layout.
• Options Tree Support - With this release, you can mix radio buttons and check boxes in order to construct an advanced option tree. Use the node's Node.ChildrenCheckBoxStyle property to specify the type of option element to display for child nodes.

Vertical Grid

• Excel-inspired Group Filters - Excel-inspired group filters were first introduced in May 2018 for both the WinForms Pivot Grid and TreeList controls. With this update, this feature is extended to the WinForms Vertical Grid control. Filter dropdowns can now group filter items from two or more data fields, and display results as a hierarchical checked list.

Miscellaneous

• WYSIWYG and Data Aware Export Enhancements - Data-aware controls that support HTML text can now be printed and exported in both Data Aware and WYSIWYG modes.
• Workspace Manager Enhancements
  • The WorkspaceManager.ShowPathColumnInWorkspacesDialog property allows you to hide the Path column in the Workspaces dialog.
  • The WorkspaceManager.SaveTargetControlSettings property allows you to save target form properties (Bounds and State).
  • The SaveWorkspaces/LoadWorkspaces method saves/restores all workspaces to/from a single file.
• Excel Filter Enhancements
  • Excel filters now automatically recognize whether an enumeration is nullable, and display or hide 'Is Null' / 'Is Not Null' items accordingly.
  • 'Values' and 'Filters' tabs now account for in-place ImageComboBox editor settings and automatically display related images.
  • Scrollbars for tabs with checkboxes can now display scrollbar annotations.
• Project Settings Enhancements
  • If you open DevExpress Project Setings for a project without DevExpress libraries, the page will display a 'Convert' button so you can automatically add core DevExpress libraries.
  • The Register Bonus/User Skins option allows you to quickly register corresponding skins.
  • Reworked font, skin and palette selectors to help improve usability.
• ToastNotificationManager Enhancements - With this update, you can handle user inputs (text and selection), respond to button clicks as well as persist your application toast notifications in Action Center.
• Fluent UI Scrollbar - The scrollbars now support Microsoft's Fluent UI. When used, a scrollbar is collapsed to a thin stripe when not active, and expands to a semi-transparent bar when a user hovers the mouse pointer over it. To enable Fluent UI Mode, set the WindowsFormsSettings.ScrollUIMode property to 'Fluent'.
• DirectX - Performance Enhancements - DirectX rendering engine has been improved which means HighDPI support is a reality on the WinForms platform.