Sundar's TechBlog

UIControlSuite Release 12 is now available

Wish you all a very happy new year 2010 :-)

UIControlSuite Release 12 is now out and available from 4th Jan 2010.

The release includes 2 new controls – An outlook 2007 like Scheduler control for both WPF and Silverlight 3.

Also included in the package are Stunning 10 new Slideshow transition effects written using High Level Shading Language (HLSL) pixel shader.

The release also contains loads of other enhancements across suite controls, and some bug fixes.

Read more of the new features in Release 12 release notes.

Docking Library for WPF and Silverlight 3

I did plan to release the docking library for WPF and Silverlight 3 in this release, but could not make it to the date, because much of the time had been spent on completing the Scheduler control for WPF and Silverlight.

I am expecting to release my docking library for WPF and Silverlight 3, in the upcoming release 13, which is due in a few weeks time.

Enjoy Release 12 :-)

Stay tuned!

- Sundar

Binarymission's entry into ASP.NET MVC controls market :-)

I am also a big fan of the ASP.NET MVC web development platform, and given that this new framework has a huge gap in terms of "ready to use" stunning business UI components, I have decided to take a plunge into this market as well, and produce something cool of business value... and the first candidate control that came to mind was a high-profile ASP.NET MVC compliant Grid control. 

With this new product in our product suite, we will have offerings across all the four major MS UI technologies: Windows Forms, WPF, Silverlight 3, and ASP.NET MVC .NET :-)

BinaryMVCGrid .NET for ASP.NET MVC framework is currently being designed as a very light-weight, AJAX enabled high performance grid control, built specifically to suit the programming model of the ASP.NET MVC framework.

The design is focused heavily on making this grid control highly performance optimised, keeping in mind that the UI features are going to be a lot.

BinaryMVCGrid .NET MVC component will have rich feature set that will include the following:

• Numerous easy to setup options for formatting data
• Capability to display nested grids to visualize (FK) foreign key relationships
• Highly scalable mode of data paging: thereby building a JSON mode paging
• Out-of-the-box data pager control
• Support for CRUD operations
• Extended Grouping of data; including allowing grouping of data in multiple modes, viz., the programmatic manner, as well as allowing your end-users to visually drag-and-drop grid column headers into the control's specially provided group-drop area)
• Column sorting
• Extended client-side interactions rendering, including customisable styling of cells, rows, and columns selection by the grid end-user.

I am planning to make available a CTP build of this new ASP.NET MVC component, sometime after my planned release of UIControlSuite .NET Enterprise edition Release 12.

I will blog about a more precise date for the release of this new ASP.NET MVC control sometime around first week of November 2009.

Stay tuned :-)

- Sundar

UIControlSuite .NET Release 12 highlights

Yes, a quick hint on what is coming in my next major release of UIControlSuite .NET build: Release 12.

New WPF and Silverlight 3 .NET controls

• Rich Windows Docking library for both WPF and Silverlight:

BinarySmartDock .NET - A comprehensive docking library for WPF: with full support for dockable & floating windows, collapsed groups, 3D document switching (like Vista's Flip-3d), and capable of letting you serialise docking layout across application sessions.

• A MS Outlook styled Scheduler control for WPF and Silverlight 3

• Enhancements to SlideShow control (for both WPF and Silverlight variants)

Stunning 10 new SlideShow transition effects written using High Level Shading Language (HLSL) pixel shader.
The WPF version of these new transition effects will be rendered using the GPU (where possible), thereby providing extra-ordinary performance during transitions.

Additional features

• Enhanced Design time experience for all of our WPF controls
  for both Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Blend 3, so you can setup the controls fully without having to write any C# or XAML code yourself :-)
• More C# sample projects for all of the WPF and Silverlight controls

Stay tuned!

- Sundar

UIControlSuite .NET Release 11.1 available now :-)

Wahooo! Yes, I have now released UIControlSuite .NET Release 11.1.

This release contains 4 new controls, 1 new control for Silverlight 3, and 3 new WPF controls, viz.:

1. A SlideShow .NET control, for both WPF and Silverlight 3

2. A very cute and customisable Glass button control for WPF, that is very useful for creating applications like that of a SlideShow app.

3. A Control Visual Re-sizer control for WPF.

I will take a little break for now, and soon get back into the development sprint of the next release - I will possibly version it as Release 12 :-)... since there are some major enhancements coming in that release.

For now, enjoy Release 11.1, and stay tuned!

- Sundar

UIControlSuite Release 11 plans

Well, as planned, the Release 11 of UIControlSuite .NET will be released during this month, and I have decided to release it in two volumes: Volume 1 and 2.

Volume 1 will be released on 13th August, and will contain the following new controls:

New WPF controls

BinarySlideShow .NET
BinaryControlResizer .NET

New Silverlight 3 .NET controls

BinarySlideShow .NET

You can read a lot more on the BinarySlideShow .NET control from my earlier blog post here.

 

Release 11 Volume 2 will contain all the remaining bits of new controls and enhancements as detailed in this earlier post.

Stay tuned! Release 11 of UIControlSuite .NET is coming close :-)

- Sundar

Release 10.5 - New Silverlight 3 .NET control: UI Virtualizing Wrap Panel

Yep! :-) I could not resist the temptation... so here you go... I have now built a new control for Silverlight 3: A "UI virtualizing" Wrap Panel control, which has now been released as Release 10.5.

I had planned this control as part of Release 11 package though… well… nothing wrong to “push out” a part of the release - a bit early :-)

This control will be the world's first Virtualizing Wrap Panel control for Silverlight 3 :-)

The control is based on my popular UI Virtualizing Wrap Panel control for WPF (which is also the world first of its kind for WPF platform).

Microsoft had certainly listened to some of my earlier rant on the missing bits that I had needed to do this control :-)... So thanks to "Redmond buddies" too on this :-)

That said, the porting of my WPF code to Silverlight 3 was not that straight-forward anyway (the SL3 RTM still was not exactly in sync with the WPF version of ItemsControl and the core VirtualizingPanel classes), but anyway, I have managed to get my SL 3 control done with my own code bits to fill the gap :-) Ha!

In terms of features, this Silverlight 3 control is exactly the same as the WPF one.

The new Silverlight 3 .NET control has now been released as UIControlSuite .NET Release 10.5... so you are welcome to come and grab your copy! :-)

You can also see a live demo of this control "in action" here:

http://www.binarymission.co.uk/binaryvirtwrappanelsl3/BinaryVirtualizingWrapPanelSLApplicationDemo.html

Note: You will need Silverlight 3 RTM to run the demo.

 

Out-of-Browser install of the application demonstration!

The online demonstration application has been configured to be run Out-of-browser (OOB feature of Silverlight 3), so you can install the demo on to your local machine/laptop by just right clicking on the application demo page, and invoking the command "Install BinaryVirtualizingWrapPanel for SL 3 onto this computer...".

 

Enjoy Release 10.5! :-)

-Sundar

Release 11 features: UIControlSuite .NET

As promised earlier on, I am excited to hint you all on the "work-in-progress" Release 11 of UIControlSuite .NET.

The following are the new improvements and enhancements that are "currently being built" now as we speak, in the specific order of priority as they appear here :-)

New WPF controls

BinarySlideShow .NET
BinaryControlResizer .NET

BinaryMultiColumnComboBox .NET

New Silverlight 3 .NET controls

BinarySlideShow .NET

BinaryTreeListView .NET
BinaryScrollViewer .NET

Enhancements to BinaryRibbon .NET control

New Stylish StatusBar
New Stylish Trackbar

New Visual Studio 2008 specific Tools/templates

BinaryRibbon control project template for VisualStudio 2008

New VisualStudio specific features for our WPF controls

Enhanced VS 2008 Designer support for BinaryRibbon
Full support for VS 2010 Beta 1 for all of our WPF controls

Trust me, that is quite a bit of work :-). I am sure you will love these "goods"!

- Sundar

Release 10 of UIControlSuite .NET is now RTM :-)

Well, the title says it all! :-)

I have now released the much awaited UIControlSuite .NET Release 10.

Its got some new WPF controls, and pretty well enhanced Ribbon WPF control, in its version 4.0.

You will all like them. Go grab your copy now, play with it and enjoy! :-)

 

The next pleasure begins: Release 11 iteration plan

Yes, that is exactly what follows now, after i have had a nice fun out of my Sunday! :-)

I will soon blog about all the "goods" that is coming in Release 11 of UIControlSuite .NET.

 

Silverlight 3 RTM'd :-)

Well, yes, Silverlight 3.0 has been RTM'd right in time when I am planning my Release 11 Sprint/iteration - now that is going to add some temptation to bring in some new Silverlight 3 Controls :-) in Release 11 :-)

Stay tuned!

Enjoy Release 10 :-)

- Sundar

BinaryRibbon 4.0: Easy layout Scale transformation. plus full Vista and Windows 7 Aero Glass support

Continuing with my other post on the new Layout scaling feature that is in Ribbon 4.0, I also want to show off  some more details of this new feature, viz.:

• The Layout scaling is easy to apply - i.e. you don't have to code / XAML the scale transformation yourself.

The control's Window object i.e. BinaryRibbonWindow class has a new property that accepts a double value for the Scaling factor, and that is all to it.

It will scale the entire window - i.e. the Window titlebar, control buttons area, as well as the Ribbon Panel (where you host all your ribbon bar content), automatically with the value you set using this simple dependency property on the BinaryRibbonWindow control.

• The Scaling transform supports Vista and Windows 7 Aero glass fully - i.e. the scaling logic will also ensure that the Aero Glass that is extended into the Window Title frame fully covers the entire area of the newly scaled up/down Window title bar (a.k.a. Non-client area) with glass.

 

A screen shot of the BinaryRibbon running in Vista (without Aero glass), and the layout's scale transform set at the standard 100%:

 

This is a screen shot of BinaryRibbon in Vista (with Aero Glass), its layout scale transform set to 150%: (You can see that the glass is correctly and fully extended to the 150% scaled area too):

 

This is a screen shot of BinaryRibbon in Vista (without Aero), its layout scale transform set to 150%:

Looks cool? :-)

Just wait a day or two , to get your hands on Release 10 of UIControlSuite .NET :-)

- Sundar

BinaryRibbon 4.0 - more layout "goods": Full support for Right-to-Left FlowDirection

Yes, as promised, the BinaryRibbon 4.0 (part of the upcoming UIControlSuite Release 10) will have full Right-To-Left FlowDirection support :-)

Here is a screen shot of the control running its blue theme (with its customised MS Office like ScrollBar control as well), and the UI's Layout running Right-To-Left FlowDirection.

 

 

Stay tuned.

- Sundar

New ScrollViewer (+ ScrollBar) WPF controls in Release 10

UIControlSuite .NET Release 10 will have a new WPF control that I am introducing: BinaryScrollViewer .NET control.

This control instantly replaces the standard .NET WPF ScrollViewer and ScrollBar (Primitive) controls... and it does not just stop there... it also allows you to completely customise the ScrollBar's all UI aspects, by simply letting you to set the desired colours/brushes for the each element of the ScrollBar UI.

This control saves you from spending time in having to tweak into / re-writing the Visual Tree of the ScrollBar controls and the ScrollViewer's Style.

It is all done for you already, with my professional touch ;-), and all that you will need to do is to simply setup the desired colours for each bit of the ScrollBar (Horizontal and Vertical ones) UI, and "pass it on" to the control by merging your custom resource dictionary containing the chosen colours/brushes into your application's Resources.

No more of those days of having to put up with the out-of-the-box Windows Standard ScrollBar UI colours that are pretty much stuck to the OS's themes and hence have no synchronisation to your Application's colour theme.

BinaryScrollViewer .NET is here, to rescue! :-)

 

Here is a screen shot of some of the colour customised ScrollBar controls "in action":

 

 

Release 10 "RTM" date is not far off! ;-)

Stay tuned!

- Sundar

BinaryRibbon v4.0 - Layout goodies

One of the other features i was talking about in my earlier post that is coming in BinaryRibbon 4.0 (part of the Release 10 of UIControlSuite .NET) is the automatic Ribbon content Resizing (thereby performing the required collapse/expand of groups) when the control is scaled up or down.

With this new capability, you can perform a transformation on the ribbon control to scale it up, for example, to get a larger UI, without having to worry about the control/groups rendering quality.

As you scale up / down the Ribbon, the control adjusts its layout accordingly, and at the the same time, renders the UI with the same crispness/clarity as seen in its standard scale (thanks to Vector drawing! :-))

A screen shot of the Ribbon at 100% scale factor:

 

A screen shot of the Ribbon at 150% scale factor:

You can see that the Ribbon maintains the same crispness rendering quality at a 150% scale factor, and has also automatically performed the layout logic to move items into overflow panels, etc., given the constrained window size available vis-a-vis the requested higher scale factor of 150%:

Isn't that cool! :-)

 

New ScrollViewer control in Release 10

OK, I will soon blog about my new 100% easily skin-able ScrollViewer control that is coming as part of Release 10 :-)

With this new scroll viewer control in your toolbox, you are no more tied to using the standard Windows OS Scrollbars!

Forget about having to re-style / tweak the ScrollViewer control template yourself.

You can now simply use BinaryScrollViewer control, and just set your desired colours / brushes for various UI elements of this custom scroll viewer control using the various ComponentResourceKeys (CRKs) the control exposes, and within minutes you will have scrollbars matching the rest of your application UI ;-)

Stay tuned.

- Sundar

Ribbon WPF v. 4.0 control skinning... easy as pie :-)

Yes, in version 4.0 of BinaryRibbon WPF .NET, skinning the control is an absolute pleasure... trust me! :-)

Have a nice set of colours ready in your mind for "that gorgeous" custom skin that you want to apply on the Ribbon control?

Good news! Those colours in your mind are all that you will need, to skin the Ribbon in just few minutes.

The upcoming version 4.0 exposes a set of very easy and intuitive API that you can use to create and apply your custom skin for the control.

The API expose the ComponentResourceKeys (CRKs) of all the relevant resource objects that are used by the control, to render the Ribbon.

You will simply create a custom resource dictionary, use the exposed API to set the various brushes/resources, and merge the dictionary into your Application object's Resources. That is all to it!

Using this API, I was able to create a custom skin and get the app running, in about less than 5 minutes :-) (Of course, I had in mind those desired skin colours ready when I started to create the custom skin).

I have also updated the documentation to show in detail (in XAML as well as in Procedural code) as to how to go about creating your own skin for Ribbon - simple and straight-forward.

 

New custom skins, out-of-the-box

As announced earlier, Release 4.0 of BinaryRibbon WPF, will come with ready to use new additional skins (on top of the already existing 3 Office skins and 1 Windows 7 skin), that you can use straight out-of-the-box.

These custom skins cover 10 different colour themes.

I wanted to show off some of these new custom built-in skins that are available in version 4.0 / Release 10:

Here you go...

Brown

Yellow

Creamy green

Green

Pale Orange

There are five more colour skins in the control. You can play around with these once I make the Release 10 package available to public.

 

Glass support for the Application menu button

One other new feature you will note (even from the screen-shots above) in the upcoming release is that the the Application menu button now supports more precise "glass" rendering, and also can be skinned by accepting a background colour for its internal glass fill :-)

 

There is more to write on the features of Release 10... stay tuned for my next set of blog posts on the details and screen-shots of:

• The new WPF controls in Ribbon 4.0,
• The newer features in Ribbon 4.0 (you can read those hints from my earlier post)
• The cool animation effect of mouse hovering on non-selected Ribbon tab item headers, and
• A new suite of ScrollViewer and ScrollBar.NET WPF controls 

Just a couple of more days to go for Release 10 going public :-)

Stay tuned.

- Sundar

SlideShow .NET control for WPF in Release 11

Yes :-) You read that correct! A little secret that I had kept away from you all.

I have now completed my new WPF control BinarySlideShow .NET - a SlideShow viewer control that can host complex content (including 2D and 3D controls, Images and any other content that you can imagine).

As is obviously expected, the control is highly designer friendly, and it is also very friendly and intuitive to those who love to do things the procedural way ;-) rather than XAML-ing.

The control boasts loads of State Transition / animation effects, including the very popular SnowDustWipe effect that I had introduced in my VirtualizingWrapPanel control.

You would simply instantiate the control, add slide items to it (setup with your slide show content), and simply Play it :-)

The Play() method comes as a couple of overloads, each one providing fine-grain control over how you would want the control to run the slideshow.

The control provides user controlled, as well as automatic - i.e. DispatcherTimer based automatic slide transitions.

Until then, continue to enjoy the current Release 9.7 :-)

Stay tuned!

- Sundar

Version 4.x/5.x of BinaryRibbon WPF (goods) highlights :-)

I am currently very busy working on the next release of UIControlSuite .NET (Release 10), and specifically on the final bits of version 4.x of the Ribbon control for WPF

Like I had hinted in my earlier blog post, BinaryRibbon WPF is getting loads of goodies in its 4.x version... yummy... yummy... I know :-)

OK enough talk, let me now list the specifics of the new features that are in 4.x version of BinaryRibbon for WPF:

New features in Ribbon 4.0

New Custom Ribbon skins out-of-the-box

Ten new Custom skins that you can simply choose and apply to your app instantly.

New Ribbon custom controls

- Scorllbars
- StatusBar
- Checkbox and Radio Buttons as seen in our TreeListView WPF control
- FontFamily and FontSize comboboxes

Layout/ flow direction goodies

- Right-to-left support
- Ribbon auto-sizing feature will support auto-sizing of the control (resulting in automatic minimisation/maximisation and other UI effects) when performing layout transformation on the control (thanks to Vector based drawing!)

 

New features in Ribbon 5 (i.e. part of the planned Release 11)

New and enhanced Visual Studio 2008 designer support

Apart from the currently existing Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Blend Design time support, the control will offer an enhanced custom design time experience for Visual Studio 2008.
This will enable you to easily set up labels, select image resources from within your project resources, and be able to move around controls within the Ribbon control (say across Ribbon groups, etc.) with simple drag-and-drop operations.

Visual Studio 2010 (CTP) support

Ribbon 5.x will also support Visual Studio 2010 (CTP), along with some enhanced design time experience specific for Visual Studio 2010 IDE, including, supplying a Ribbon WPF Visual Studio 2010 Project Template for you to quickly get started with building your Ribbon application in minutes! :-)

My Release 10 iteration ends just after 1st week of July, so you all can expect a CTP of Ribbon 4.0 in couple of days soon.

Yes, as is usual, I am listening to all my customers (and you can see its effect as above :-))
So if you have any wish list of features in mind, please do ping me, and I will certainly try to box it in releases next to Release 10.

My Release 11 iteration timebox begins sometime 2nd week of July :-)

Stay tuned for screen shots and CTP of Release 10 soon!

- Sundar