Binarymission Blog

UIControlSuite .NET Release 18.5 goes LIVE

The New Release 18.5

The new release UIControlSuite .NET 18.5 is now LIVE with 3 new WinForms .NET controls including the WinForms Scrollbar control (as detailed in my earlier blog post here).

Also available in this release are a host of other feature enhancements to existing WinForms, WPF & Silverlight controls, and set of bug fixes.

More details available here in the UIControlSuite .NET Release 18.5 Release notes.

Have fun!

Next Release 19…

The next major release, UIControlSuite Release 19, with loads of new WPF & Silverlight .NET controls, is not far away! Stay tuned.

- Sundar

New WinForms Custom ScrollBar control to be available in Release 18.5 Of UIControlSuite .NET

I just cannot believe how many companies are in WinForms development even now, in spite of the enormous potential that WPF and Silverlight continues to offer for thick/desktop and smart client development… and as a result I have been getting a huge number of many new WinForms controls requests from existing and new potential customers ;)

A new WinForms ScrollBar .NET Control

Anyway, as a result of a large amount request for a custom ScrollBar control for WinForms, I have put together a new control – ScrollBar .NET for WinForms.

I already have written a customised WPF ScrollBar/ScrollViewer control which is already available in the UIControlSuite package, and this new ScrollBar control is for WinForms.

Features include:

• Supports both Orientations: Vertical, and Horizontal
• You can customise the colors every single aspect of the rendered artefacts viz., Thumb, Track and Scroll Arrow buttons
• Supports customisation of colors for rendering various states like Hot, Pressed, Normal and Disabled
• Supports customisation of images in the Thumb and Arrow buttons
• Out-of-the-box ready to use pre-configured rendering with Office 2007, Windows 7, Windows 8 Metro style, and custom Basic Colors rendering pack

Where can you use this new control

You will be able to use this wherever you would normally use the HScrollBar and VScrollBar classes, and use to implement scrolling in containers that do not provide their own scroll bars (or even if they provide their own, you could switch them off and add this control and wire up the scrolling using the control’s properties such as LargeChange, SmallChange, Minimum, Maximum, Position, etc.).

Additional new WinForms .NET Controls that will be made available as part of this release:

To make instant use of the new WinForms ScrollBar control, I have written some new useful controls that comes built-in with the new scrollbar control as their scroll bar, so you do not have to write or wire up anything.

These new controls include:

• A Scrollable Imageviewer control
• A Scrollable Panel container control

With these controls in your toolbox, you can simply set the desired colors for various aspects of the scrollbar, and start using these controls.

When are these new control available?

I am expecting to make this new control available on sometime this week – say by 27/28th.

 

Some screenshots of this new Customisable WinForms ScrollBar control in action:

 

Check the product page in the company website here: New WinForms SCrollBar .NET control

This new .NET WinForms control will be released as part of UIControlSuite .NET Release 18.5, and will be available only to Corporate Edition customers (which is the only license made available going forward).

This release will also include a maintenance and some enhancements to existing WinForms, WPF and Silverlight controls in the suite.

- Sundar

 

Virtualizing Wrap Panel v8.0 Enhancements and UIControlSuite Release 18.2 now available

The Virtualizing Wrap Panel for WPF, SIlverlight and Windows Phone 7 control stands enhanced with some new features like so:

Rendering related enhancements:

These new properties enhance the control’s Grouping related rendering capabilities. Use these to fine tune the pixel level details of rendering the virtualized grouped view

• CustomExtraSpacingBetweenGroupHeaderRowAndDataItemRow
• CustomExtraSpacingBetweenGroupRenderingCompletionAndGroupHeaderRowRenderingBegins
• IsRenderItemDimensionHeightSpacingBetweenGroupHeaderAndDataItemRowEnabled
• ShouldRenderItemHeightSpacingAfterAGroupHasBeenRendered
• ShouldRenderExtraLineBeforeHeader

More details & screen-shots will be available in the company website.

This brings the VirtualizingWrapPanel control to its version 8.0, and the UIControlSuite .NET Release 18.2 to Release 18.2.

Notes:

Customers please note that this new enhancement is available only to the Enterprise Edition customers or customers who have bought the Virtualizing Wrap Panel control product.

Enjoy the new updates.

- Sundar

UIControlSuite Release 18.1 – Enhancement to Multi-column Combobox control

The Release 18.1 is now RTM / available to public. This release contains an enhancement to our WinForms Advanced Combobox control.

The control’s multi-column mode now is capable of rendering the column data in varying data formats:

The control when run in its multi-column mode, is capable of rendering column data in various data format types like so:

• Currency data type; where you can specify how many decimal places you want the control to display the data
• Integer data type; where you can ask the control to render the thousands commas separator
• Decimal data type; where you can ask the control to render decimal value with how many ever decimal precision you want it to render
• Date or Date and Time data type ; where you can ask the control to render the date as just date or with full custom date string as desired
• Text data column; this is default mode of rendering the data in the multi-column view.

Note that the view will still render the data as string data, but it will format it to any of the above listed data formats before rendering it in the view and then render it as text data.

More details & screenshot of the feature in action is in the website / product page here:

http://www.binarymission.co.uk/Products/winforms/combobbox-wf.html#multiple-column-data-formats

 

Have fun.

- Sundar

UIControlSuite .NET Release 18 is now LIVE and available

The Release 18 is now LIVE, and all announced features are now available ;)

The full list of features in this Release are like so:

 

New WPF Tab control

This will be a customisable Tab control that is ready to use out-of-the-box.

Its got several styles of rendering including Visual Studio style, Diamond, Trapezium, and a host of others, and currently supports two orientations (Top and Bottom).

Refer to more detail on this control here in my earlier blog post.

 

New WPF & Silverlight control: ZoomAndPan provider

ZoomAndPan is a new control for WPF & Silverlight, and as the name indicates clearly, the control provides Panning and Zooming service to any FrameworkElement.

The control has several configurable features including, being able to set:

1. Custom Zoom factor
2. Custom Maximum and Minimum zoom depth
3. Enabling or disabling Panning
4. Enabling or disabling automatic zoom out, based on a particular key
5. Custom keyboard key for automatic zooming out

An Online demo of this ZoomAndPan control is here:

Online demo of ZoomAndPan control for WPF & Silverlight

 

A screenshot of how you can use the control to enable zooming and panning on it is like so:

 

Enhancements to existing WPF and Silverlight controls

1. Several new slide transition effects have been added for the Slideshow control
2. Flowchart / Organisation chart control now supports Zooming and Panning out-of-the-box
3. Flowchart / Organisation chart control now supporting out-of-the-box printing facility (including printing into multiple pages).

General maintenance, bug fixes across controls in the suite, including:

- FIXED: Slideshow Raindrop effect in Win7 64-bit did not work sometimes, now fixed.
- FIXED: Slideshow repeating the last slide twice if you moved directly to the last slide when the slideshow begins
- FIXED: An extra pixel unit of border that was being rendered in the left hand side of the Ribbon tab item
- FIXED: WinForms TreelistView item rendering flickers when performing mouse-move when using the advanced gradient color rendering mode for items.

 

Release 19 Updates

The work on the upcoming Release 19 is underway and approaching completion soon :)

The new controls that will be available in Release 19 are like so:

• Docking control for WPF
• Docking control for Silverlight
• Ribbon control for Silverlight
• Advanced Grid control for the WPF
• Advanced Grid control for Silverlight
• Scheduler for WPF, with Hour, Day, Month and Year views
• Scheduler for Silverlight, with Hour, Day, Month and Year views

Stay tuned for more information on that release in a couple of weeks time from now.

 

Enjoy Release 18.

- Sundar

UIControlSuite .NET Release 18 - New WPF Tab control introduced

Here comes Release 18 “Delivery”, in an agile way ;) – the Continuous Delivery model in action!

As announced in my earlier post on Release 18, i am now making the builds available incrementally with each new feature/enhancement/fix as promised, so we will have the Release 18 made available smoothly over a few days of time (rather than waiting for the one full release with all new stuff in it on the Release 18 sprint release date).

I making available the new WPF Tab control now, and have added it as part of the already available SmartNavigator controls collection in the UIControlSuite package.

This gives you a very nice and customisable Tab strip control that is ready to use out-of-the-box.

 

Tab-strip control features summary

The control is a regular Tab control for WPF, but its got several out-of-the-box features such that you can simply drag-drop a control instance into your Window, set some properties and off you go for an amazing, really jaw-dropping Tab control features.

This control can do everything my (already available) WinForms Tab control can do, and much much more!

To summarise the features quickly, its got several styles of rendering including Visual Studio style, Diamond, Trapezium, and a host of others, and currently supports two orientations (Top and Bottom).

The control also has some neat animations such as performing transforms upon mouse hovering into a tab header, rendering currently inactive (or not selected/mouse-hovered) tab items to be rendered in a translucent / transparent mode, and more.

 

Is there a Silverlight version of this control?

At this time, the control is written only for WPF (as planned for Release 18), but i intend to re-write it for Silverlight as well soon. (Oops! This little secret slipped out of my mouth accidentally ; ))

OK, now that i have mentioned it,  let me also tell you that I am planning to release the Silverlight version of this control as part of the next big release – i.e. Release 19 along with the other “heavy-weight” features-rich controls).

 

Here are some snapshots of the WPF Tab-strip control in action…

 

 

 

 

Download the package today, and have fun.

- Sundar

UIControlSuite Release 18: To be available on 5th September

All,

I will be making Release 18 of UIControlSuite.NET public, on the 5th September. Here is a quick summary of what is coming in this release…

New Tab control for WPF (Update: This is now delivered in the Release 18 first build released on 31/08/2011)

This will be a customisable Tab control that is ready to use out-of-the-box.

Its got several styles of rendering including Visual Studio style, Diamond, Trapezium, and a host of others, and currently supports two orientations (Top and Bottom).

Enhancements to existing WPF and Silverlight controls

1. A new standalone Pan and Zoom control is now available for WPF and Silverlight.

This will be able to provide Panning and Zooming services to any content.

2. Several new slide transition effects have been added for the Slideshow control
3. Flowchart / Organisation chart control now supports Zooming and Panning out-of-the-box
4. Flowchart / Organisation chart control now supporting out-of-the-box printing facility (including printing into multiple pages).

General maintenance, bug fixes across controls in the suite, including:

- FIXED: Slideshow Raindrop effect in Win7 64-bit did not work sometimes, now fixed.
- FIXED: Slideshow repeating the last slide twice if you moved directly to the last slide when the slideshow begins
- FIXED: An extra pixel unit of border that was being rendered in the left hand side of the Ribbon tab item
- FIXED: WinForms TreelistView item rendering flickers when performing mouse-move when using the advanced gradient color rendering mode for items.

 

Release 19 work-in-progress

The Release 19 of UIControlSuite pack of work is getting closer to completion as we speak, but i will announce its release date a bit later.

-Sundar

Release 19 of UIControlSuite .NET: Sneak peek into what is coming!

First, a big “Thank you”!

Guys, thanks for all your awesome interest in my Release 17 release of UIControlSuite.NET with the version 7 of VirtualizingWrapPanel control!

Now, its time to talk about what plans I have for the next major releases… so here it goes…

A little sneak peek into what is being completed for the Release 19

Release 19 will be my yet another major release with the following new controls:

• Docking control for WPF
• Docking control for Silverlight
• Ribbon control for Silverlight
• Advanced Grid control for the WPF
• Advanced Grid control for Silverlight
• Scheduler for WPF, with Hour, Day, Month and Year views
• Scheduler for Silverlight, with Hour, Day, Month and Year views

I will announce the ETA for releasing Release 19 in a few weeks later, once i have my upcoming Release 18 made RTM and available to public.

Stay tuned!

- Sundar

VirtualizingWrapPanel v 7.0 + UIControlSuite Release 17 enhancements – Varying child size rendering supported

VirtualizngWrapPanel version 7.0 is now available.

This build supports rendering the child items content with differing size.

The control is capable of rendering differing item sizes (with a maximum size specified via the ItemDimension property), and still can render it virtualized and support grouping, filtering and sorting on the children items.

 

Here is the online demonstration Silverlight application

http://www.binarymission.co.uk/demos/VPanel_Grouping_Filtering/Virtual_Group_Sort_Filter_SampleTestPage.html

 

Screenshot of the feature in action here:

 

Another feature I am really proud about is this:

UI Virtualize anything that can be scrolled (as part of ItemsControl)

The control can be used to automatically "UI Virtualize" any content that can be scrolled.

The typical use case for this control is to use it as the ItemsPanelTemplate for an ItemsControl, but you can use this control to virtualize any scrollable content, not just only as ItemsPanelTemplate.

For example, you can host it inside a scollviewer (as part of an ItemsControl's ControlTemplate) to UI virtualize the scrollviewer's content.

 

Screenshot of using the control to virtualize the scrollviewer's content, as part of the ItemsControl's ControlTemplate

 

Enjoy!

- Sundar

UIControlSuite Release 16: Virtualizing Wrap Panel control supports Group header rendering for the virtualized data, with full customisation using Custom DataTemplate

The Virtualizing Wrap Panel control for WPF, Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 now enters its Version 6, with some cool new features:

• Group header summary row rendering
• Group header is fully customizable via custom data template; the data to be rendered is made available to the template via its DataContext by the control
• A new property ItemPositioningMode has been introduced, with two possible options: Greedy and Safe to manage the available space for rendering the virtualized child items
• Virtualization performance improvements across mouse wheel, keyboard and scrollbar scrolling user actions.

Visit the UI Virtualizing Wrap Panel control product page in the web site for more details.

Online Demo

You can also view the online Silverlight demo of the latest version 6.0 of the control here.

This makes the UIControlSuite Enterprise edition enter its Release 16.

 

A screenshot of this feature in action is here:

 

Enjoy!

- Sundar

Release 15.5 - Advanced Group header rendering modes in Virtualizing Wrap panel control for WPF & Silverlight

As from the recent Release 15, the Virtualizing Wrap Panel control supports Grouping in its virtualization.

On top of that, I have made one more cool enhancement now – i.e. supporting multiple modes of group header rendering.

From Release 15.5 (V 5.0 of Virtualizing Wrap Panel control), the control offers three kinds of group header/children rendering., viz.:

GroupVirtualizationMode.Continuation: The grouped data (header and children) will continue to flow one group after the other, wrapping lines in a standard manner

GroupVirtualizationMode.LineBreak: In LineBreak mode, each group header (and its grouped child items) will start to render in the new row/column

GroupVirtualizationMode.StandaloneRow: In StandaloneRow mode, each group header will live in a new row/column, and its children will start to render in the next row/column.

The standalone mode is similar to the LineBreak mode, except that in this mode, the group header will live in its own row/column than the relevant grouped items.

All the above features can be setup using a simple property on the control with absolutely no additional code, so its fully MVVM pattern friendly.

Some screenshots of these features in action:

Continuation mode:

   

LineBreak mode:

StandaloneRow mode:

Have fun.

- Sundar

Release 15 of UIControlSuite .NET goes LIVE!

I have now made Release 15 of UIControlSuite .NET LIVE.

Major highlights of this release are:

• Virtualizing Wrap Panel now supports Grouping even when virtualizing
• A new Windows Phone 7 (WP7) control – Virtualizing Wrap Panel for WP 7
• Ribbon control now contains a Visual Studio 2010 skin out-of-the-box
• 10 New Slide transition effects in Slideshow control
• Collapse / Expand of nodes in Organization Chart control

Other enhancements and fixes in the following controls:

• Slideshow control
• Advanced Tab control
• Organisation Chart control
• Carousel control
• Hierarchical TreeListView control

 

Enjoy the new controls, and have fun!

- Sundar

Virtualizing Wrap Panel control for Windows Phone 7 (WP7) to be available in Release 15

All,

As part of the upcoming Release 15 of UIControlsSuite .NET Suite and version 4 of UI Virtualizing Wrap Panel control package, I am happy to announce that I am also making available a new control for the Windows Phone 7 platform – Virtualizing Wrap Panel for Windows Phone 7 (WP 7).

This Windows Phone (WP7) version of the control will support all the features that are available in the WPF & Silverlight versions, including support for automatic re-virtualisation/realisation for transactional edits/updates, filtering, sorting and grouping of child items.

Stay tuned, and watch the product page for more updates soon.

Cheers

- Sundar

Virtualizing Wrap Panel v4.0 (with Grouping support feature) + UIControlSuite release 15 RTM date

Customers,

Thanks for the very impressive excitement/interest you have all shown on my upcoming release, specifically on the Grouping feature support in the Virtualizing Wrap Panel control (both WPF and Silverlight versions).

I am happy to announce the date for the upcoming release to be Friday, June 3rd, 2011.

This will be Release 15 of UIControlSuite .NET and a major release of version 4.0 of Virtualizing Wrap Panel  control.

 

Virtualizing Wrap Panel control, version 4: Highlights on major features included

1. Grouping enabled, even when doing virtualization

2. A new option of aggressive memory management feature has been introduced. (via the control’s property VirtualizationSchemeOption to AggressiveDisposeAndCollectionOnLeavingViewportBounds)

Other control enhancements available in the UIControlSuite Release 15 includes:

• Ribbon control:

          New Visual Studio 2010 scheme/theme, available out-of-the-box

• Organisation chart control:

          The control now supports expanding/collapsing of its root nodes. The latest version demo is here.

• SlideShow control:

          10 new Transition effects (Pixel shaders) added

Stay tuned…

- Sundar

Ability to support “Grouping” feature in Virtualizing Wrap Panel control, to be available soon.

The upcoming Release 15 of UIControlsSuite will contain a major enhancement to the Virtualizing Wrap Panel control.

As promised in my earlier post, the Virtualizing Wrap Panel control will now support virtualization even in the context of Grouping of data – i.e. perform virtualization and also continue render your ICollectionView data using your custom grouping setup on it.

This was one of the most difficult features to write, and i am very proud to say I have completed this implementation now, and this will be made available soon as part of the upcoming Release 15 of UIControlSuite and also as version 4 of Virtualizing Wrap Panel control.

This feature will be available for both WPF and Silverlight versions of the control.

Stay tuned for screenshots and online demos…

- Sundar