Binarymission Blog

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

VirtualizingWrapPanel enhancments: Fully supports IEditableCollectionView data sources, ICollectionView Filtering and Sorting

I have now made enhancements to the Virtualizing Wrap Panel control to support the following:

• IEditableCollectionView data sources: This will mean the control’s virtualization engine will support the transactional edits to the ItemsControl’s items source data, and the control will automatically re-virtualize/realize the contents for rendering in its viewport.
• Dynamic update of the viewport, based on Filter and Sort: The control is now capable of dynamic and automatic re-virtualization / realization of child items for re-rendering in the view port, on dynamically filtered and sorted data (for ICollectionView data sources)

Both the WPF and Silverlight version of the control have these new features available.

These new features will be available as part of the UIControlSuite Release 14 that is due for release on the 13th March.

Existing customers can download the latest retail build containing the above enhancements to VirtualizingWrapPanel control from the customer support premium portal web site from 7th March.

Data Grouping support

I am currently working on this feature – i.e. The virtualization engine to support custom grouping of data.

This feature and some more as announced in my earlier blog entry, will be made available early Arpil 2011.

 

Cheers

- Sundar

Virtualizing Wrap Panel for WPF & Silverlight, Volume 2011: Plans

Guys – This is just a “heads up” on the next major version I am working on, for my Virtualizing Wrap panel control for WPF and Silverlight.

You can expect the following heavy-weight features in the control, soon:

• Out-of-the-box support for rendering items of varying size at the same time (currently the control already supports the feature of dynamic sizing of items via an eventing mechanism on scrolling in the viewport)
• Grouping of items
• Sorting of items
• Filtering of items : This will include automatic support for removing realized items from viewport (without affecting anything on the bound data context)
• Support for rendering items even when the root visual in the visual tree is a panel control that supplies Infinite size as the available size during the control’s layout pass (includes panels such as Stack panel, et al.)

This is a very technically complex and a very ambitious release for me!

I am planning to consolidate the release of this new version of the Virtualizing Wrap panel control along with the next major release of the Ribbon control (v 5.0) with support for Backstage view feature and more design-time features (for both Blend and VS 2010), as UIControlSuite .NET Release 14 Volume 2011.

Excitement begins now… just a few more weeks of waiting time… … watch this space for a tentative date for this release.

Wish you all a very Prosperous and Happy New year 2011.

Cheers

Sundar

Organization Chart .NET control: A New WPF 4 & Silverlight 4 control released

Guys, I have put together a new WPF and Silverlight 4 control named OrganisedTree .NET.
This is a control that you would want to use for presenting a very visually engaging tree-view style data.
It will take your hierarchical data and present it using cascading linkage between various levels of nodes, at the same time supporting highlighting the path to currently selected node.

Some uses of this control are scenarios such as displaying Corporate Organisation charts, and such.

The control boasts tons of features, all of which are very easy to setup, straight in XAML - absolutely no procedural coding required.

The core features of these controls (both WPF and Silverlight 4 variants) include:

• Out-of-the-box support for Organisation chart style hierarchical data display. This means you don;t have to mess with the standard .NET WPF/Silverlight TreeView control ‘s styling/re-templating changes.

You could simply drag-and-drop OrganisedTree .NET control into your design surface, and ask it to render your hierarchical data in a Organisation chart style mode, by doing absolutely nothing (other than setting up your hierarchical data for the control – which you will do anyway!)

• Supports two mode of tree rendering: Top-To-Bottom, and Bottom-To-Top
• Easy to setup/use in your applications: The control's object model is similar to .NET TreeView, but only more awesome :)
• High performance rendering: The control is written from scratch engineered for high performance rendering , and does not derive from the .NET WPF/Silverlight TreeView controls
• Supports rendering the Selected path with a custom brush
• Supports Expand/collapse of nodes for children display
• Supports setting up custom data for drawing the nodes connecting lines and its color
• Supports drawing a custom path (instead of just a line object)
• Supports enabling or disabling drawing connecting lines between nodes
• The control also allows you to setup custom length for drawing teh connecting lines between sibling and parent/child nodes 
• Global and node- level styling is supported, so you can customise the look-and-feel of the nodes at each level
• Drag and Drop support built-in
• Enhanced design-time experience supported: I have written custom design-time assemblies specific to both Visual Studio 2010 and Blend 4 IDEs so that it will be easy to setup the control visually without ever writing a single line of code or XAML even!

I have released the first version of these controls as part of Release 13.6 of UIControlSuite .NET Release 13.6.

More jaw-dropping features in the OrganisedTree.NET control, and some more new controls for WPF 4 and Silverlight 4 "on the works" as we speak :)

The product page is here.

Enjoy Release 13.6, and have fun!

- Sundar

New Tab control for WPF 4 and Silverlight 4 now available

I have now completed writing a new custom Tab control for both WPF and Silverlight, and is available for Retail customers’ use.

These new controls will be available for Evaluating customers soon – in a day or two.

Please note that I have built these new controls using .NET 4.0 framework, so this will only work in your WPF 4.0 and Silverlight 4.0 applications.

A quick glance of the features… :)

Features:

• Scrollable tab panel area (for supporting large number of tab items), with custom style-able scrolling buttons
• Various popular tab rendering styles supported out-of-the-box, including:
    Google Chrome, Visual Studio 2010, and MS OneNote
• Custom built-in attractive styles
• Skinning made easy: All drawing resources are exposed through a Resources static class via ComponentResourceKey (CRK) access, so you could simply build your cusotm Resource dictionary setting up values for these CRKs and merge it into your application’s Resources, and get the tab control completely skinned to your desire.
• Out-of-the-box support for the ability to add a new TabItem visually, backed by a Command for the same, that you can handle in your ViewModel before allowing the new tab to be added
• Each tab item header supports custom style-able “close” button
• Item header supports cool animation when mouse hovering and selecting tab items
• Tab control supports various tab strip placements of Top, Bottom, Left and Right positioning
• Provides MVVM pattern friendly Command property for handling important actions such as Closing a tab item, etc. so that you could work with the control entirely in your XAML mark-up, and handle commands in your ViewModel class
• Every single UI component/part of the control's interface is customizable

Just drag-and-drop, and setup tab items, and your tabbed interface is ready for use! :)

- Sundar

New Silverlight and WPF Pixel Shaders “effects” library released

Considering the fact my customers crazily love my SlideShow control’s custom PixelShader effects, i have made a separate class library containing these effects – one for Silverlight and one for WPF, so you can use these “cool Effects” on any UIElement in your applications :)… Have fun.

- Sundar

UIControlSuite .NET Release 13 news

UIControlSuite .NET Enterprise edition Release 13 will be made available in 2 volumes/drops (across various dates) from 18th September :)

Volume 1: Date 18th September

• Carousel for WPF
• Carousel for Silverlight

The control offers powerful customisation features, including being able to set custom perspective camera, ambient lighting, zoom factor, Carousel items’ reflection, deterministic (and also dynamic) sizing of carousel items, gap between items, and also the  carousel Viewport 3D perspective camera (in the WPF version).

But of course, you will also be able to completely re-template the control’s visual tree anyway.

Volume 2: Date 25th September

• Enhanced Slideshow control features for WPF & Silverlight
  (50 new slide transition effects)
• Several new Blend 3 & 4 custom Behaviour and TriggerAction components for several of WPF & Silverlight controls, allowing designers to setup additional “cool” interactivity on various controls in a declarative manner, without having to code or write additional XAML :)

These new behaviours include reflection, water effect, auto-border-decoration behaviours. More details later.

Volume 3: Date: 7th October

New Pixel Shaders custom  "Effects"! library for WPF and Silverlight

Watch this space for evaluation downloads as and when each volume / drop is made available.
You could also start to download the package from Binarymission web site.

Enjoy!

- Sundar

UIControlSuite .NET Release 13 plans

Given Microsoft has RTM'd .NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010 today, I want to announce my plans for my next release: Release 13 of UIControlSuite .NET, delivering some cool WPF 4, Silverlight 4 and MVC 2 controls. 

Release 13 RTM date: TBA.

 

New controls coming in Release 13 of UIControlSuite .NET

For Silverlight 4

• A Carousel control

 

For WPF 4

• A comprehensive Grid control: Features as described above in my Grid control for Silverlight 4
• An advanced and easy to use Carousel control

 

Enhancements in the existing controls

WPF and Silverlight control enhancements:

• Slideshow control: 50 new Slide transitions, including an eye-candy advanced water-drop effect
• Advanced design-time experience enhancements to all of the existing WPF and Silverlight controls, specifically to support Expression Blend 4 and Visual Studio 2010 Designers
• Enhancements to the existing MS Outlook 2007 styled Scheduler control. I will be detailing the specific new features in this control, in another blog post soon.

 

Stay tuned!

- Sundar