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

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 .NET WPF 2.0 with Windows 7 Scenic skin

I have now released build 2.0.400 of BinaryRibbon .NET (WPF) with the well awaited Windows 7 Scenic "look-alike"  Ribbon skin :-)

Here is the screen shot, straight from my web site here: BinaryRibbon WPF .NET

I think i have done a pretty much good job here :-) creating this skin as much close look-alike of what it is in Windows 7 or "Weven" as we like to call it ;-)

Of course, as you can see, in my demo application that uses my Windows 7 Scenic Skin, i have setup the tab item groups using my group rendering UI.

You could also simply separate the groups using a separator control, just like how MS present their Ribbon tab items in their Paint and other applications in Win 7. I think its just a question of taste here... I love the group rendering UI rather than just using separators across groups.

Anyway, there you go... :-)

- Sundar

Windows 7 skin for BinaryRibbon WPF

There is a lot of excitement around the new Scenic Ribbon UI in Windows 7, and after hearing a lot of requests from my customers, I am currently building the Windows 7 Scenic Ribbon skin for my WPF control BinaryRibbon .NET.

The new UI looks cool, the major changes observed vis-a-vis the current theme being:

• Rendering colour of various UI elements is different (including the AppMenuButton)
• The ApplicationMenuButton looks rectangular, and is not a toggle button (as is in other themes in the control) but then a drop-down button, and is located alongside the first tab item header in the Ribbon Bar panel.
• The QAT (Quick access toolbar) does not have that nice fancy curved corners, but then takes a rectangular one.

I have almost completed writing the Windows 7 skin XAML, and will be posting here a screen-shot of how it has come out :-)

The updated version of BinaryRibbon .NET (version 1.5) will also be available soon once the skin is ready!

As is currently in my control, this new skin will be available as a new value from the Skin enumeration that you can choose from, which already contains a couple of UI skins including Office Blue, Black and Silver.

Although Windows 7 is now only an RC, I take it Microsoft won't be making any major change to the Scenic Ribbon UI in the RTM release.

Well, even if they did change it in the RTM, its not a big deal, since we can still keep this skin in the control (we wrote it!! :-)), and it does look good and appealing ;-)

Update 17/06/09

Guys, i have now added my new Windows 7 Scenic Ribbon Skin into BinaryRibbon WPF :-)

Please read the latest update in my blog. All Binarymission customers (and potential customers too ;-)) can now download and enjoy Windows 7 Scenic Ribbon 7 skin in their Ribbon enabled apps :-)

Get your copy of BinaryRibbon WPF Build 2.0.400 now.

- Sundar