Version 2009 vol 3
Automatic Editor Type Switching
With this release, all DevExpress WinForms Editor controls used on a form can be converted to another editor using the dropdown available through the control's smart tag. This procedure automatically preserves the control's size and location so as not to break form layout and copies all common settings and event handlers - freeing you from any manual modifications.
Version 2009 vol 2
Seven New Skinning Options for Windows Forms Controls
In our continuing effort to address your business needs, we've introduced seven new professional Skins/Themes in DXperience v2009 vol 2.
Expression Editor Now Available in Grids
In previous versions, the only way to specify unbound column values was to handle an event and write the appropriate code. The same applied if you needed conditional formatting driven from complex criteria. With this new release, DevExpress WinForms controls now allow you to address both these requirements using an intuitive design-time editor.
An updated version of the DevExpress Expression Editor (the first version was introduced in XtraReports v2008 vol 2) is now available to our main WinForms Grid controls. You can use it to specify formulas for unbound column values or to set up conditional formatting. The DevExpress controls that support this new feature are the XtraGrid and XtraPivotGrid.
For unbound columns, you can also enable the end-user customization of expressions. Simply enable an appropriate option and the column's header menu will include a link to the Expression Editor.
'How to' Video: WinForms Grid - How to Use the Expression Editor
New Functions
Not only have we shared the Expression Editor between our main WinForms Grid controls, we've also extended the supported function set with about 50 new functions. These include the following:
- Math: Abs, Cos, Sin, Atn, Exp, Log, Rnd, Tan, Power, Sign, Round, Ceiling, Floor, Acos, Asin, Atn2, BigMul, Cosh, Log10, Sinh, Tanh.
- String: PadLeft, PadRight, IsNullOrEmpty, Ascii Char, ToStr, Replace, Reverse, Insert, CharIndex, Remove.
- DateTime: GetDate, GetMilliSecond, GetSecond, GetMinute, GetHour, GetDay, GetMonth, GetYear, GetDayOfWeek, GetDayOfYear, GetTimeOfDay, Now, UtcNow, Today, AddTimeSpan, AddTicks, AddMilliSeconds, AddSeconds, AddMinutes, AddMinutes, AddHours, AddDays, AddMonths, AddYears.
Note that this function list matches the list of new functions supported by eXpressPersistent Objects.
'How to' Video: Reporting Tool - Using Built-in Functions for Calculated Fields
Export to XLSX is Now Available
The XtraPrinting Library - our data printing and export library for Windows Forms - has been extended with XLSX support. You can now export your grids, tree-lists, vertical grids, pivot tables and banded reports to the latest version of Excel's file format. Because the new format supports more spreadsheet columns and rows (16,384 columns and 1,048,576 rows compared to 256 columns and 65,536 rows in XLS), you can now export bigger datasets.
Rich Text Editors in Grid Cells
Previously our XtraRichEdit engine could be used only to display rich text content within data-aware control cells. In addition to read-only mode, you can now use the same repository item to edit HTML, RTF, Plain Text, MHT and DOCX data stored in your data fields.
Note: This feature shipped in a minor service update for DXperience v2009 vol 1.
Animated Icons in Tab Page Headers and Labels
You can now assign animated GIF images to page headers and labels and their animations will be displayed correctly.
Incremental Searching in ListBox Controls
Your end-users can now search for information more effectively within our ListBox Controls.
Customizable Menu Contents in Filter Controls
You can now customize the content of all menus used within Filter Controls. This allows you to remove unnecessary columns or operations from built-in menus.
In addition to menu customization, you can also handle newly implemented events to customize data editors on the fly.
Version 2009 vol 1
New Skinning Option for Windows Forms Controls
DXperience v2009 vol 1 extends our Skinning engine with yet another unique visual style – Springtime.
Auto-Collapsing Panels
You can now enable the auto-collapsing feature in the SplitContainerControl. With this feature, an end-user can click the splitter to minimize one panel, and thus maximize another.
Prompt Text in Empty Editors
You can now easily enable input prompt text for editors with null values. This text immediately disappears when the editor gets focus.
Advanced Tooltips for Tab Control's Pages
Our tab control now supports SuperToolTips so that you can display rich information about tab pages, including images and memo fields.
Custom Text Representations of Check Box Values
If a grid column or tree list column contains Boolean values, you can use CheckEdit controls for data visualization. When grouping data against these column, displaying their filter dropdown list and in some other instances, true and false values are represented by "Unchecked" and "Checked" strings. You can manually specify the strings that should be displayed instead of true and false.
Minor Enhancements
You can show error icons for editors using the DXErrorProvider component. By default, error icons are displayed at a control's left edge. You can now change the icon's location for standalone editors.
You can now enable tooltips for a track bar control's indicator, to display the current value. By default, only the value is displayed. However, you can handle an event to apply display text formatting or to provide custom display text.
- Built-in support for ICO files have been added to our image editors.
- New skin elements have been added - TabPageButton and TabHeaderButton. These elements are used to paint XtraTabControl's Close buttons. Previously, these buttons were painted using another skin element, that was also used by other controls. Now, a dedicated skin element is available.
Version 2008 vol 3
New Skinning Option for Windows Forms Controls
DXperience v2008 vol 3 extends our Skinning (Application Wide Themes) with two additional visual styles. The first is the "Dark Side" offering you another version of our black UI. The Pumpkin skin extends this with Halloween themed images.
For the complete list of skins (application themes) available to you with our WinForms product line, please visit the following page:
http://www.devexpress.com/Products/NET/Controls/WinForms/Skins/
Blog: The Pumpkin Application Skin - Coming Soon to a Theater Near You...
Video: Application Wide Skins
Version 2008 vol 2
New Skinning Option for Windows Forms Controls
DXperience v2008 vol 2 extends our Skinning engine with yet another unique visual style – the Summer Skin.
HTML Style Text Formatting in WinForms Controls
Historically, Windows Forms controls never allowed you to emphasize portions of their text. For instance, you couldn't apply bold formatting to a few words within a label text.
With version 2008 vol 2, we have added this capability to our Label, Check Editor and Grid Control (for column and band headers). You can now specify captions for these elements using HTML-style markup - using the following tags: <br>, <color>, <size>, <b>, <i> and <u>.
Server Mode Performance Improvement
If the XtraGrid is in server mode, focused row and selection are not restored after sorting, grouping or filtering operations. This significantly improves application performance.
You can enable focused row and selection persistence by enabling a single option.
New Built-in Comparison Operator in Filtering Dialogs
The newly implemented Contains operator increases the count of built-in comparison operators. It allows less experienced end-users to easily find data and avoid using the Like operator which requires wildcard knowledge.
Version 2008 vol 1
New Skin Options for Windows Forms Controls
We've added three new skins to our Windows Forms product line - they include the Holiday, McSkin, and Valentine's Day skins.
New Component - CheckedComboBoxEdit
This new control allows you to display a set of Boolean options or bit fields in a dropdown window.
It can be used both standalone and for in-place editing within container controls (XtraGrid, XtraTreeList, etc).
Version 2007 vol 3
New Components
The XtraEditors Library introduces two new button controls and a new component that makes it easier to validate user input.
DropDownButton
This button can be associated with a popup control or a context menu. End-users can invoke the associated control by clicking the button's drop-down arrow.
CheckButton
DXValidationProvider
Previously, in order to validate data within standalone editors, you had to manually subscribe to Validation events and invoke custom validation code. The DXValidationProvider component looks at the validation task from a different standpoint. With this component, you don't need to write code. Simply create validation rules and associate them with editors.
The following image shows how you can use the design-time editor to create validation rules and associate them with editors:
Embeddable MarqueeProgressBar Сontrol
In previous versions, MarqueeProgressBar could only be used as a standalone control. With this release, it can be integrated into toolbars, ribbons, grids and all other Developer Express container controls.
Animation
The PictureEdit and ImageEdit controls now support animated GIF files.
GIF animation support is also available within container controls (such as the XtraGrid, XtraTreeList, XtraBars, etc). As an example, the following image shows how you can enhance a grid control's functionality using animated GIF files:
Displaying RTF Data in Container Controls
Container controls (such as the XtraGrid, XtraTreeList, XtraVerticalGrid, etc) can now display RTF data within their cells (read-only mode). This allows you to show formatted text with images without using any custom draw features.
Version 2007 vol 2
New Editors
The new ZoomTrackBarControl component enables you to imitate the track bar used in Microsoft Office® 2007. This track bar allows users to scale documents and is usually displayed within the status bar's right section. If you own the XtraBars Suite, you can implement the same interface, since editors from the XtraEditors Library can be embedded into our toolbar, menu, Ribbon and status bar components.
Another new editor is our font selection combo box. This control provides the same appearance and behavior as the font selector in Microsoft Office®. Just like the ZoomTrackBarControl, the new FontEdit can be embedded into our container controls, including grids, toolbars and ribbons.
DateEdit Enhancements
The DateEdit control now allows end-users to manipulate the time portion of the edit value. The editor's dropdown window displays a Windows® Vista™ style clock and a TimeEdit control.
Re-designed List Box Controls
In v2007 vol. 2, we have completely re-designed the following controls from the XtraEditors Library: ListBoxControl, ImageListBoxControl and CheckListBoxControl. All these controls had the same base engine which, to put it mildly, had become quite hard to support.
The public interfaces of out list box control has not been changed. Existing applications will continue to work without modifications on your end.
Version 2007 vol 1
New Editors
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The DateEdit control can use the new Windows Vista visual style.
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The RangeTrackBar control has been added to the XtraEditors Library. This control allows end-users to specify value intervals. It can be used both standalone and for in-place cell editing within controls such as the XtraGrid.
Data Error Indication Improvements
The IDXDataErrorInfo interface is now supported by the XtraGrid, XtraTreeList and XtraVerticalGrid. With this new feature, all controls within these suites provide you with advanced data error visualization capabilities.
New Skins for Office 2007 Imitation
Three new skins are available: Office 2007 Blue, Office 2007 Black, Office 2007 Silver.
These new skins are shipped in a separate assembly: DevExpress.OfficeSkins.dll. To use them in your next application, you will need to register this assembly as you would with any custom skin project.
.NET Framework 1.x Support
DXperience v2007 vol 1 no longer provides .NET Framework 1.x support. If your projects require .NET Framework 1.x, please use DXperience v2006 vol 3 or older. We will continue to provide bug fixes for older version of DXperience.
Version 2006 vol 3
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Filter Control - a stand-alone emulation of the XtraGrid's built-in Filter Editor which allows end-users to construct filter criteria of any complexity.
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The XtraEditors Library introduces a new DXErrorProvider component, which is a more powerful and flexible version of the standard ErrorProvider component. With the standard component, you could only validate data in individual editors when they were about to lose input focus. DXErrorProvider offers you more flexibility by allowing you to validate the content of entire container controls - for instance, forms. And it has one more advantage - you can use up to six types of error notifications. There are three built-in types: error, warning and information message. You can also specify up to three custom notification types, i.e. supply your own icons to be displayed next to editors.
Fade Animation Support
Animated hot-track effects are now supported in our .NET Windows Forms products. When end-users hover Ribbon elements, command buttons, check boxes, editor buttons or main menu items, these elements are highlighted using an animated fade effect. Fade animation is also used to restore an element's original state when the mouse pointer leaves this element.
Advanced Ribbon-Like Tooltips
First, we enhanced our RibbonControl with support for "super tooltips". We added a SuperTip property to the RibbonPageGroup and BarItem classes, enabling advanced tooltips display for group buttons and all types of bar items.
... We then made it possible to use advanced tooltips with any control from our Windows Forms product line. For instance, a simple button or a check box now also exposes a SuperTip property thus allowing you to provide consistent hint windows throughout your applications. And note that regardless of the control, the SuperTip property provides a designer dialog that makes it much easier to customize hint content at design time.
Version 2006 vol 2
TrackBarControl
The XtraEditors Library now offers you a replacement for the standard TrackBar control.
This new control's main features are the following.
- Horizontal or vertical orientation.
- Customizable orientation of thumb and tickmarks.
- Keyboard support.
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This control can be used for in-place editing in container controls like the XtraGrid.
MarqueeProgressBar
The MarqueeProgressBar control was designed to mimic the behavior of the standard ProgressBar control when its Style is set to Marquee. It is used to indicate that a time-consuming operation is in progress but it is unknown how long it may take.
The main benefits of this control are:
- Horizontal or vertical orientation.
- Optional caption text display.
- Customizable animation speed.
LabelControl
The LabelControl is designed to replace the standard Label control in your applications and thus bring visual consistency without any effort on your end. In addition to features found in the standard control, the LabelControl can display a horizontal line to the right of the text. This lets you imitate group box headers.
XtraScrollableControl
The XtraScrollableControl replaces the standard ScrollableControl so you can design complex controls that are capable of displaying our scroll bars.
XtraForm
As you can see from screenshots on this page, the XtraForm is now capable of displaying skinned captions. To activate this feature, you need to write a single line of code.
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DevExpress.Skins.SkinManager.EnableFormSkins();
DevExpress.Skins.SkinManager.EnableFormSkins()
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Below are some screenshots that demonstrate the appearance of the XtraMessageBox if title bar skinning is applied. Needless to say, you will see the same appearance in all dialogs that are used in our controls, since we use XtraForm objects to represent forms. For instance, you will see such title bars in the Filter Editor dialog in the XtraGrid, Appointment Editor dialog in the XtraScheduler, Print Preview dialog in the XtraPrinting Library, etc.
Version 2006 vol 1
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The Tag property has been added to repository items.
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A new SizeMode option has been added to PictureEdit. Set the SizeMode property to "Squeeze" to proportionally resize the image only if it does not fit within the control.
- ImageCollection component can be used with the ToolTipController instead of the ImageList component. This enables you to use images with alpha channel (32 bit images) within hints.
New Skin Options
Two new skins have been added - iMaginary and Lilian. Click the desired image below to review their appearance when applied to an application built with Developer Express controls.
Version 3
Enhancements to Shared Libraries
- New Style Customization API
The styles for all controls are now specified via Appearance objects instead of the ViewStyle and ViewStyleEx objects. The new objects are easier to handle, provide additional text management benefits, and allow direct style customization in event handlers without raising recursive layout updates. The previous style customization options are still available for backward compatibility.
- Skins
All controls can now be painted using skins. This means that primitives like buttons, column headers, etc are constructed from a set of bitmaps.
New Controls
The XtraEditors Library v3 offers you 8 additional controls allowing you to build more consistent user interfaces.
Improved Mask Functionality
- Numeric and Date-Time Masks
A new mask mode allows you to specify masks using standard or custom format strings.
- Full Support for Regular Expressions
You can now generate masks of any complexity by specifying syntax similar to the POSIX ERE specification.
- New Mask Designer
Specify masks via an easy-to-use designer dialog with numerous samples, sample preview and mask testing features.
New Features
- Entering Null Values
Editors now allow end-users to enter null values by pressing the CTRL+0 or CTRL+Delete shortcuts.
- Extended Error Handling
In addition to input validation, editors now provide an error visualization option - displaying icons that invoke error tooltips.
- Delayed or Immediate EditValueChanged Event Call
You can choose whether the EditValueChanged event is raised immediately after the editor's value has been modified by the end-user or only after the editor stays idle for a predefined time interval. For instance, delayed event calls are useful if time-consuming operations are invoked when an editor's value is being changed.
- Custom Buttons in the Data Navigator and Control Navigator
The navigator controls now expose a Buttons.CustomButtons property allowing you to add custom buttons with ease.
- End-User List Sorting in the LookUpEdit Control
The new HeaderClickMode property specifies whether clicking a column header will change the search column or will sort the list against the clicked column's values.
- Non-Focusable Buttons
The SimpleButton control introduces an AllowFocus property that specifies whether the button can receive focus. If this property is set to false, the button acts like a toolbar button.