Common Changes Across All ASP.NET Controls

New Project Wizard

This release introduces a new step-by-step Wizard that simplifies the project management process, be it creating a new web project (via Visual Studio's "New Project" or "New Web Site" dialogs) or modifying settings of an existing project. By using our Wizard, you can easily set up the layout of site pages (for new projects), select a theme for the site, define the application's localization, set up different configuration options for DevExpress controls and the entire web site.

The Wizard's main project management functionality is checking web.config file integrity in relation to DevExpress controls and updating the configuration file with both DevExpress related information (the required assembly references and project-wide settings) and defined site customization settings.

New Project Templates

We have created a set of new project templates to help you automatically generate drafts of common application types and layouts. Some of these run our new Project Wizard allowing you to easily configure the generated application.

• Empty Web Application

  An empty web site ready for DevExpress ASP.NET AJAX Controls. Contains only web.config file with DevExpress-related settings.

• Standard Web Application

  An ASP.NET web site based on the default VS project template, but configured by DevExpress ASP.NET Project Wizard and powered by DevExpress ASP.NET AJAX Controls. Available layouts: Standard, Microsoft Outlook inspired, Custom.

• Web Application for Tablet Devices (ASP.NET version only)

  An ASP.NET tablet web application to be configured by DevExpress ASP.NET Project Wizard and powered by DevExpress ASP.NET AJAX Controls. Available layouts: Mobile Store or Custom.

• Microsoft Outlook Inspired Web Application

  An ASP.NET web site using an Outlook layout pattern implemented with the help of specific DevExpress web controls, including the ASPxGridView and ASPxScheduler.

These project templates are developed for different platforms (ASP.NET, MVC), view engines (such as MVC's default and Razor) and programming languages (C#, VB).

Theming Mechanism - Enhancements

You can now more easily apply a DevExpress theme to the entire web site or to an individual control. To apply a theme, you no longer need to extract skin files to the project's App_Themes folder using ASPxThemeDeployer tool - all the required resources will be automatically applied from a theme assembly.

We have implemented a flexible mechanism to apply a theme to all DevExpress controls for an entire web site. You can do this either in web.config (using the new theme-related options of our 'devexpress' configuration section) or programmatically (by setting specially added static properties).

Available themes can now be previewed at design-time using a new control-related design-time editor.

New iOS-like Theme

In our continuing effort to address your business needs, we have introduced a new iOS-like application-wide theme. Although this theme does not fully emulate iOS element appearance, it is designed and optimized for touch interfaces. We have modified the size of tap-able UI elements to fit the average size of a fingertip, thus making them fingertip-size control elements.

The new iOS-like theme is widely used in our new 'Home Realtor' RWA demo.