The ZoomContentControl is a control we added to our Navigation for WPF product with the WPF Studio 2009.2 release.  It makes it easy for an end user to scroll through any sort of large content.

WPF Studio 2009.2 build 515 (released this week) adds support for overlays, which are elements you add to layer on top of the content.  When the content is scrolled or scaled, the overlays move accordingly but do not scale themselves.

In this QuickStart that ships with the product as of build 515, we show a vector map of the United States.  We can add a pin to the map by clicking on the map.

In this screenshot, I clicked to add a pin by Cleveland, OH.  Let’s zoom in and scroll a bit to see what happens…  More...

We’ve just made the WPF Studio 2009.2 build 515 maintenance release available.  This maintenance release includes some new features and bug fixes.  Notable new features include ZoomContentControl overlays and SyntaxEditor IME input support.

We’ll describe these in more detail in upcoming posts.  In the meantime, check out the detailed list of updates.

Download the WPF Studio evaluation now or if you are a customer, grab the new release from your account.

WPF Studio 2009.2 and just been released and is available for download now.  This new major version has some enormous updates in it, the larger of which we’ll describe below.

See our related forum announcement for exact details on what updates were made in each product.

	Docking/MDI for WPF Floating document functionality like in Visual Studio 2010 Document windows in 2009.2 support the ability to be dragged out of the MDI area and floated.  This allows end users to move documents to secondary monitors.  This has been a very highly-requested feature by our end users.  The functionality matches what is found in Visual Studio 2010. All floating windows can now be maximized, and a custom chrome is used to render floating window titlebars and borders. This previous blog post talks about the new features in more detail.
	Editors for WPF AnalogClock control added A new AnalogClock control is now included that can render a clock with hour, minute, and optional second hands.  The hands can be dragged to set new time values. EnumListBox control added EnumListBox is a new control that makes it extremely easy to pick between enumeration values using checkboxes or radio buttons.  It even can render alternate display text based on Description attributes. EnumEditBox control added The new EnumEditBox control is an editor implementation that has a dropdown with an EnumListBox.  When the dropdown is closed, the selected enumeration value is displayed. DateTimeEditBox updated to display clock in dropdown The popular DateTimeEditBox control has been updated to display a time entry section on its dropdown when a date/time or time-only value are edited in it. The DateTimeEditBox will automatically toggle whether a month calendar and/or clock are available in the dropdown based on the date/time format used for the control.
	Navigation for WPF ZoomContentControl added Need a control that provides an intuitive interface for navigating around large content?  The new ZoomContentControl has what you need.  It is extremely configurable, and allows for easy zooming/panning and other operations. This sort of control is perfect for browsing around content such as large pictures, maps, reports, designers, and more. Custom buttons (like the Open Image button above) or other controls can be easily embedded in the UI.
	Ribbon for WPF In-ribbon galleries add support for multiple display rows You asked for it and we delivered.  In-ribbon galleries now support more than one display row if the height of the items can fit more than one row. The rows even animate up and down as you scroll between them.
	SyntaxEditor for WPF Tagging mechanism added Tagging is an exciting new feature area that allows any text range in a document to be “tagged” with custom data.  This data could be anything from custom classifications to something that indicates a squiggle line should be drawn when the text is rendered. Adornments mechanism added The new adornments features allow any custom UI elements to be inserted into the text area surface.  This is one of the most exciting feature areas added to SyntaxEditor since it opens up the doors for providing amazing visualization customizations to end users.  Our favorite demo of adornments is the sample that shows how to make animated smoke puff near the caret as you type.   See this previous post that talks about a number of new samples that show off ideas for adornment usage. Squiggle line support added A built-in adornment layer supports squiggle line rendering.  Now you can “tag” document text ranges that have syntax errors and the squiggles will show up automatically in SyntaxEditor. New event sinks and improved language service design We’ve added a number of new event sinks that let your syntax language classes process when new documents or views are attached to or detached from the language.  A number of language services have been opened up so that more than one instance of a service type can be registered.  This means you could have two completion provider services in place, etc. More documentation We’ve added a lot more documentation, especially in the area of language creation.  Our language creation walk-through topic now also gives a table of common syntax language features and links to the steps/services needed to implement them.
	All controls Visual Studio 2010 and Expression Blend 3 designer support added Version 2009.2 adds designer support for Visual Studio 2010 and Expression Blend 3. New samples added We’ve added a number of new QuickStarts for the various products to demo controls and features.  SyntaxEditor alone is up to about 55 full source samples.

Upgrade Notes

Since 2009.2 is a major new version, 2009.1 customers will need new license keys to use the 2009.2 version. 

If you are an existing customer and have an active subscription, you can log into your Actipro account and there should be a link near the top of your Organization Purchases page allowing you to request a free upgrade to 2009.2.

Alternatively if your subscription has expired, you can order a renewal from our purchasing pages.

If you are using individual WPF products but would like to switch to either the WPF Essentials bundle or WPF Studio suite, e-mail our sales team and we’ll be happy to discuss discounted upgrade options.

Build 506 of WPF Studio 2009.1 is available for download now.  It is one of the larger WPF Studio maintenance releases we’ve made.  Let me do a quick review of some of the major exciting new features.  In addition to this list, there are a lot of other minor enhancements made.

See our related forum announcement for exact details on what updates were made in each product.

	Docking/MDI for WPF Custom content in docking window tabs Any content can now be placed in docking window tabs.  This screenshot shows an animated progress indicator in one tab and a drop-down button in the other tab. Resize slots in a SplitContainer New features have been added making it possible for you to resize the slots of a SplitContainer however you like.  This screenshot shows a split container with an even distribution of space for its slots. Cascade and tile tabbed MDI documents You now can cascade, tile horizontally, and tile vertically tabbed MDI documents.  This screenshot shows how six tabbed documents are tiled horizontally. New WindowControl features WindowControl has several new options and even allows custom content to be in the title bar.  This screenshot shows a small progressbar in the title bar. Close tabs with middle-click An option has been added to allow tabs to close with a middle-click, much like in some popular browsers.
	Editors for WPF Improved min/maximum value support The built-in editors have had support for min/max values improved.
	Navigation for WPF New Windows 7-like expander style A new style has been added that renders similar to the Windows 7 expanders and even has smooth animation.  The style is customized for each system and Office theme. Built-in expander styles updated to support all expand directions We’ve updated all our built-in expander styles so that all expand directions are supported: up, down, left and right.
	PropertyGrid for WPF New textbox and dialog button property editor We’ve added a new built-in property editor that uses a TextBox and includes a button that can be used to show a dialog.
	SyntaxEditor for WPF Finalized language definition format This build finalizes the new language project and language definition XML formats.  All language samples have been updated to use them instead of the classic SyntaxEditor 4.0 for WinForms dynamic language XML definition format. Language Designer application Very major improvements (several weeks of dev time) have been made to the Language Designer application.  It has a number of helpful tools for quickly getting started building a syntax language for use with SyntaxEditor.  It now just takes a few minutes to get up and running, even for SyntaxEditor newbies. Automated quick info session processing We’ve added a new quick info provider service that can be added to a language.  This service watches for mouse hovers and just asks you what to display in response to hovers over different areas of the editor.  Quick info can be displayed for hovers over the text area, or any other part of the editor such as in margins. View mouse hover event A new view mouse hover event has been added.  We handle all the processing for determining when to fire it. Caret and selection brush customization You now can completely customize the look of the caret and selection.  Don’t like our default settings?  Change them however you like! Completion list display when user starts typing a word We’ve added a new feature to make it easy to know if the user is starting to type a new word, so that a completion list can display in response. MGrammar tokens now get assigned a token key We’ve updated tokens generated from the Oslo Dataflow Add-on to provide an IToken.Key value if a TokenKey attribute is specified in the original MGrammar source
	Shared Library for WPF Unique tooltip for PopupButton popup indicator We’ve added a new PopupIndicatorToolTip property to PopupButton, which allows the popup indicator to display a unique tooltip, rather than the tooltip for the main button area.

Part of the large Actipro WPF Studio build 456 update was a number of new themes for our controls that match the "Royale" Windows system theme.

The Royale theme is a Media Center-like theme that was made available for Windows XP and generally looks more modern than the three standard Windows XP themes.

Now all our themed WPF products look great in the Royale system theme.  Let's take a peek at some of the major controls:

Actipro Ribbon for WPF

Actipro Docking & MDI for WPF

ExplorerBar and Breadcrumb (Part of Actipro Navigation for WPF)

NavigationBar (Part of Actipro Navigation for WPF)

Actipro Wizard for WPF

Today's WPF Studio maintenance release added a new Aero theme for the ExplorerBar control.

The screenshot above shows the normal and alternate styles for ExplorerBar items.  In addition, when the mouse moves over a header, the header changes its background to reflect the hover state.

We've done a lot of blogging in the past couple of weeks on new WPF controls that were being prepared for the next maintenance release of WPF Studio v3.5.  Well, I'm pleased to announce that all those controls are now live with today's latest build 425.

New Controls and Components

A slew of new controls and components are included in this build.  Here is a brief list of the major new ones, with links to the previous blog posts that describe them:

• Breadcrumb control, like the Vista explorer addressbar
• Ribbon textbox and combobox hint text
• Aero wizards
• Vista-like command button for use in Aero wizards and task dialogs
• Animated progress bar
• Popup button control, with the ability to show context menu or any other WPF content in its drop-down
• Glass window class, which makes it easy to extend Aero glass into the client area of the window
• Many new value converters, enumerations, and helper methods

Improved Documentation

Our already-thorough documentation has been further enhanced, with a lot of new topics. 

Many New Samples

We've continued to add many new samples to the Sample Browser with this build.  In fact, there are 16 new samples added in this maintenance release!

How to Download?

If you already own WPF Studio v3.5, just go to your Organization Purchases page and download the new maintenance release from there.  If you don't own WPF Studio v3.5, you can get it from the Download page.

The last major control that will be added to our Navigation for WPF product in the upcoming WPF Studio v3.5 maintenance release is the Actipro Breadcrumb control.  The Breadcrumb concept was introduced in Windows Vista to replace the old style of address bar. 

The Breadcrumb control is essentially a condensed version of a TreeView.  Instead of showing a full hierarchy, only the selected path down the tree is displayed.  We've put a lot of work into this control to make sure it has all the Windows Vista features along with some additional ones.

Drop-Down Selection

When the drop-down arrow next to an item is clicked, a popup menu displays containing the child nodes.  Simply click on a child node to select it.

Overflow

When the width of the Breadcrumb is not large enough to support the display of all the items, a chevron button appears at the left side of the Breadcrumb.  Clicking the button shows a menu containing access to all the hidden parent nodes.

Auto-Minimize

Breadcrumb can be configured to auto-hide any number of nodes at the top of the hierarchy when child nodes are selected.  This behavior defaults to hiding only the root node.  For example, in a file system when you select something below the Desktop, the Desktop node minimizes but is fully accessible from a drop-down button that is displayed in its place.  This allows you to hide nodes that aren't commonly used but still keep them accessible.

Tail Items

Tail items are a really neat feature that is unique to Actipro Breadcrumb.  Not even Vista's Breadcrumb has it.  By default, the last item displayed is the selected item.  However you can configure the Breadcrumb to display any number of tail items. 

As an example, say you drill down to a leaf node in your tree.  Then you click a parent node item to select the parent.  If tail items are enabled, the previously-selected leaf node will still be visible although with a faded appearance.  This allows end users to quickly jump back to a previously-selected child node.

Edit Mode

By clicking on the icon at the left of the Breadcrumb, you can jump into "edit" mode.  In this mode, the node items disappear and are replaced by a TextBox where you can enter the full path to the desired node directly. 

You have total control over how the text path is converted to a node path.

Action Buttons

Custom action buttons may be added to the right side of the control.  These can be anything you wish, however for proper usage you will want to have their purpose be related to the nodes represented in the Breadcrumb.

Progress Bar

Just like Vista's Breadcrumb, Actipro's BreadCrumb fully supports a progress bar embedded in the background of the control.  You can optionally use this to reflect loading progress when a new node is selected.  It uses our AnimatedProgressBar control that was described in a previous blog post. 

Features include animated smooth progress transitions, multiple states (green, yellow, red), and more.

Themes

Breadcrumb supports multiple built-in themes, everything from Windows Classic to Vista.

We are currently working on the samples and documentation for Breadcrumb, and expect to have it released in the next several days.

Explorer bar is an implementation of the task bar that was introduced in Windows XP's explorer. It hosts a vertical stack of expandable panes that generally provide task-based information to the end user.

Any content can be placed within each expander pane and the alternate style of pane headers is supported via a simple style setting.

Animated Expander Panes

Each expander pane uses smooth animation to fade in and slide down its contents when expanded. Likewise, when an expander pane is collapsed, its contents fade out and slide back up.

Themes

This product includes 4 distinct built-in themes and is fully extensible so that other product themes can be custom developed. Themes can be tinted towards any color or set of colors, and brush resources from them may be reused.

Single Expansion Option

An option is available to only permit a single expander pane to be expanded at any time. By default, any number of expander panes may be expanded.

Globalization

This control fully supports left-to-right layouts and user interface resource string customization.

Designer Support

ExplorerBar has designer support similar to our other controls.  For instance when working in Visual Studio 2008, you have access to task panes for the controls:

ExplorerBar installs toolbox items for VS 2008.  It even includes an item template that is available from the New Item pane in VS 2008 that when selected, creates a new Window with a simple ExplorerBar on it.

Getting ExplorerBar Free

Any Actipro WPF Studio customer with an active subscription is eligible to get ExplorerBar for free!

Actipro WPF Studio v3.5 adds a new control called NavigationBar.  NavigationBar provides a facility for navigating through different panes of data. This concept was introduced in Outlook, and NavigationBar implements all of the features found in Office 2007. It has an elegant user interface which uses buttons to control which navigation pane is selected. Panes can display data or simply act as a container for child controls.

If screen real estate is available, large buttons can be used for pane selection. The end-user has the option of using a splitter to move the large buttons into the overflow button tray, which uses smaller buttons. If not all of the buttons can fit in that tray, they flow out into the overflow menu, accessible by the chevron button.

NavigationBar Minimization

The NavigationBar supports a minimized mode in which it is collapsed to be very narrow. A button appears in the original content area of the NavigationBar and when clicked, a popup displays containing the content of the currently-selected pane. Minimization can be set to occur on the left or right sides.

Customize Button

The customize button can optionally be displayed in the overflow button area of the NavigationBar. When clicked, it displays a menu that is populated with default menu items but can be customized and fully styled

Options Window

A built-in Options window comes packaged with NavigationBar.

The window offers the end-user the ability to reorder navigation pane buttons by using the Move Up and Move Down buttons. Navigation pane buttons can also be hidden by unchecking the button items in the list. The visibility and sort order can be reset back to defaults by clicking the Reset button.

Themes

This product includes 8 distinct built-in themes and is fully extensible so that other product themes can be custom developed. Themes can be tinted towards any color or set of colors, and brush resources from them may be reused.

Containers

The NavigationBar has an option to hide its pane buttons. By using this option, you can mimic a simple container that has the NavigationBar appearance.

NavigationBar also includes styles that can be used for Expander controls to mimic a sub-header panel. The expander uses fade and slide animation during expand and collapse operations.

Layout Serialization

End user layout customizations can be persisted in XML format and restored later.

Globalization

This control fully supports left-to-right layouts and user interface resource string customization.

Designer Support

NavigationBar has designer support similar to our other controls.  For instance when working in Visual Studio 2008, you have access to task panes for the controls:

NavigationBar installs toolbox items for VS 2008.  It even includes an item template that is available from the New Item pane in VS 2008 that when selected, creates a new Window with a simple NavigationBar on it.

Getting NavigationBar Free

Any Actipro WPF Studio customer with an active subscription is eligible to get NavigationBar for free!