The Actipro Blog

In a recent blog post, we mentioned that WinForms product updates were in progress.  I'd like to get into some more detail on what is to be expected from these updates.

Update Overview

Creation of WinForms Studio 2012.1

The next major WinForms controls release that we are working on restructures the WinForms control products to be similar to our WPF controls.  There will be a new WinForms Studio suite option that provides discounts over purchasing controls individually. 

UIStudio is being split up into three individual products:  Bars, Docking/MDI, and Navigation.  All of these separate products will be available in the WinForms Studio suite or individually.

The WinUICore and Shared assemblies have been merged into a single Shared assembly.

Finally, all products will have the same version number, which for the first version will be 2012.1.

Migration to .NET 3.5 and VS 2010 Projects

We've wanted to migrate to VS 2010 projects for the source and samples for a while now.  WinForms Studio 2012.1 will feature source built from VS 2010 projects and samples available in VS 2010 and 2008.

.NET 3.5/4.0 Client Profile Support

A common feature request over the past couple years has been for us to decouple the control designer functionality from the product assemblies so that "client profile" setups in .NET 3.5 or 4.0 can be used.

For WinForms Studio 2012.1, we have removed references to System.Design.dll from the product assemblies and have moved all designer functionality out to separate Design assemblies instead.

Restructuring of Internal Processes

All of our WPF and Silverlight controls are managed, built, and deployed using the same sort of scripts and tools.  This allows us to share code and make updates much faster.

For a long time now we've wanted to get our older WinForms controls on the same configuration.  That way, our products for all three platforms can be maintained internally by us in the same fashion. 

To accomplish this, internally we have:

• Created a source code folder structure that closely mimics our WPF/Silverlight source code folder structures.
• Updated all product licensing to use the same mechanism found in WPF Studio.
• Created a new Sample Browser application that is used to browse all WinForms product samples and product release histories.
• Converted product documentation to use our newer documentation format and build tools used in WPF/Silverlight.
• Merged all product documentation into a single help file like in WPF/Silverlight
• Created a new build process based on the WPF Studio build process.
• Created a new installer based on the WPF Studio installer.
• Other more minor updates.

Beta Testers Wanted

We're excited to be getting the updates listed above completed and out into your hands.  We are already well on our way towards doing so.

I'd like to take this opportunity to ask for beta testers to work with the new version once a beta is ready.  We hope to have a beta ready some time in the next couple weeks.

Please write us if you are an existing WinForms control customer and would like to be a part of our beta test.

We'll post more soon!

Earlier this week we posted new builds of many products, including WPF Studio.  The latest WPF Studio build now has a new QuickStart that shows how easy the Themes portion of WPF Studio makes it to customize other products such as Docking/MDI.

The first release of WPF Studio 2011.2 made some visual updates to Docking/MDI that went with a more high-contrast look that focuses the user's eye on content, instead of the docking UI.  This look is similar to Visual Studio 2010 (Aero theme shown below):

We had a couple customers request an option to use the older lighter appearance that was present is past versions.  So for build 552 we added a QuickStart showing how easy it is to customize the entire look of the Docking/MDI product.  We provide full source lighter alternate Docking/MDI themes for Aero, Office Blue, and Office Silver in this QuickStart.

Here is the alternate theme for Aero:

The QuickStart demonstrates how you can wire up alternate themes to use and take effect whenever the app's theme is changed.  Download WPF Studio's latest build to see this new QuickStart in action.

We just published maintenance releases for all WPF and Silverlight controls, along with the WinForms SyntaxEditor and UIStudio products.

WPF Controls

The WPF Studio updates include numerous minor enhancements, tweaks, and bug fixes throughout nearly all the WPF controls.  It also has a brand new sample for Docking/MDI and Themes that shows how to completely provide an alternate look for the Docking/MDI product, one that is similar to our older lighter themes.  We'll showcase this in a future blog post.

The updates for the maintenance release are described in this announcement thread.

Silverlight Controls

The Silverlight Studio updates also include numerous minor enhancements, tweaks, and bug fixes throughout the various Silverlight controls, and are described in this announcement thread.

WinForms Controls

SyntaxEditor and the .NET Languages Add-on had several enhancements and bug fixes (described in this announcement thread).

UIStudio had several tweaks and bug fixes applied (described in this announcement thread).

What We Accomplished

In this quarter, we released the 2011.2 versions of WPF Studio and Silverlight Studio.  Numerous major new feature areas were added to SyntaxEditor, and WPF saw the release of our new Themes for WPF product, which unifies and improves how theming is done across our WPF products, adds full themes for native controls, and facilitates consistent app-wide themes.

What’s Coming Next

There are a lot of exciting things coming in the next several months:

• A brand new web site that has been in development for over a year
• Updates to our WinForms products
• A new product coming to WPF and Silverlight
• More SyntaxEditor features

Blog Post List

Here is a quick categorized list of useful blog postings made in this quarter.

• SyntaxEditor .NET Languages Add-on - Anonymous Types
• WPF Studio 2011.2 Build 551 Released
• WPF Studio 2011.2 Released
• Themes for WPF Part 6 - Wrapping Up
• Themes for WPF Part 5 - Tinting Support
• Themes for WPF Part 4 - Built-In Themes
• Themes for WPF Part 3 - Docking/MDI Visual Updates
• Themes for WPF Part 2 - Common Asset Pool
• Themes for WPF Part 1 - Native WPF Control Themes
• Silverlight Studio 2011.2 Released

In the WPF Studio 2011.2 build that was just released, we added resolver and IntelliPrompt support for anonymous types.  Now the add-on supports those features for extension methods, lambdas, and anonymous types.  All of those things are the building blocks for future LINQ IntelliPrompt!

Anonymous Type IntelliPrompt Examples

Let's see some examples of automated IntelliPrompt for anonymous types.

In this screenshot, we have implicitly declared a variable anon as an anonymous type.  The anonymous type's properties are initialized using a variable, and a couple assignment.  Hovering over anon to display quick info reveals anon as an anonymous type.  More...

WPF Studio 2011.2 build 551 has been released and is now available for download.

This maintenance release fixes a couple bugs introduced in the previous build related to WPF/WinForms interop so it is highly recommended as an immediate download if you use our WPF products in a WinForms app or use interop controls in Docking/MDI.

The SyntaxEditor .NET Languages Add-on adds resolver and IntelliPrompt support for anonymous types.

Docking/MDI adds a highly-requested WindowStateChanged event, that is raised when a docking window's state has changed.

See the announcement post for the detailed list of enhancements and updates.

We’re very pleased to announce that WPF Studio 2011.2 build 550 has been released and is now available for download.

This version has enormous updates for all products that unifies and improves how theming is done, and provides optional themes for native WPF controls that look great next to Actipro controls, thus facilitating consistent app-wide themes.  SyntaxEditor also has received numerous new highly-requested feature areas such as IntelliPrompt parameter info, single-line edit mode, code fragments, and drag and drop.

Major new features are described below. See the announcement post for the detailed list of enhancements and updates.

Stunning App-Wide Themes

Actipro Themes includes professionally-designed themes that cover all system, Office themes, and high contrast mode. 

The themes apply to all Actipro controls and optionally to native WPF controls.  This ensures that no matter what combination of controls you use in your app, it will look great!  More...

This post concludes our series on the Actipro Themes being added for all our WPF controls in the upcoming 2011.2 version.  We hope you have enjoyed seeing the new theme-related features that are just around the corner.

To sum up, Actipro Themes has these major features:

• Over 10 professionally-designed themes, including all system and Office themes
• Enhanced styles/templates for native WPF controls with the latest UI designs
• Native WPF control styles/templates can be applied app-wide with one line of code or used on a case-by-case basis
• Reusable styles/templates for common scenarios such as embedded buttons and glyphs
• A common pool of reusable brush assets, used by the styles/templates for both Actipro's custom controls and native WPF controls
• Special brush assets, such as ones for container and workspace backgrounds
• All assets can be customized globally or on a per-theme basis
• Brush assets are organized into tint groups that can each be tinted towards any color, allowing for easy custom theme generation

Beta Testing and Final Release

If you are an existing customer and are interested in beta testing Actipro Themes and the rest of WPF Studio 2011.2 (like all the new SyntaxEditor features), please e-mail us ASAP.  We’re expecting to start the beta test early next week.

The final release should be out several days following the beta test start.

This post continues our series on the Actipro Themes being added for all our WPF controls in the upcoming 2011.2 version.

In the last post, we looked at the various built-in themes that will ship with Actipro Themes.  In today’s post, we’ll peek at the tinting features that are included.

What is Tinting?

Tinting is ability of taking a pre-defined WPF Brush or Pen and creating a clone of the object with color changes to be more like a certain target color. 

If you take a brush and tint it towards a gray color, you end up with a grayish brush that has the saturation characteristics of the original brush.  The Actipro Themes object model that ships in our Shared Library has a number of helper extension methods that make allow you to tint any Brush or Pen.

Tinting Themes

While you can tint brush and pens individually, it’s much more useful to be able to tint large quantities of brush/pen assets at the same time.  Especially when you consider there are over 800 assets in the common asset pool for each built-in theme!

Actipro Themes supports the tinting of any theme or portion of a theme towards a certain color. This means that you can take a built-in theme like the Office Silver theme, and make it a red one instead.  More...

This post continues our series on the Actipro Themes being added for all our WPF controls in the upcoming 2011.2 version.

In the last post, we looked at the updated visual design we’ve applied to our Docking/MDI product that looks great with the new native WPF menu/toolbar styles we include with Actipro Themes.

In today’s post we’ll take a peek at some of the themes that are built into Actipro themes.

System Themes

System themes are included right inside the WPF Shared Library and will automatically activate on any Actipro themed controls based on the current operating system theme.  Of course specific themes can also be set on the Actipro theme manager.

Office Themes

The three Office themes make your application look just like the Office suite of applications.  These themes are shipped in a separate assembly to trim down on Shared Library size when the Office themes aren’t needed.  They can be activated by adding a reference to our Office themes assembly and registering them with a single line of code.

High Contrast

The high contrast theme can optionally be activated when it is detected that the system is in high contrast mode.  It’s designed to make controls stand out to those who are visually impaired.

Future Themes

Actipro Themes makes it easy for us to tweak existing and develop new themes in the future.  Anybody want a lighter Metro-like or other theme?  Send us your comments and we’ll log the requests.

Summary

Whether you want to have your application fit into the current system theme or have it look more like Office, Actipro Themes has you covered.

In our next post, we’ll take a look at the tinting support in Actipro Themes.