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Actipro Software has been creating .NET user interface control products for Windows Forms since its inception. More recently, Actipro has become a pioneer in the .NET 3.0 WPF control development arena.
Saturday, 2 January 2010 04:48 by Bill Henning (Actipro)

Actipro Blog 2009 Q4 posting summary

What we accomplished

In Quarter 4 of 2009 we mostly focused on getting the WPF Studio 2009.2 release out. 

SyntaxEditor for WPF saw major updates to the Language Designer application, along with a ton of new features including tagging, adornments, squiggle lines, and much more.

Some screens and video showing the future SyntaxEditor for Silverlight control were made available.  This control shares most of the same framework as the WPF version of SyntaxEditor.

Docking/MDI for WPF added floating document support similar to the functionality found in Visual Studio 2010.  All floating windows can now be maximized and custom chromes can be used for rendering the window border/titlebars.

Editors for WPF added a new AnalogClock controls, and used this new clock on the DateTimeEditBox dropdown when appropriate.  A new editbox and a list control were added to support easy end user editing of enumeration values.

Navigation for WPF added a new ZoomContentControl that provides an intuitive interface for scrolling/zooming any large content, such as maps, pictures, reports, etc.

Ribbon for WPF added support for multi-row in-ribbon galleries.

All WPF controls received VS 2010 and Blend 3 designer support.

The SyntaxEditor .NET Languages Add-on for WinForms added C# 4.0 and VB 10.0 parsing support.

What’s coming next

In the coming months, we plan on expanding our product line, getting more into the Silverlight realm, and updating Ribbon to use newer Office 2010 features.

Newsletters

The December 2009 newsletter gave an overview of the WPF Studio 2009.2 release along with other recent updates and future plans.

Blog post list

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

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Thursday, 1 October 2009 15:40 by Bill Henning (Actipro)

Actipro Blog 2009 Q3 posting summary

What we accomplished

In Quarter 3 of 2009 we focused on adding some significant value to our existing products while adding some new DataGrid support.

SyntaxEditor for WPF saw the implementation of the multi-threaded syntactic/semantic parsing framework, integration with ANTLR parsers via a new add-on, AST construction and error reporting features for the MGrammar add-on, and robust hit testing.

DataGrid for WPF was introduced as a new free product for our customers.  It is a couple of add-ons that provide behavior extensions, new themes, and Editors for WPF integration with the open source Microsoft WPF DataGrid control.

Docking/MDI for WPF added tab tinting, standard MDI window icons, and magnetism features.

What’s coming next

Right now we’re doing some very major enhancements to the SyntaxEditor Language Designer tool, so that it will be very easy to create language definitions used by SyntaxEditor for WPF.  Once these enhancements are complete and documented, we’ll publish what will probably be the final WPF Studio 2009.1 maintenance release.  More information will be posted soon on the updates we’re doing.

Following the final 2009.1 release, we will be working on some big updates for a WPF Studio 2009.2 version that shouldn’t be too far behind.  One cornerstone feature of 2009.2 will be floating documents like those found in VS 2010.  We have some other surprises planned as well.

Blog post list

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

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Wednesday, 19 August 2009 02:04 by Bill Henning (Actipro)

Actipro Blog 2009 Q2 posting summary

What we accomplished

Quarter 2 of 2009 was extremely busy for us.  It saw the introduction of two new major WPF products: SyntaxEditor for WPF and Editors for WPF.  Both were part of the WPF Studio 2009.1 release and WPF Studio customers with active subscriptions received them free.

This release also included a new, more cost-effective bundle called WPF Essentials, which includes Docking/MDI, Editors, Navigation, Ribbon, Wizard, and the Shared Library, all for the low cost of $399.  If you are looking to get into WPF development, you won’t find a better bundle than that.

Since the release, we have continued enhancing our SyntaxEditor and Editors products.  SyntaxEditor saw UI-related find/replace functionality added and languages started using the service locator pattern.  Editors added a new TimeSpanEditBox and interop functionality was provided that allowed Editors to be easily used within PropertyGrid.  We added support for the Microsoft Pixel Shader Effects (WPF FX) Library with our transition controls.

Blog post list

Here is a quick categorized list of blog postings made in quarter 2 of 2009.  Sorry this is coming very late but better late than never!  We’ll make sure we are more on schedule next time.  More...

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Thursday, 18 June 2009 05:57 by Bill Henning (Actipro)

WPF Studio 2009.1 customers can now download default control styles

We’ve just enhanced our Organization Purchases page so that customers of our WPF Studio 2009.1 suite can download a ZIP containing the default styles and templates for the controls.

DownloadStyles

Note the new link highlighted above that you’ll see in your account if you own WPF Studio 2009.1.  Click that link to download a ZIP that has all the XAML source files used in the various WPF Studio products.  These XAML source files define the brushes, templates and other resources that are used by the products.

Enjoy!

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Sunday, 19 April 2009 22:17 by Bill Henning (Actipro)

Actipro Blog 2009 Q1 posting summary

Here is a quick categorized list of blog postings made in quarter 1 of 2009.  We’ve done a lot of posts on SyntaxEditor for WPF and Editors for WPF functionality.  Both products will be part of WPF Studio v5.0.

We currently are working on documentation and doing other final touches in preparation for the release of WPF Studio v5.0.  Anyone with an active subscription for WPF Studio v4.5 will get v5.0 free when it is released.  More...

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Friday, 13 March 2009 00:22 by Bill Henning (Actipro)

New poll regarding which minimum .NET framework you use for your WPF applications

At Actipro we try hard to base our development on customer feedback.  One important way we receive feedback is via the use of polls.

For instance, our What IDEs do you use for WPF design/development? helped us determine when to move exclusively to Visual Studio 2008 for WPF Studio sample projects.

Our last poll, Which WPF products do you want to see Actipro bring to market?, has been instrumental in guiding which WPF products we work on next.  From that poll, we know that you are all really looking forward to Editors for WPF and SyntaxEditor for WPF, both of which should be cornerstones for the next major WPF Studio version.

If you haven’t answered our products poll, please do as it will still help us plan for products beyond the next major WPF Studio version.

Now we’d like to get some more information from you.  At some point in the future, we want to move WPF Studio to be based on .NET 3.5 SP1 so that we can take advantage of framework enhancements such as virtualization and improved 3-D.  Please answer our new poll to help us determine when to make this move.

BulletLink  Which minimum .NET framework version do you require for your WPF applications?

Thank you for your time, it makes a difference!

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Tuesday, 24 February 2009 00:03 by Bill Henning (Actipro)

Get Actipro updates on Twitter

We’ve been fascinated by Twitter and its ability to further connect people together.  If you aren’t familiar with it, it basically is a simple way to let people know what you’re doing.  You get up to 140 characters to say what’s going on and people who subscribe to your account can get notified of updates and reply if they wish.

We were thinking that it would be great to use this technology to keep our customers informed of what’s going on at Actipro.  So, without further ado, we’ve created the official Actipro company Twitter account.

Click the link below to jump right to our company Twitter page:

Actipro twitter account

Alternatively, use your Twitter client to start following the Actipro account.

We’ve gotten a lot of great feedback from people who like to read our blog updates and by starting to publish more minor updates on Twitter, we hope we can further communicate with you about what is going on at Actipro.

Please feel free to reply to our “tweets”, we’d love to talk to you.

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Saturday, 3 January 2009 21:56 by Bill Henning (Actipro)

Actipro Blog 2008 Q4 posting summary

We’ve been very active with the Actipro Blog over the past year and plan on continuing to use our blog for communicating what is going on at Actipro as we move into 2009.

We’d like to provide a quick categorized list of blog postings made in quarter 4 of 2008.  Note that this blog posting summary and other future blog posting summaries will be tagged under the keyword blog.

SyntaxEditor for WPF

Editors for WPF

Other WPF Products

Windows Forms Products

Media Products

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Sunday, 14 December 2008 17:31 by Bill Henning (Actipro)

Would you like to see XAML icons?

We recently released our Actipro Icons product that is a huge bundle of some of the most professionally-designed bitmap icons that you’ll find on the web.  Actipro Icons includes over 1,750 unique icon designs.  Each design comes in 16x16 and 32x32 sizes, normal, hot, and disabled states, and is available in alpha-blended PNG and Icon formats.

View our initial blog post about Actipro Icons

Customer requests

Following the release of Actipro Icons, we’ve had a handful of customers (mostly our WPF Studio customers) asking for XAML-based icons.

I’d like to talk a bit about XAML icons and more importantly, to get your feedback.  We want to know what you’d like to see and whether it would be worth it to invest time in development of a XAML icons product.

Bitmap vs. XAML icons

The benefit of bitmap icons (like in our Actipro Icons product) are that they are touched-up to look spectacular at 16x16 and 32x32 sizes.  The downside is that when doing animation on them or scaling them up, they appear pixelated.

XAML icons are vector-based and are a native format to WPF.  They scale and rotate just as crisp and clear as at their target size and orientation.  This means they are ideal for various animations and/or other effects.  Additionally, when zooming in either via WPF scaling or Windows’ Magnifier, or when using alternate DPIs, they continue to look great.

Where most vector icon designers go wrong

Nearly all vector icon developers create their icons at 256x256 size and a small handful of them sell XAML-based copies of them.  Why is this bad?  Well at 256x256 and even probably down at 64x64 size, the icons will look perfect.  However realistically, how many of us use icons at those sizes? 

I would argue that 99% of icon usage is at 16x16 or 32x32 size, or sizes close to those.  Even if you have a well designed icon for 256x256 size, as soon as you scale it down to 32x32 or below, it will look blurry and many features of the icon such as borders will be invisible.  This is not good, and brings us back to where bitmap icons really shine.

Our take on the right way to create XAML icons

There has to be a solution that allows us to use vector-based XAML icons and still have them be detailed and distinguishable at small sizes like 16x16.  Here’s what we came up with in the event we do pursue a XAML icons product…

First, we still make a large 256x256 icon size for those who want the ultimate detail level for large size images.  Second, in addition to that size, we develop more customized variations of each icon that are meant to be used at smaller sizes such as one for 16x16 and one for 32x32.

Since most usage of icons is at or around 16x16 or 32x32 sizes, these special variations would be near their bitmap icon counterparts in quality and clarity.  Yet they would still be able to be scaled up and down per WPF animations and effects, and would not suffer from pixelation.

Note that XAML icons made at 16x16 would use very large borders and more contrast for the icon content, since that would show up best at the small size.  Whereas the larger variations would include more detail not found in the smaller variations, smaller borders, and more gradient effects, etc.

Styles

Icons can be designed using various styles.  Common styles are the Vista style, the Office 2007 style, or older XP styles.  Personally, I prefer the Office 2007 style of icon when used within applications.  I feel it’s more approachable.

Reply with your feedback

We really want to hear your feedback on these ideas since it will guide us to determine whether we should pursue a XAML icons product or not.  Also tell us which “style” would you like XAML icons to be in, either Office 2007, Vista, or another style?

Please post comments here or send us an e-mail.  Thanks for your help!

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Monday, 1 December 2008 22:09 by Bill Henning (Actipro)

New Product: Actipro Icons - Over 1,750 unique icon designs for your apps!

We’re very happy to announce the release of a brand new media product that can be used by any application or web developer:  Actipro Icons.

IconsHeader

Let's face it, most developers don't have the graphical skills it takes to make quality icons. And even if they do, proper icon creation takes a huge time investment. This is where Actipro Icons comes into play.

Actipro Icons provides a low-cost, yet complete solution for your graphics needs when building applications. It is a professionally-designed bundle of 10 categorized icon sets, containing over 1,750 unique icon designs, all in the Office 2007 style.

When counting the size, state, and format variations of each design, there are over 21,000 images included in the bundle.

Learn more about Actipro Icons

Multiple Sizes and States

All of the Actipro Icons (see our preview page) are implemented in 16x16 and 32x32 pixel sizes, with normal, hot and disabled states for each.

SizesAndStates

The sample images above show the six variations of a "slide-show play" icon that are included in both alpha-blended PNG and Icon formats.

Pixel-Perfect Quality at Small Sizes

When comparing icon sets with other competitors, it's extremely important to look closely at the quality of the icons at the 32x32 and 16x16 pixel sizes, since nearly all practical icon usage is at those resolutions.

Here's where our product stands out. Most icon sets are designed for 256x256 size and then are just scaled down to 32x32 and 16x16 sizes. As any graphics designer will tell you, once you scale down an image like this, the result is a very poor quality image that is full of anti-aliasing and a has a general lack of clarity.

Actipro Icons are different. Every single one of our icons have been "cleaned up" following scaling, and a good amount of extra work has been done in some cases to get icons looking spectacular in 32x32 and 16x16 sizes. We fully encourage you to compare the quality of our icons with competitors.

Download Sampler

Download a free sampler containing several icons so that you can see the quality for yourself:

Download sampler

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