We're very happy to have just released WPF Studio v4.0.  This version is the culmination of several months of work and we're sure you'll love what you see.

Download Actipro WPF Studio v4.0 now

To celebrate, we'll be posting details about a special promotion for existing UIStudio for WinForms customers who are looking to get into the WPF arena.

Docking & MDI for WPF

Actipro Docking & MDI is a complete solution for easily adding a docking tool window and/or multiple document interface to your WPF applications. Allow your end users to drag and dock tool windows wherever they please, and to persist their customizations. Also use this product to fill the gap left by Microsoft not including an MDI mechanism in the WPF platform.

Docking & MDI has been implemented with flexibility in mind. It has more options than nearly any other competitive product out there and mimics Visual Studio 2008's capabilities. While it supports all the types of standard layouts you find in most docking window products, it also supports some extended functionality that you won't find anywhere else.

Check out more information about the product or try a live demo on our site.

Gauge for WPF

Actipro Gauge is a control suite that implements circular, linear, and digital gauge controls for the Windows Presentation Foundation framework. Each gauge control has tons of options available, providing for limitless possibilities.

Gauge controls are ideal for displaying several data points in a concise and compact area. Everything from car dashboards to medical and industrial equipment use gauges, and are quickly recognized and understood by users.

The circular and linear gauges are perfect for presenting a value, or values, bound by a specific range. The digital gauge is perfect for mimicking real-life LED displays.

Check out more information about the product or try a live demo on our site.

Other Enhancements

There were a lot of other minor enhancements and tweaks made throughout our WPF control products for this release.  We added several new demos and useful utilities as well.

Theme Browser

One great new utility found in WPF Studio is the Theme Browser.  A WPF Studio customer was kind enough to post a simple theme browser for our controls in the WPF Studio forums for the benefit of other customers.

We took this idea and ran with it, making a very helpful utility that lets you browse each Brush resource used by our products for the various themes.  The utility shows a preview of each Brush and even allows you to copy a DynamicResource reference accessing the Brush to the clipboard so that you can reuse it in your applications as long as the same theme is loaded.

This is really useful for those of you making some customizations to other controls and wanting to use the same Brushes as us so that you have a consistent look in your application.

String Resource Browser

Going along with the Theme Browser idea, we wanted to make a String Resource Browser.  All our products that display text in the user interface stores the default text in string resources.  You can customize or localize the text in code-behind via a single line of code for each item. 

The String Resource Browser lets you examine all the string resources used in our various products.  When you select a string resource, you have the ability to enter a customized version of it.  The Browser even generates the C# and VB code you can paste into your application to perform the customization.

We've had a lot of interest from customers regarding our product roadmap for WPF development.  I wanted to post where things currently stand and where our future development priorities lay.  I also would like to give customers the opportunity to voice their opinion as to what they would most like to see added to WPF Studio down the road.

In addition, we are now announcing a new WPF product that will be available after the WPF Studio v4.0 release:  PropertyGrid for WPF.

WPF Product Roadmap

Here is the roadmap for WPF development as of June 2008.

WPF Studio v4.0 Release

The WPF Studio v4.0 release will be available in the next several weeks.  We are still finishing up the two new products that have been added and are in the process of adding samples, documentation, etc. 

Actipro Docking & MDI for WPF

The Docking product implements docking tool windows and MDI functionality for WPF.  We haven't talked too much about the feature set yet, however we'll get into that closer to release time.  Rest assured though that themes are created for all Windows system themes, along with all three Office themes.  It also will offer a huge number of options.

Use the docking tag to search for info on this product in the Actipro blog.

Actipro Gauge for WPF

The Gauge product makes it easy to create any sort of circular, linear, or digital gauge.  These gauges can be used to represent data in digital dashboards, provide virtual instrumentation, and much more.

Use the gauge tag to search for info on this product in the Actipro blog.

After WPF Studio v4.0

The following two products have had work started on them but were placed on hold temporarily while we divert our development resources towards getting WPF Studio v4.0 out the door.

PropertyGrid for WPF

A new product, PropertyGrid for WPF, will provide property grid functionality similar to that found in Visual Studio and Expression Blend.  We will get into more details about the product following the WPF Studio v4.0 release.  However its development is already fairly far along, and we expect it to be ready within a few weeks after the WPF Studio v4.0 release.

SyntaxEditor for WPF

SyntaxEditor for WPF will provide the high quality code editing experience you expect from Actipro, the industry leader in syntax highlighting editing controls and components.  One SyntaxEditor for WPF design goal is to make a common document/parsing library so that it can be shared with the next Windows Forms SyntaxEditor v5.0 and CodeHighlighter.  We also have a ton of new features planned that we will start posting about in the future.

As a WPF Studio Customer, Will I Receive These Products for Free?

As long as your WPF Studio subscription is active when a product is released, you will be eligible to upgrade to the new version and get any new products added to WPF Studio for free.  Each WPF Studio developer license includes a free subscription that can be renewed at its expiration date each year.

What Would You Like to See Added?

Let's hear your comments on what you'd like to see added that hasn't been listed in our roadmap above.

Some suggestions from customers have included:

• Grid
• Chart/graph
• Scheduling
• Reporting

Please post a comment and rank in order of priority which of these (or your own suggestions) that you would like us to work on.

At Actipro, the opinions of our customers matter and your feedback really will help steer our long term future development efforts.

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!