We wanted to squeeze one last feature into SyntaxEditor for Silverlight (our upcoming code editor control) before locking down the code for RTM. I’m pleased to announce that nearly all the IntelliPrompt completion list functionality found in the WPF version of SyntaxEditor will be available in the Silverlight version!
Let’s see an example…
Here we are editing code in SyntaxEditor and press Ctrl+Space. This opens the completion list. The completion list is populated via a language service, meaning that each language implementation decides what to show and when, generally by examining AST data for the document. In this sample, we hard-coded some values.
Once the completion list was opened, I typed an underscore character and the first item matched on that typed text so it became highlighted. Note that a description tip appeared next to the selected item, giving more detail about it. Description tips are fully customizable and can be built using our custom mini-HTML formatting language, or by inserting Silverlight controls directly.
Note that there are a number of filter buttons and tabs in this completion list sample. You can click those buttons and tabs to filter out items that are presented in the list. I will uncheck the Method button and will select the Public members tab. This means that methods will no longer be shown and only public members will be displayed. Let’s see the result:
That is really neat because it updates live. Note that use of the filter buttons and/or tabs is completely optional. Since we filtered out the item that was matched by our typed text, the top item is now partially selected.
I hope this gives you a quick introduction to some of the upcoming SyntaxEditor for Silverlight’s completion list UI capabilities. Just imagine what you can do with these features in a Silverlight-based online IDE!
This all will be available in the coming days when Silverlight Studio goes RTM! Continue watching our blog for details.