We’re very pleased to announce that WPF Studio 2011.1 build 540 has been released and is now available for download. This version has a lot of very large updates, especially in the Docking/MDI and SyntaxEditor products.
Major new features are described below. See the announcement post for the detailed list of enhancements and updates.
2D QR Code
Our Bar Code product now includes a complete QR Code implementation that fully adheres to standards and allows you to code an enormous amount of data since it is two-dimensional.
Most modern mobile phones have bar code scanner apps that can read these codes. When a URL is specified in the code, the apps redirect a browser right to it for more information.
Complete MVVM Support
New updates effectively let DockSite behave like an ItemsControl. It can now bind to a collection of view models. Each view model auto generates a docking window as a container (overridable in the same way you can with ItemsControl) that will wrap the view model and display content for it.
An implicitly defined DataTemplate resource for the view model can be used to render the view model’s content within the docking window. An ItemContainerStyle can be set on the DockSite to bind docking window properties like Title, etc. to appropriate properties on the view model.
New MVVM demos and QuickStarts are included in our Sample Browser, along with some reusable common code (which you are free to use). In addition, we have a new MVVM Features topic in our help file.
Prism 2.2 and 4.0 Integration
For Prism support, we've added the Docking/Prism Interop assembly, which includes a region adapter for the DockSite control. Once the region adapter has been registered, the DockSite can be registered/named as a region, and you can add one or more views to it. By default, the views will become documents (i.e. DocumentWindows) in the DockSite. This can be altered by adding some metadata to tell the adapter whether you want the specified view to become a document or tool.
The installer comes with a prebuilt version of the Docking/Prism Interop assembly that targets Prism 2.2. The Docking/Prism Interop source code is available at http://actipro.codeplex.com, and it is ready to be compiled to target Prism 4.0 . We've included a project file for both versions and used #if's to support both versions with the same code.
There are two new Prism samples included in 2011.1 that leverage Unity, with one targeting Prism 2.2 and one targeting Prism 4.0.
Miscellaneous Updates
Docking windows and containers now support the starting of drag operations programmatically.
We also have merged all document and tool window styles into a single style for easier definition and support of implicit styles going forward.
Calculator Control
The new Calculator control can be used by end-users to interactively calculate numeric values. It supports all the standard calculator functions, including: memory saving/recalling, square root, and inverse. Three different display modes are available to show more or less functionality.
It is used as the default drop-down for several of the numeric EditBox controls, as seen above.
Rating Control
The new Rating control inherits from ItemsControl and renders glyphs that can be used present an average rating or collect a user rating.
By default, attractive star glyphs are used, but these can be easily replaced with any custom glyph. There is also support for both horizontal and vertical orientations.
In this screen for a restaurant review UI, a custom fork glyph is used as the rating item template.
Miscellaneous Updates
Property Editors can now also be assigned by the type of the associated object, as well as by property name and type, which were previously supported.
Overridable methods have been added to DataFactory to allow easier customization of properties.
LL(*) Parser Framework Enhancements
An enormous amount of new features have been added to the LL(*) Parser Framework in 2011.1:
- Type-specific AST node (distinct classes for each type of AST node) support.
- Language Designer AST node code generation.
- Language Designer ability to open assemblies that contain multiple parsers.
- New tree constructors.
- New can-match callback helper methods.
- New error reporting methods.
See our previous blog post series for details on the new features.
First .NET Languages Add-on Beta
The long-awaited first beta of the WPF SyntaxEditor .NET Languages Add-on is now available. Features for both the C# and Visual Basic languages include:
- Abstract syntax tree (AST) generation.
- Over 130 distinct AST node classes.
- Automatic code outlining based on AST structure.
- Reporting and automatic squiggle display of errors for invalid syntax.
- Mouse hover quick info for syntax errors.
- Line commenting.
- Optionally change the parser to parse expressions, statements, etc. instead of compilation units.
The add-on has been extremely well tested and is ready for production use. We only are keeping the beta tag on it until we add automated IntelliPrompt features. We will be working on those in the coming weeks now that the first phase of the add-on is complete.
Web Languages Add-on Updates
The XML schema resolver now supports a default namespace, meaning that a xmlns attribute isn’t required on the XML’s root element to get automated IntelliPrompt to work based on a schema.
Easy Parsing of Text Strings
We’ve added a new SyntaxLanguageParsingExtensions.Parse extension method for ISyntaxLanguage that uses the language's IParser to parse specified text in the calling thread and return the IParseData result. This feature makes it easy to parse a code snippet.
Squiggle Lines at Document End
Squiggle lines now can render at the document end, which is a common syntax error location when typing near the end of a document.
Performance Enhancements
We’ve implemented some major performance improvements in several areas of the product and in the Web Languages Add-on.
FanPanel Control
The new FanPanel control allows child elements to be positioned in sequential order along the z-axis, while keeping a focal item centered in the view. Additionally, items below or above the focal element can be easily faded, rotated, or offset using customizable properties, providing for some visually appealing layouts.
This screen shows a horizontal layout where the focus item is in the middle and items before and after rotate away and fade out.
In this screen, the items render over the same center point and look similar to albums in Media Player.
In this layout we add a twist to the items. There are many configurable properties that allow you create your own special effects. And as the focal item changes, each item animates to its new position.