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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.
Wednesday, 30 April 2008 03:59 by Bill Henning

Sneak Peek: Docking for WPF

As mentioned in a previous blog post, we're putting a lot of development time into a new product named Docking for WPF.  This product will provide advanced docking window and MDI management functionality for WPF applications, similar to that of our UIStudio product for Windows Forms.

We also have several other major new WPF products in the works but are keeping quiet on those for the time being.

Progress Update

Without further ado, here is a current screenshot of the Docking product:

DockingDemo

The Docking for WPF product showing complex hierarchies of docked tool windows, auto-hide, tabbed MDI, and dock guides

Much of the functionality you see above is working great.  We need to do a lot of object model refinements yet and have to get into some other new features but everything is progressing nicely.

Getting Docking for WPF

Docking for WPF is not yet available, however customers of our WPF products may be eligible to participate in a beta test once we get closer to that phase of development.  If you are a WPF Studio customer and would like to help beta test the product later on in the development cycle, send us an e-mail.

We get a lot of questions on whether the Docking for WPF product will be included in WPF Studio upon release.  The answer is yes.

Any customer who has an active WPF Studio subscription at the time of Docking for WPF's release will get it for free!

Requesting Features

If you would like to request any specific features for the Docking for WPF product, now is the time to send your comments in.  Just email our support address at any time.

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Categories:   Actipro | In development | WPF
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Comments

Marc Wuergler said:

Hello Bill!

Do you have an idea about the release date of the docking control?

Thanks

Marc

May 4. 2008 19:25
Bill Henning said:

Hi Marc,

We're still debating this a bit internally. We have a lot of interest in this product from customers come in almost daily. So what we could do is put out a public beta of it maybe with WPF Studio v4.0 once the foundation of it is pretty stable just so it can get in the hands of customers who own WPF Studio licenses. Then we could continue working on related features like designer support, additional MDI and switcher types, etc. So at a minimum, we still need to do a lot of object model tweaking yet, implement layout serialization, write documentation, and testing. But other than that, much of the functionality you see in the screenshots is already working. We are doing our best to get this out as fast as possible so that you can work with it. Also if you are a WPF Studio customer and want an early beta, just email over and we can sign you up on a beta tester list.

May 5. 2008 00:22
Ali Adams said:

Would it be possible to add Minimize/Maximize/Restore support on each Pane please?

I am trying to put off the decision of WPF Docking System with the management here because I prefer yours to other competitors especially the FEATURE-COMPLETE Navigation and Ribbon controls including supports right-to-left which a must here in the UAE for Arabic language.

Well done for the excellent work and please release a public preview with a month to start tasting while you cook Smile

ThanQ Smile

PS: Please beef up the WPF Shared Library with more essential "WPF missing" controls.

June 23. 2008 22:15
Bill Henning said:

Thanks for your comment Ali. I'm not sure the max/min support will make this first release since we're trying to get it out into the hands of customers, however I'll make sure it's on a list for possible future features.

Docking also supports right-to-left layouts and that is demoed in our sample.

We are nearing completion of the code for the first version. Then it's just documentation and some designer functionality and we can release it.

June 24. 2008 00:21
Ali Adams said:

Many thanks Bill. How about other controls? Do you recommend we use the freeware Bag-O-Tricks [wpf.netfx3.com/.../entry7094.aspx] for now until you provide equivalents in your Shared Library?
Ali
God > infinity

June 24. 2008 02:30
Bill Henning said:

Certainly, Kevin did some great work on those samples.

June 24. 2008 03:39

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