The Actipro Blog

Yesterday we posted that we are looking for beta testers to work with the new MVVM support features coming to our Docking/MDI for WPF product in the 2011.1 version.  Beta testers will be able to access the new functionality before 2011.1 is officially released.

Going along with that theme, we’ve had several customers request official support for Prism (Composite WPF), a Microsoft guidance designed to help build rich and flexible WPF desktop applications.  In the past, one of our guru customers had made an open-source set of classes to allow integration of Docking/MDI with Prism and he shared the work with the community via our forums.

Now that our native MVVM support features have been completed for Docking/MDI 2011.1, we’re considering creating an official Prism integration assembly that harnesses our new MVVM features, and placing it in our open source contrib project.

Today I’d like to ask how much interest there is out there in us implementing such an integration assembly.  Please comment below if you’d like to see these features added.  And if you’d like to beta test them when we do implement them, please follow the directions in yesterday’s call for beta testers post.

Thanks for your input, we want to make sure Docking/MDI continues to be the premier docking window product for WPF.

Several weeks ago we posted that we were actively working on a series of updates to add true MVVM support to the Docking/MDI for WPF product.

These new features work similarly to a standard ItemsControl but are optimized for use with document/tool windows.  For instance if you wish to databind your document view model objects to auto-generate DocumentWindow wrappers, you simply bind the new DockSite.DocumentItemsSource property to a collection of view models.

You can use customized DataTemplates to render the docking window content area, and can configure ItemContainerStyle styles to bind properties like docking window titles to your view models.

Beta Testers Wanted

The features described above and more will be part of the WPF Studio 2011.1 release, which is still several weeks away.  However we are looking for some customers to beta test them in advance of the official release.

If you are an WPF Studio customer with an active subscription and are looking to use these new MVVM features in your own applications, please contact us via e-mail to discuss how to participate in the beta test.

We are only looking for testers who will actively be using the new MVVM feature set and will provide feedback on them.  Multiple new samples and full documentation on the feature set will be available with the beta test.

We look forward to hearing from you.

We’re developing new controls and features on multiple fronts right now.  In today’s post I’d like to share some details of just a couple large items currently in the works for WPF.

A top customer request is to port the popular .NET Languages Add-on from Windows Forms to WPF.  This add-on contains advanced implementations of C# and VB that have everything from AST generation and code outlining to automated IntelliPrompt.

We’ve started working on the .NET Languages Add-on for WPF and are following the general syntax language development steps outlined in our Getting Started series of samples.

General Design Stages

The first stage is building grammars for C# and VB.  We’re using our new LL(*) Parser Framework that was added to SyntaxEditor in the 2010.2 version for this task.  We’re already a good chunk through the C# grammar and have started thinking of some additional ways to further improve the LL(*) Parser Framework, which we may work on next.

Once we have the grammar completed, syntax errors will be reported in the editor via squiggle lines and quick info tips for the squiggles.  Therefore it is vital that the grammar properly handles the entire C# and VB grammar so that syntax error reporting is correct.

The next stage after that is to add automatic code outlining based on the AST that is returned.  Nodes like type and member declarations should be foldable.

After that, we need to add code to return contextual data about a given location, such as whether the caret is in a type declaration, etc.  This can be a rather complex thing depending on how much detailed information is needed to support automated IntelliPrompt, especially since C# and VB each have hundreds of productions that make up their syntactic grammar.

The final large step is to add in automated IntelliPrompt.  This involves code for maintaining reflection data from “referenced” assemblies, along with reflection data from parsed source files.  Contextual data from the previous step helps determine “what” needs to show in completion lists and in quick info.  Appropriate reflection data is added to the IntelliPrompt popups based on the context.

At some point in this whole process, we’ll be adding new IntelliPrompt parameter info features to SyntaxEditor too, along with automated parameter info popups for the C# and VB languages, just like with the completion list and quick info.

First Beta Release

In the interests of getting something out into your hands, we may do a first beta release after the grammar and code outlining stages are complete, even if it’s only for C# initially.  This would give you a fast C# language with syntax highlighting, line commenting, AST generation, syntax error reporting, and code outlining.

For Docking/MDI we’ve started on a series of updates to add true MVVM support to the product.  This has been a top customer wish for a while.

So what will this functionality let you do?  It effectively will let DockSite behave like an ItemsControl.  There will be an ItemsSource property that you can bind to a collection of view models.  Each view model will auto generate a docking window 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 will 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.

This is going to be a major new feature to Docking/MDI’s already-expansive feature set and we’re very excited to be adding it, probably in WPF Studio 2011.1.

We’re extremely pleased to announce the release of WPF Studio 2010.2, available now.  Customers with active subscriptions can upgrade to the latest version for free from their Organization Purchases page.

WPF Studio 2010.2 contains very major updates to the Docking/MDI, PropertyGrid, Ribbon, SyntaxEditor and Views products.

• Docking/MDI adds complete layout serialization (MDI area too), new layout deserialization options, and many new UI options.
• PropertyGrid makes numerous performance improvements and adds nested categories.
• Ribbon adds Office 2010 themes with glass extensions into the tab area.
• SyntaxEditor adds our new LL(*) Parser Framework, which is a grammar-based way to easily create parsers.  It also adds many new features and a new Getting Started series of QuickStarts that show how to build a custom syntax language start to finish.
• The SyntaxEditor Web Languages Add-on has been released, which provides an advanced XML syntax language implementation with automated IntelliPrompt completion lists, quick info, schema validation, code outlining, and much more.
• Views adds the new book control, previously shown in this post.

Download the free WPF Studio 2010.2 evaluation now

For a larger summary of updates and some screenshots, please view our latest newsletter:

Enjoy the new version!

In the past several posts on Ribbon such as this and this, we showed some screenshots of the Office 2010 theme updates being added in WPF Studio 2010.2.  We’re updating our other products that have Office themes as well.  Today I’d like to share some of the theme updates being applied to Docking/MDI for WPF.

This screenshot shows Docking/MDI’s Office 2010 blue theme with tabbed MDI.  PropertyGrid is also visible in the floating tool window.  More...

WPF Studio 2009.2 and just been released and is available for download now.  This new major version has some enormous updates in it, the larger of which we’ll describe below.

See our related forum announcement for exact details on what updates were made in each product.

	Docking/MDI for WPF Floating document functionality like in Visual Studio 2010 Document windows in 2009.2 support the ability to be dragged out of the MDI area and floated.  This allows end users to move documents to secondary monitors.  This has been a very highly-requested feature by our end users.  The functionality matches what is found in Visual Studio 2010. All floating windows can now be maximized, and a custom chrome is used to render floating window titlebars and borders. This previous blog post talks about the new features in more detail.
	Editors for WPF AnalogClock control added A new AnalogClock control is now included that can render a clock with hour, minute, and optional second hands.  The hands can be dragged to set new time values. EnumListBox control added EnumListBox is a new control that makes it extremely easy to pick between enumeration values using checkboxes or radio buttons.  It even can render alternate display text based on Description attributes. EnumEditBox control added The new EnumEditBox control is an editor implementation that has a dropdown with an EnumListBox.  When the dropdown is closed, the selected enumeration value is displayed. DateTimeEditBox updated to display clock in dropdown The popular DateTimeEditBox control has been updated to display a time entry section on its dropdown when a date/time or time-only value are edited in it. The DateTimeEditBox will automatically toggle whether a month calendar and/or clock are available in the dropdown based on the date/time format used for the control.
	Navigation for WPF ZoomContentControl added Need a control that provides an intuitive interface for navigating around large content?  The new ZoomContentControl has what you need.  It is extremely configurable, and allows for easy zooming/panning and other operations. This sort of control is perfect for browsing around content such as large pictures, maps, reports, designers, and more. Custom buttons (like the Open Image button above) or other controls can be easily embedded in the UI.
	Ribbon for WPF In-ribbon galleries add support for multiple display rows You asked for it and we delivered.  In-ribbon galleries now support more than one display row if the height of the items can fit more than one row. The rows even animate up and down as you scroll between them.
	SyntaxEditor for WPF Tagging mechanism added Tagging is an exciting new feature area that allows any text range in a document to be “tagged” with custom data.  This data could be anything from custom classifications to something that indicates a squiggle line should be drawn when the text is rendered. Adornments mechanism added The new adornments features allow any custom UI elements to be inserted into the text area surface.  This is one of the most exciting feature areas added to SyntaxEditor since it opens up the doors for providing amazing visualization customizations to end users.  Our favorite demo of adornments is the sample that shows how to make animated smoke puff near the caret as you type.   See this previous post that talks about a number of new samples that show off ideas for adornment usage. Squiggle line support added A built-in adornment layer supports squiggle line rendering.  Now you can “tag” document text ranges that have syntax errors and the squiggles will show up automatically in SyntaxEditor. New event sinks and improved language service design We’ve added a number of new event sinks that let your syntax language classes process when new documents or views are attached to or detached from the language.  A number of language services have been opened up so that more than one instance of a service type can be registered.  This means you could have two completion provider services in place, etc. More documentation We’ve added a lot more documentation, especially in the area of language creation.  Our language creation walk-through topic now also gives a table of common syntax language features and links to the steps/services needed to implement them.
	All controls Visual Studio 2010 and Expression Blend 3 designer support added Version 2009.2 adds designer support for Visual Studio 2010 and Expression Blend 3. New samples added We’ve added a number of new QuickStarts for the various products to demo controls and features.  SyntaxEditor alone is up to about 55 full source samples.

Upgrade Notes

Since 2009.2 is a major new version, 2009.1 customers will need new license keys to use the 2009.2 version. 

If you are an existing customer and have an active subscription, you can log into your Actipro account and there should be a link near the top of your Organization Purchases page allowing you to request a free upgrade to 2009.2.

Alternatively if your subscription has expired, you can order a renewal from our purchasing pages.

If you are using individual WPF products but would like to switch to either the WPF Essentials bundle or WPF Studio suite, e-mail our sales team and we’ll be happy to discuss discounted upgrade options.

Build 506 of WPF Studio 2009.1 is available for download now.  It is one of the larger WPF Studio maintenance releases we’ve made.  Let me do a quick review of some of the major exciting new features.  In addition to this list, there are a lot of other minor enhancements made.

See our related forum announcement for exact details on what updates were made in each product.

	Docking/MDI for WPF Custom content in docking window tabs Any content can now be placed in docking window tabs.  This screenshot shows an animated progress indicator in one tab and a drop-down button in the other tab. Resize slots in a SplitContainer New features have been added making it possible for you to resize the slots of a SplitContainer however you like.  This screenshot shows a split container with an even distribution of space for its slots. Cascade and tile tabbed MDI documents You now can cascade, tile horizontally, and tile vertically tabbed MDI documents.  This screenshot shows how six tabbed documents are tiled horizontally. New WindowControl features WindowControl has several new options and even allows custom content to be in the title bar.  This screenshot shows a small progressbar in the title bar. Close tabs with middle-click An option has been added to allow tabs to close with a middle-click, much like in some popular browsers.
	Editors for WPF Improved min/maximum value support The built-in editors have had support for min/max values improved.
	Navigation for WPF New Windows 7-like expander style A new style has been added that renders similar to the Windows 7 expanders and even has smooth animation.  The style is customized for each system and Office theme. Built-in expander styles updated to support all expand directions We’ve updated all our built-in expander styles so that all expand directions are supported: up, down, left and right.
	PropertyGrid for WPF New textbox and dialog button property editor We’ve added a new built-in property editor that uses a TextBox and includes a button that can be used to show a dialog.
	SyntaxEditor for WPF Finalized language definition format This build finalizes the new language project and language definition XML formats.  All language samples have been updated to use them instead of the classic SyntaxEditor 4.0 for WinForms dynamic language XML definition format. Language Designer application Very major improvements (several weeks of dev time) have been made to the Language Designer application.  It has a number of helpful tools for quickly getting started building a syntax language for use with SyntaxEditor.  It now just takes a few minutes to get up and running, even for SyntaxEditor newbies. Automated quick info session processing We’ve added a new quick info provider service that can be added to a language.  This service watches for mouse hovers and just asks you what to display in response to hovers over different areas of the editor.  Quick info can be displayed for hovers over the text area, or any other part of the editor such as in margins. View mouse hover event A new view mouse hover event has been added.  We handle all the processing for determining when to fire it. Caret and selection brush customization You now can completely customize the look of the caret and selection.  Don’t like our default settings?  Change them however you like! Completion list display when user starts typing a word We’ve added a new feature to make it easy to know if the user is starting to type a new word, so that a completion list can display in response. MGrammar tokens now get assigned a token key We’ve updated tokens generated from the Oslo Dataflow Add-on to provide an IToken.Key value if a TokenKey attribute is specified in the original MGrammar source
	Shared Library for WPF Unique tooltip for PopupButton popup indicator We’ve added a new PopupIndicatorToolTip property to PopupButton, which allows the popup indicator to display a unique tooltip, rather than the tooltip for the main button area.

We’ve been hard at work on some very major new Docking/MDI for WPF features that will be coming in the WPF Studio 2009.2 release.  In this post I’d like to give a quick preview of some enhancements: floating documents, maximizing rafting windows, and custom rafting window chrome.

Here is a screenshot showing the new enhancements:

VS 2010-like floating documents

The biggest new feature is the ability for tabbed documents to be able to be dragged outside of the MDI area into a floating state, where they can be placed on a second monitor if desired.  In the screenshot, the WelcomeDocument.rtf docking window is a document window.  It can be docked anywhere in the tabbed MDI area or can be floated such as it is shown.  Note the document’s icon even appears in its titlebar.

Maximizing rafting windows

Rafting windows are containers for docking windows that are in a floating state.  Now all rafting windows can have the ability to toggle between maximized and restored states.  You can see the maximized button on each of the rafted windows in the screenshot.

Custom chrome for rafting windows

All rafting window titlebars and borders in version 2009.2 will have a custom chrome that matches the current application theme.  In the 2009.1 version, rafting windows let the system draw the titlebars and borders.  By having the rafting windows be themed, they truly match the application’s theme.  This is especially useful for our built-in themes like the Office blue, silver, and black ones.  The rafting window in the screenshot that contains the Solution Explorer and Class View shows the new chrome, in this case for Aero theme.

Release timeframe

We have one more WPF Studio 2009.1 maintenance release planned for the coming weeks.  After that we will prepare for the first WPF Studio 2009.2 release, which will contain all the functionality described here.

Remember that if you purchase WPF Studio 2009.1 now, you will get the 2009.2 version free when it is released since all WPF Studio license purchases come with a year of free upgrades to new versions.

WPF Studio build 503 was just released and includes a lot of updates to our WPF products, some being major new features.  I’ll review some of the big updates made to SyntaxEditor and Docking/MDI below.

SyntaxEditor for WPF Lexical parsing terms renamed to fit industry standards In the previous builds, we called the object that performed lexical analysis a lexical parser.  After preparing to add our new syntax/semantic parsing core framework, we renamed instances of the term “lexical parser” to “lexer”.  This allows us to use the industry standard pair of terms “lexer” and “parser” going forward where a lexer is what performs lexical analysis, and a parser is what performs syntax/semantic analysis. Multi-threaded core parser framework support added to languages The addition of parser support to SyntaxEditor is a huge step forward for the product since it brings us closer to being able to implement the add-ons we have in our SyntaxEditor for WinForms product.  What is a parser?  As mentioned above, it’s anything that performs syntax/semantic analysis.  Our additions in this build provide an automated mechanism where text changes in a document can auto-trigger a call to a parser via a worker thread to parse document text and return a result asynchronously.  Most often, the result is some sort of AST, syntax error list, symbol tree, etc.  We don’t yet have a grammar that will generate ASTs like we did in WinForms, however our parser mechanism is very open and easy to use.  So it’s simple to wire up your own parser code or a call to any third party parse like MGrammar or ANTLR. Two new QuickStarts demonstrating how to implement a parser Two new QuickStarts have been added that show off how to create a basic parser for a language, have it called from a worker thread on text changes, and respond in the UI when the parse data result is returned asynchronously.

Docking/MDI for WPF Magnetism Magnetism is a feature that kicks in when dragging rafting windows or standard MDI windows.  When the corners or edges of the window being dragged get close to another corner/edge, the dragged window will snap itself next to the stationary window.  You have total control over the sensitivity of the magnetism and how far apart the windows will snap. Tab appearance customization, tinting, and blinking Docking windows now have a number of properties that help you use custom brushes for tab display in various mouse states.  In addition to that, tabs can be tinted to any color.  This allows for tabs to be easily rendered similar to those in OneNote.  Via the use of this feature, you can also create blinking tabs to notify the user that attention is required. Easy primary document retrieval and change notification Due to popular request, IMdiHost (the core MDI host interface implemented by both TabbedMdiHost and StandardMdiHost) now has a new PrimaryWindow property and PrimaryWindowChanged event.  This property tells you the “main” document in the MDI area. Icons for WindowControl Icons will now show up on WindowControl, and accordingly on standard MDI windows. Eight new QuickStarts That’s right, we’ve added eight new QuickStarts with build 503 to show off both new features and some other interesting existing features.  Be sure to check them out.

Another new feature that we have added to our Docking & MDI for WPF product, is magnetism. This is a popular feature of the Dock controls in Actipro UIStudio and will be available in the upcoming WPF Studio release.

The magnetism features take effect when dragging and resizing undocked tool windows, as well as documents in the MDI area (standard MDI mode only). When magnetism is active, any undocked tool windows or standard MDI documents that are dragged will attempt to "snap" their corners to other nearby window corners. If a corner is not found nearby, then the dragged window will attempt to align to the edge of another nearby window instead. This makes it very easy for the end user to align windows in a column or row. Additionally, the resizing of windows will also use magnetism to "snap" edges to the location of other nearby window edges.

There are two new properties on the DockSite that can be used to customize the magnetism behavior. The first is MagnetismSnapDistance, which indicates the distance at which magnetism begins to snap windows being dragged. If this value is greater than zero, magnetism is enabled. If set to zero, then magnetism is disabled. Increasing this property's value, which defaults to 5, will increase the range over which the magnetism will work.

The other property is MagnetismGapDistance, which indicates the distance between windows that are snapped together via magnetism. If this value is greater than zero, there will be a gap between windows that are snapped together.

Again, these great new features will be available in the next build of WPF Studio.