The Actipro Blog

Another new feature is coming to SyntaxEditor for WPF, WinRT/XAML, and Silverlight in the next maintenance release: incremental search.

What is Incremental Search?

Incremental search is a way for the end user to quickly search for text in a document without needing to interact with search dialogs or panes.  With a couple keyboard strokes, the end user can instantly start searching for text.

How It Works

To start incremental search mode, press Ctrl+I and start typing some characters. The characters will be accumulated into a find text string and used to search the document for the next instance of the find text, which will be selected.

Press Ctrl+I to move to the next match, or Ctrl+Shift+I to move to the previous match. Continue typing characters to append to the find text. Backspace can be used to remove characters from the find text. Esc can be used to deactivate incremental search mode.

The WPF and WinRT versions are capable of showing custom cursors while incremental search is active, enabling the end user to have a visual indicator of the current mode.  Silverlight unfortunately doesn't allow for custom mouse cursors.  It is recommended that all platforms also show some sort of status bar indicator.  In the screenshot above, you can see how the StatusBar is updated as I type to show the current find text.

Summary

Incremental search is already available in SyntaxEditor for WinForms and will now be in the other SyntaxEditor platforms after the next maintenance releases.

We just wanted to post a quick reminder that all of our latest versions of WPF, WinRT/XAML, Silverlight, and WinForms controls support the new Visual Studio 2013 version.

If you haven't tried VS 2013 yet, we urge you to download it from Microsoft's site.  It features a more refined design than VS 2012, and is a pleasure to use.  In particular, we love using the new Team Explorer tool window and peek definition editor feature.

Also, in case you haven't heard, Microsoft is hosting a Visual Studio 2013 Virtual Launch event on November 13.  The event will consist of a keynote speech and they will be going over the new features in subsequent technical sessions.  Be sure to check it out.

We've got an exciting new SyntaxEditor feature to announce that's been desired by a number of customers.  And best of all, it's coming to all our supported platforms:  WPF, Silverlight, WinRT/XAML (coming very shortly), and WinForms.

The new feature is the ability to edit multiple lines when a block selection is active, also known as column editing.  First, let's review block selections.

Block Selection

Block selection occurs when you hold Shift+Alt and press the arrow keys.  For instance if you press the Shift+Alt+Down shortcut a couple times, you create a block selection that in previous versions would end up selecting the entire three lines since its selection was zero-width (no real characters were selected).  If you then pressed Shift+Alt+Right, it would make a rectangular selection that is three lines tall and one character wide.

At this point you could extend the selection further and then copy it, move to a new location in the document, paste it, and the entire block would be pasted in place there.  This is a very handy editing feature in some scenarios.

Changes to Block Selection

In the next SyntaxEditor releases, we have altered how things work when you have the zero-width block selection.  Again this is the scenario where you start with no selection and press Shift+Alt+Down a couple times.  In the updated code, we now no longer show selection over all the lines and instead, render a thin line that displays where the block selection is.

In the screenshot above, you can see the blue lines that indicate the location of the zero-width block selection.

If we extend the block selection to the right, it become a rectangle that covers the class attributes.  We now can delete that by pressing Del.

Multi-Line Editing

Now let's get onto a demonstration of the new features coming for multi-line editing.

Again, I've created a zero-width block selection and now I'll start typing.

I've typed in the div tag again but I only did it once.  It automatically entered the characters I typed on each line that was part of the zero-width block selection.  That's pretty neat!

Not only does normal character typing work while doing multi-line editing, but Tab (indent), Shift+Tab (outdent), Del (delete next character), Backspace (delete previous character), Shift+Del (delete to next word start), and Shift+Backspace (delete to previous word start) also do.  For instance if I press Backspace to delete the last character I typed, the result is this:

The last character I typed (a >) is now gone in all three lines.

Summary

These sorts for multi-line editing features can really help increase productivity in a number of editing scenarios.  They will be included in the next releases of our WPF, Silverlight, and WinForms controls.  And they will be included in the upcoming WinRT version of SyntaxEditor as well.

WPF Controls 2013.1 build 591 has been released and is now available for download.  This build focuses on minor enhancements and bug fixes.

See the announcement post for the detailed list of enhancements and updates.

A couple weeks ago we posted a blog entry showing off a sample we created, where a hosted Windows Workflow Designer instance is integrated with our WPF Docking/MDI and SyntaxEditor controls to dramatically improve the designer UI.

Since that post, we've had a number of customers request the sample that we created, and we have been happy to pass it along.  In today's post, I wanted to announce that we've updated the sample yet some more, adding automated variable IntelliPrompt features!

In the screenshot above, two variables are declared: myText (a string) and anotherVar (a boolean).  I pressed Ctrl+Space in the expression editor (a SyntaxEditor control) to display the completion list.  The myText variable shows up properly as a string.

Next, I moved to the assignment expression (another SyntaxEditor control) and typed anotherVar. to get the members of that variable.  SyntaxEditor's .NET Languages Add-on kicks in again here and shows the members appropriate for a boolean value.

Summary

These sorts of features really improve the editing experience for your customers.  If you rehost the Windows Workflow Designer in your WPF apps and would like our example, please contact us and we'll pass it along.

For those customers who downloaded the first version, this update (along with some other tweaks) is at the same URL as before.

Actipro WPF Controls 2013.2 have been released and is now available for download. 

Major new features are described below.  See the announcement post for the detailed list of enhancements and updates.

PieChart

A new pie chart control has been added to complement our other bar, line, area, and scatter chart offerings.

The pie chart supports advanced features like multiple label positioning and display options, legend display, nesting of multiple series, hierarchical data, and more.

DonutChart

Donut charts have been added as well.  All the same features found in pie charts are found in donut charts, and the hole radius is fully configurable.

Axis Tick Labels for Percentage Stacked Charts

When using stacking bar or area charts with the percentage axis option, the percentage value labels now display on the axis.

Improved Scatter Chart Samples

A new and improved scatter sample has been added.

Improved Support for Touch

Ribbon buttons have been improved to support touch-based tapping.  Popups on all ribbon controls have also been updated to be positioned properly on tablet PCs that have the "right handed" option set.

Web Languages Add-on - Advanced JavaScript Language Implementation

A new advanced JavaScript language implementation has been added to the Web Languages Add-on.

The syntax language features syntax highlighting, parsing, AST building, syntax error reporting, code outlining, delimiter auto-complete, smart indent, text formatting, and code block selection.

See a summary of the new language in this previous blog post.

Delimiter Auto-Completion

Delimiter auto-complete is where the user types a start delimiter and a related end delimiter is auto-inserted after the caret.

In the screenshot above, the { character was typed and the } character was auto-inserted.  This feature has been added to several of the languages in our add-ons.

Delimiter Indent Provider

Curly brace auto-indent can now be easily added to any language, and it has been added to our C# and JavaScript languages in the add-ons.

When the caret is in the middle of a curly brace pair, pressing Enter normally will move the close curly brace to the next line with the caret right in front of it.  If you have an indent provider for your language, the close curly brace will be indented properly however it's still not an ideal situation because you generally want the caret to be on its own line before the close curly brace's line.

This scenario is where curly brace auto-indent comes in!  This feature injects a new blank line in between the braces, indents one more level, and positions the caret on that line.

Indentation Guides

Indentation guides are subtle vertical lines that render at each tab stop on lines prior to the first non-whitespace character.  They help visually align the indentation of visible code blocks.

You can see the silver indentation guide lines in the tab stops within this screenshot:

Whitespace-only lines are intelligent and render indentation guides based on the tab stop level of surrounding text.

Improved Code Fragments Performance

Lexer and token scanning performance has been improved when using our code fragments feature, which allows you to set header and footer text to surround the document's text for purposes of parsing.

Improved Printing Support

A custom highlighting style registry can now be set explicitly for printouts.  This is ideal if your editor is in a dark theme since then you can use an alternate highlighting style registry designed for light backgrounds on printouts.

Rendering of printouts has also been improved when the syntax highlighting option is off.

.NET Languages Add-on - IntelliPrompt Parameter Info for Array Indexers

Automated parameter info support has been added when the end user edits array indexers.

.NET Languages Add-on - Customizing Completion Items Sample

A new sample is now included that shows how to add and remove items from the C# and VB automated IntelliPrompt completion list.  This ability lets you filter out certain completion list items or add your own custom ones before the list is displayed to the end user.

Improved WindowChrome to Not Cover Auto-Hidden Windows Taskbar

In the past versions, WindowChrome (and thus RibbonWindow) would cover up an auto-hidden Windows taskbar when the window was maximized.  This issue has now been resolved, and the auto-hidden taskbar is now visible.

InertiaScrollViewer

The InertiaScrollViewer control is a drop-in replacement for the native WPF/Silverlight ScrollViewer control but allows you to scroll content using touch, similar to what you're used to on Windows 8 and mobile devices.

It reacts to dragging, flicking, mouse wheel, and normal mouse operation via the scrollbars. You can adjust properties like EasingFunction, VelocityTimeRatio, and VelocityDistanceRatio to fully control how inertia scrolling looks and feels.

In the screenshot above, you can see how our main Sample Browser pages have been updated with InertiaScrollViewer, allowing full touch interaction and navigation within them.

Last week we had a customer write us who was rehosting the Windows Workflow Designer in their own WPF application.  See these MSDN notes for documentation on how to do so.

The customer wanted to be able to use SyntaxEditor to create a custom VB Expression editor since it would allow them to have features like syntax highlighting and automated IntelliPrompt capabilities (via SyntaxEditor's .NET Languages Add-on).

In addition, the customer asked about being able to use our Docking/MDI product to add docking windows to host the designer's ToolBox and Properties windows.

We spent a few minutes and modified the Microsoft sample for rehosting the Windows Workflow Designer to integrate Actipro controls into it, and here's what we came up with:

You can see how tool windows (fully dockable) host the ToolBox and Properties views and the designer is hosted in the tabbed MDI area.  In addition, SyntaxEditor (in single-line mode and with the .NET Languages Add-on) is used to provide automated IntelliPrompt features for editing expressions. 

This really improves the UI experience for end users.  If you are rehosting the Windows Workflow Designer in your own WPF app and would like the full source of our integration example, please write us and we'll be happy to send it to you.

UPDATE:  Check out this newer blog post showing off enhancements for automated variable IntelliPrompt features.

WPF Controls 2013.1 build 583 has been released and is now available for download.  This build focuses on minor enhancements and bug fixes.

See the announcement post for the detailed list of enhancements and updates.

Several weeks ago, we announced a new Delimiter Auto-Complete feature coming to the 2013.2 version of SyntaxEditor for WPF and Silverlight.  This feature is great because it improves typing efficiency by auto-inserting end delimiters when the start delimiter is typed.

We have been wanting to improve the typing experience even more and in today's post, I'd like to announce that curly brace auto-indent is also coming.

What Is Curly Brace Auto-Indent?

When the caret is in the middle of a curly brace pair, pressing Enter normally will move the close curly brace to the next line with the caret right in front of it.  If you have an indent provider for your language, the close curly brace will be indented properly however it's still not an ideal situation because you generally want the caret to be on its own line before the close curly brace's line.

This scenario is where curly brace auto-indent comes in!  This feature injects a new blank line in between the braces, indents one more level, and positions the caret on that line.

Sample Usage

Let's start with a regular JavaScript function declaration.  Note how the caret in in between a curly brace pair.

In the past, if you pressed Enter, you'd get this:

With the new curly brace auto-indent feature, instead of the above when you press Enter, you will get now this:

The end user is immediately able to start typing content for the function.

Summary

These new features will be available in the 2013.2 version of SyntaxEditor, and are built into our advanced C# and JavaScript languages for this version.

They can easily be added to any custom language as well with a few lines of code.

WPF Controls 2013.1 build 582 has been released and is now available for download.  This build focuses on minor enhancements and bug fixes.

See the announcement post for the detailed list of enhancements and updates.