The Actipro Blog

We've spent the past three months mostly working on redesigning some of the core implementation of our SyntaxEditor control and wanted to give an update today on where things stand.  From this point forward, we'll call this development effort "SyntaxEditor vNext".

Unified Text Rendering Engine

The first phase of this was described in our previous Building a Better SyntaxEditor Text Rendering Engine post.  What we've done is come up with a common API that can be used for text rendering and is the same across WPF, UWP, and WinForms.  It allows consumers of this text rendering API (namely SyntaxEditor) to have a single way to perform all its core text formatting/rendering, etc. 

This is important because when we have a common API wrapper for performing those difficult and very platform-specific tasks, we are able to consolidate all the code that calls into that API to be more or less platform agnostic.  And that means the WinForms SyntaxEditor will see some huge benefits.  More on that below.

Universal Windows

The new UWP text rendering engine implementation is much, much faster than the current way we render text in the UWP SyntaxEditor.  In fact it might even be rendering faster than the WPF version now!  The new UWP text rendering engine also allows for more culture-sensitive logic involving caret movement, right-to-left text, etc.

Windows Forms

The new WinForms text rendering engine implementation is also faster than before and now supports culture-sensitive logic involving caret movement, right-to-left text, etc. 

WPF

The WPF text rendering engine implementation has always been the most advanced one, and it's getting even better.  It features improved efficiency and handles extremely long lines better.

Getting the WinForms SyntaxEditor on the Common Codebase

Per above, a key benefit of having a common API for text formatting/rendering is to finally make progress on migrating the WinForms SyntaxEditor to share code with the other newer platforms that already share a majority of code.  This would mean that the WinForms version would get all the benefits of the more advanced add-ons found in the WPF version, etc. 

This is huge for WinForms SyntaxEditor customers, and parity with the WPF version is something many customers have asked for.

Refactoring the SyntaxEditor Internals

In more recent weeks, we've been refactoring a lot of SyntaxEditor's internals that are related to views, including view management, splitting, scrolling, etc.  We're building a new internal codebase for those features that works the same across WPF, UWP, and WinForms.  And best of all, we're doing our best to keep the same public API as the current WPF version so that there will be minimal breaking changes.

The refactoring is going well thus far, but it is a long process since we're adding feature areas back in one by one with more efficient code and in numerous cases, with additional features.  Here's some examples of improvements in the scrolling area…

Scrolling Improvements

Scrolling has been improved so that you can easily scroll an editor view to any line and even designate if that line should appear near the top/center/bottom of the view, and how far to pixel offset from that location.  This will be wonderful for features like go to line.

When resizing an editor view that is scrolled to the right, if you now resize it even wider, the view lines will anchor to the right when appropriate to make sure not too much whitespace appears at the right side of the view.  In the current SyntaxEditor implementations, the horizontal scrollbar wouldn't scroll at all in that scenario, leading to a lot of extra blank space on the right side of the view.

When vertically scrolling through documents with various view line widths, the current SyntaxEditor implementations will adjust the horizontal scrollbar maximum mostly based on the visible view lines' maximum width.  The newer implementation tries to remember longer line max widths it's seen in the past and prevents a lot of the horizontal scrollbar maximum jumpiness that can happen when scrolling vertically.

Summary

We're really excited about where things are heading.  Not only are we getting a better internal codebase for managing a lot of view-related features, we're adding features as we go, and are consolidating the WPF, UWP, and WinForms codebases such that they will share 95%+ of the code.  This will allow for language add-on codebases to be shared across all platforms.  And the public SyntaxEditor API changes for the WPF/UWP platforms will be kept to a minimum.

If you have any specific view-oriented features that you'd like to see in SyntaxEditor, now is the time to get your suggestions in. 

We're chatting daily about progress in our Slack workspace and would love for you to discuss SyntaxEditor with us there.

Our v2017.2 WPF, Universal Windows, and Silverlight controls have all been updated with new maintenance releases that are now ready for download.  It is highly recommended that you get these new builds since many products received numerous minor enhancements and bug fixes. 

Let's take a quick look at some of the more notable features that were added.

Docking/MDI

The mouse wheel can now scroll document tabs when in an overflow situation and using certain tab overflow behaviors.

Editors

Updated the color pickers such that the end user can tap and drag anywhere in a hue ring or saturation/brightness square to change color attributes, and not just on the thumb.

Added a new drop-down to ColorPicker that allows switching between RGB and HSB text input modes.

Added new features for adding custom inline UI elements within edit boxes, like the "Now" button in the TimeEditBox below.

Improved the DateEditBox and TimeEditBox default formats to better support parsing of entered text values that lack part delimiters.

Grids

Added the TreeListViewColumn.SortDirection property and related ColumnSortDirection enumeration that can be used to indicate that a sort glyph should appear in the column header when paired with a custom sorting mechanism.

Improved TreeListBox to better handle property updates from view-models on other threads.

Improved TreeListBox selection tracking performance.

SyntaxEditor

Improved numerous edit actions to retain their final selection after the action goes through an undo/redo process.

Improved how Tab indenting is handled when there is a block selection.

Improved the Cut Line to Clipboard edit action to support multiple lines.

Improved the .NET Languages Add-on's logic for selecting the best IntelliPrompt parameter info member overload when typing a comma at the end of an argument list.

Improved the XML line commenter in the Web Languages Add-on to comment the entire line text when there is no selection.

Summary

There were also a large number of smaller improvements made throughout the products.  See the announcement posts for the detailed list of enhancements and updates:

• WPF Controls announcement
• Universal Windows Controls announcement
• Silverlight Controls announcement

The past several weeks, we've been prototyping a new core text rendering engine for future use with SyntaxEditor (and possibly other products) that can be used across multiple platforms.  This text rendering API is the same across all supported platforms, which currently are WPF, UWP, and WinForms.  The implementation of that common API is platform-specific behind the scenes since each UI platform supports rendering text in very different ways.

SyntaxEditor would be a consumer of that text rendering API.  By using that text rendering API that is common across platforms, we could consolidate all the SyntaxEditor logic related to text formatting, rendering, and hit testing to be the same.

Platform Benefits

First the UWP version's text rendering implementation in this new engine is lightning fast, and would yield a massive rendering speed increase when merged into the UWP SyntaxEditor, compared to our current way of rendering text in the UWP SyntaxEditor.  It also would be more culture-sensitive with better logic on caret movement, right-to-left text, etc.

The WinForms version's implementation is also fast and compared to the current WinForms SyntaxEditor's way of rendering text, would gain culture sensitivity for caret movement, right-to-left text, etc.  Having a common text rendering API with other platforms would also be a big step in moving the WinForms SyntaxEditor down a path towards using the same general SyntaxEditor API as the other newer UI platforms use.  A future goal is to make this happen so that changes we make to features, add-ons, etc. can flow freely between all the SyntaxEditor platforms.

Finally the WPF version's text rendering is already very fast and culture-sensitive, but there are several logic enhancements we're making to improve speed when rendering long lines.

What's Next

We're still working on everything, but so far, tests in separate projects are very promising for the future of this text rendering API experiment.

Once things are finalized a bit more, we may plug it into one of the platforms like UWP to begin actual usage testing with SyntaxEditor.  This process will take some time since we will have to pull out all the plumbing for the current SyntaxEditor text rendering implementation, and adjust things to work with this new API.  We will give some updates once we make progress on that end.

We're happy to announce that the 2017.2 versions of our WPF, Universal Windows, and Silverlight controls have been released.  These versions include some new controls, new features, and a lot of minor updates and bug fixes.

See all the details on the 2017.2 releases in the various announcement posts:

• WPF Controls announcement, and additional maintenance release announcement
• Universal Windows Controls announcement
• Silverlight Controls announcement

SyntaxEditor

Intra-Line Adornments

Full support for intra-line adornments is now included.  These allow whitespace to be reserved above and/or below view lines, and adornments rendered in that space.

A first new sample shows implementation of a Visual Studio-like Code Lens adornment with info display and hyperlink. 

A second sample shows a Visual Studio-like Peek Definition (embedded editor) display.  This is accomplished using a second SyntaxEditor within an adornment of the outer SyntaxEditor.

Vertical Scrolling

Vertical scrolling logic has been refactored to better handle view lines of various sizes.

Code Outlining

A couple new code outlining commands have been added: apply default outlining expansion and expand all outlining.

.NET Languages Add-on Roslyn Extensions

A new optional assembly is available that has Roslyn extensions for loading IBinaryAssembly instances that can be referenced by a project assembly, instead of using normal .NET reflection.

.NET Languages Add-on IntelliPrompt

IntelliPrompt completion is now available for object creation expression initializer member names.

Docking/MDI (WPF/UWP)

Floating Windows

A new property can be data-bound to your VM to float or restore a docking window.  The default location request event allows for specifying that a docking window should open in a floating dock host.  Docking windows that were closed while floating now support more precise restoration later.  Dragging standalone floating docking windows by their tabs now has a better experience.

Contextual Indicators

The read-only contextual indicator for documents now uses a separate display mechanism from the custom contextual indicators, allowing both to show at the same time.

Editors (WPF/UWP)

AutoCompleteBox

A new AutoCompleteBox control has been added that allows text entry and provides suggestions for auto-completion.

This kind of control is ideal for use in search query and quick launch kinds of scenarios.

DateEditBox

Clicking a date on the popup calendar now closes the popup.

Grids (WPF/UWP)

Drag/Drop

The TreeListBox item adapter has been updated with a method that fires when hovering over an item during a drag, allowing you to determine whether it should be expanded.

New adapter methods have also been added that are called immediately before and after a drag, allowing for custom adornments to be displayed while dragging.

Shared Library (WPF/UWP)

AdvancedTextBlock

A new AdvancedTextBlock control has been added that can show a tooltip when overflowed and can highlight spans of text based on captured text ranges (i.e. filter match results).

What We Accomplished

In this quarter, we continued enhancing the 2017.1 versions of our WPF Controls, Universal Windows Controls, and Silverlight Controls.  Docking/MDI gained many minor feature improvements.  Editors added better support for custom formats in numeric edit boxes, default values, and had other tweaks. Grids improved tree filtering, empty content display, column header taps, focus tracking, and added/updated several samples.  SyntaxEditor's .NET Languages Add-on added C# 6 and VB 14 syntax support, improved resolver logic for partial classes and base types, and more.  Numerous other updates were made across these and other products.

What’s Coming Next

We currently are working on finishing up the feature set for the 2017.2 versions.  Docking/MDI has a lot of updates related to floating windows, Editors adds a new AutoCompleteBox control, SyntaxEditor adds intra-line adornments (like the VS editor's Code Lens or Peek Definition features) and scrolling logic is refined, and the .NET Languages Add-on is getting an option to use Roslyn to load reflection information for referenced assemblies.

Most information on these new controls and features will be published soon.

We hope to roll v2017.2 out in the next several weeks.

Blog Post List

Control Product Releases

• WPF, UWP, and Silverlight v2017.1 Maintenance Releases
• WPF Controls v2017.1 Maintenance Release

Our v2017.1 WPF, Universal Windows, and Silverlight controls have all been updated with new maintenance releases that are now ready for download.  It is highly recommended that you get these new builds since many products received numerous minor enhancements and bug fixes. 

See the announcement posts for the detailed list of enhancements and updates:

• WPF Controls announcement
• Universal Windows Controls announcement
• Silverlight Controls announcement

The WPF Controls 2017.1 build 651 maintenance release is now available.  This build has a large number of updates and new features for various WPF control products (Docking/MDI, Editors, Grids, Ribbon, SyntaxEditor, Shared Library), and includes bug fixes for all issues that have been found since the original 2017.1 release. 

In addition, the SyntaxEditor .NET Languages Add-on now supports C# 6 and VB 14 syntax, with full automated IntelliPrompt.  The screenshot below shows automated IntelliPrompt working properly with a null-conditional operator.

The rather large list of full update details are contained in this forum thread.

What We Accomplished

In this quarter, we wrapped up all of the massive changes and improvements we've been working on for our new Grids and updated Editors products and rolled them out in the 2017.1 versions of our WPF Controls and Universal Windows Controls. 

The new Grids product contains a reimagined PropertyGrid control that is much faster and easier to use than our older WPF PropertyGrid control.  Grids also contains new highly-requested TreeListBox and TreeListView controls that are very fast and can reproduce control experiences like those seen in the Visual Studio Solution Explorer and more.  All of these new controls are available for WPF and UWP.

Our UWP Editors product was improved with numerous new controls and enhancements.  The entire product was also ported to WPF so that there is cross platform compatibility.  We did this since the new Editors are much more lightweight and in the future, any changes we make to one platform will easily roll into the other's codebase.

What’s Coming Next

Now that the new Grids product is officially out in the wild, we've been collecting feedback from customers and have been working on many enhancements centered around that feedback.  The first 2017.1 maintenance release is close to ready for release and has a number of those enhancements in place.  The maintenance release is also adding updates to our .NET Languages Add-on (WPF, UWP, Silverlight versions) to support C# 6 and VB 14 syntax, with full automated IntelliPrompt working for the new language features too.

We have started work on other SyntaxEditor updates, namely implementing intra-line adornment support.  This would allow you to add features like the VS editor's Code Lens or Peek Definition to SyntaxEditor.  We've started a public thread for these features and are beginning to look for beta testers.  Please write our support address if you'd like to help test this and ensure that our implementation meets your needs.

Beyond that, we plan on continuing adding minor enhancements to Grids, SyntaxEditor, Editors, and Docking/MDI over the coming weeks.

Blog Post List

Tips and a Special Offer

• How to Animate a WPF Standard MDI Window into Place
• Celebrating VS 2017 - A Free Universal Windows Controls Offer

Control Product Releases

• WPF, UWP, and Silverlight Controls v2017.1 Released
• WPF Controls v2016.1 Maintenance Release

The 2017.1 versions of our WPF Controls, Universal Windows Controls, and Silverlight Controls were recently released, with the WPF and UWP controls getting some enormous updates in these versions.

The primary focus of the 2017.1 version in WPF and UWP was to add an improved PropertyGrid control and tree controls (TreeListBox and TreeListView) in our new Grids product, and to update Editors to be more modern/lightweight, and share a codebase between the two platforms.  Another focus was on maximizing the performance of all the controls.  The new PropertyGrid for instance shows a massive speed increase over the older WPF v2016.1 PropertyGrid.

See the entire lengthy detailed update list in these announcement posts:

• WPF Controls
• Universal Windows Controls
• Silverlight Controls

If you want to discuss the new controls added in 2017.1 or have suggestions for additional features, please join our #UIControls channel in our Slack team.  It's free and you can chat with us and other customers.

Please note that the v2017.1 WPF Controls have PropertyGrid, Editors, and licensing breaking changes to support better API design and features, so be sure to read the "Converting to 2017.1" topic in the documentation that comes with the controls.  It walks through everything in detail.

Grids is a new product added to the WPF and Universal Windows Controls in v2017.1.  It features three primary controls:  TreeListBox, TreeListView, and PropertyGrid.

TreeListBox

TreeListBox is a single-column control that renders a tree structure.  It is designed to mimic the features found in the Visual Studio Solution Explorer.  You have full control over the appearance of each node, and can easily wire up any tree data model for rendering via the use of our adapter pattern.

The UI tree is virtualized for optimal performance.  Unlike the standard WPF TreeView, TreeListBox is a single ItemsControl that is far less resource intensive and doesn't experience odd vertical scroll jumpiness.

You have full control over whether nodes are expandable, when they load children (and with optional use of async loading with a busy indicator as seen above), and selection modes (single/multiple).  A powerful filtering mechanism is included that allows you to add type-to-filter support.  F2 can initiate inline editing of node text.  Drag and drop can be enabled and you determine what is dragged/dropped.  This just scratches the surface, and there are many other features included.

TreeListView

The TreeListView control builds on top of the foundation provided by TreeListBox and adds multiple columns with an optional header, similar to a standard WPF ListView.

Columns can be sized using several algorithms, resized/reordered by the end user, or certain columns frozen such that they don't scroll horizontally.  Grid lines can be optionally displayed.

PropertyGrid

The PropertyGrid control is based on TreeListView and renders a grid of all the properties of one or more objects and their values. Properties can be displayed by category, alphabetically, or using a custom sort.

A PropertyGrid control was available in older versions of our WPF Controls, but we rewrote much of the internals for v2017.1 and optimized the object model to focus on maximizing speed and ease of use.  The new PropertyGrid can load large complex objects almost instantly.  It's simpler than ever to customize how properties are edited via the use of property editor DataTemplates.  You have full control over which properties are presented and how.

The 2017.1 version ported the Universal Windows Editors back to WPF so that they now share a codebase.  This decision was made because the newer Editors designs are much more lightweight in terms of UI elements used in each control, and the number of bindings involved.  This improves UI performance when using many Editors controls in grids like PropertyGrid.

You'll still find many great editing features such as the ability to use arrow keys when typing in edit boxes to increment or decrement part values.

Each edit box now has an optional dedicated picker control that is used in the drop-down, like the calculator shown above.  The picker can be easily styled if a custom appearance is needed.

In addition to porting the UWP Editors to WPF, we also added a number of new editor controls.  Editors in both platforms feature specialized edit boxes and pickers for these .NET types:  Brush, Byte (WPF only), Color, CornerRadius, Date, DateTime, Double, Enum, Guid, Int16, Int32, Int32Rect (WPF only), Int64, Point, Rect, Single, Size, Thickness, Time, TimeSpan, and Vector (WPF only).

Editors also has these other various miscellaneous controls:  Calculator, CountryComboBox, CurrencyComboBox, EnumListBox, GradientStopSlider, HsbColorPicker, MonthCalendar, RadialHuePicker, Rating, SaturationBrightnessPicker, and Spinner.

The licensing mechanism was updated for the WPF Controls in v2017.1 to be simpler.  Regardless of which WPF products you've licensed from us, your apps will only need a single line in the licenses.licx file going forward.  Please read the Converting to 2017.1 topic in the documentation for details on these updates.

Enjoy the new version!

With the 2017.1 version of our WPF Controls about ready for launch, we wanted to release one more 2016.1 maintenance release of the controls.  This maintenance release has many minor updates and bug fixes.

Some notable new features include improving the speed of SyntaxEditor text formatters for numerous languages and allowing the Ribbon Backstage "close" button to be hidden, which is applicable for app startup usage scenarios.  The full update details are contained in this forum thread.

Look for v2017.1 to roll out in the next few days!