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About Us

Actipro Software is a leading provider of .NET user interface controls for the WPF, UWP, Silverlight, and WinForms frameworks, and is most well-known for their SyntaxEditor syntax-highlighting code editor control.

Please take some time to learn more about us and our product offerings.

Windows Workflow Designer SyntaxEditor Integration Updates

April 22, 2014 at 4:39 AM
by Bill Henning (Actipro)

WpfControlsTipsBlogPostBanner

Last year, we created a sample for showing how a hosted Windows Workflow Designer instance could be integrated with Actipro WPF controls within a custom WPF application to provide a very elegant interface for end users. 

We have continued enhancing it and here's what it currently looks like:

WorkflowDesigner

Our Docking/MDI product is used to provide the tool window and multiple document interface.  Our SyntaxEditor code editor control, in single line edit mode, is injected as a custom expression editor.  When you combine SyntaxEditor with our .NET Languages Add-on, you are able to have it support powerful IntelliPrompt completion lists.  For instance, in the screenshot above, you can see the itemCount variable is showing up in the completion list since it was declared below.

In recent updates, we've:

  • Updated App.OnStartup code to theme native WPF controls using Actipro themes.
  • Added a Menu above the designer with options for closing the window, and toggling the tool window visibility.
  • Added a custom completion ListBox implementation to work around issue where ListBoxItem would steal focus on click and Workflow Designer thought that it then had to close the expression editor.

When you put it all together, it's very easy to integrate Actipro WPF controls with rehosted Windows Workflow Designer instances in your applications.  It only takes a few minutes to get up and running, and once you do, the result is well worth the time.

Summary

If you rehost the Windows Workflow Designer in your WPF apps and would like our example, please contact us and we'll be happy to share it with you!

For those customers who downloaded either of the prior versions, this update is at the same URL as before.

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Tags: wpf, docking, syntaxeditor
Filed under: Actipro, New features, WPF
Permalink | Comments (0)

JSON Language Coming to WinForms SyntaxEditor

April 8, 2014 at 10:07 AM
by Bill Henning (Actipro)

PostBannerSyntaxEditorDevNotes

We are adding a JSON language implementation to the WinForms SyntaxEditor samples for the next maintenance release.

Features

JSON is a lightweight data-interchange format that is a subset of JavaScript syntax, and is commonly used with many web technologies.  With the new syntax language, you'll be able to provide a great editor/viewer for JSON data.  Here's a screenshot:

JSONWinForms

The JSON syntax language has these features:

  • Syntax highlighting
  • Automatic code outlining
  • Smart indent
  • Delimiter (bracket) highlighting

Summary

This new syntax language example will be included in the next WinForms Controls maintenance release.

TaskDownload TaskLiveDemo TaskBuyNow

Tags: winforms, syntaxeditor
Filed under: Actipro, New features, Windows Forms
Permalink | Comments (0)

WinForms Controls 2014.1 Released

March 13, 2014 at 10:23 AM
by Bill Henning (Actipro)

WinFormsBlogPostBanner

WinForms Controls 2013.1 build 310 has been released and is now available for download.

WinFormsMetroLight

This version features the updates we did to bring Metro Light themes to the controls as described in this post and this post.  The new themes can make your app's Actipro controls render similar to the visual style found in Visual Studio 2013.

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

TaskDownload TaskBuyNow

Tags: winforms
Filed under: Actipro, New features, Windows Forms
Permalink | Comments (0)

WPF, Silverlight, and WinRT/XAML v2014.1 Released

March 12, 2014 at 6:37 AM
by Bill Henning (Actipro)

BlogPostBanner

The 2014.1 versions of our WPF, Silverlight, and WinRT/XAML controls have been released and are now available for download.

Major new features are described below.  See the announcement posts for the detailed list of enhancements and updates, including many items not listed below:

  • WPF Controls announcement
  • Silverlight Controls announcement
  • WinRT/XAML Controls announcement

ProductHeadingWPFDocking

Metro themes have been dramatically refined and updated in this version, mostly in the area of Docking/MDI.  Updated UI includes subtle border lines, new auto-hide tab appearance, title bar gripper decorations, and more.

DockingMetro

Metro themes will now not show images on tabs by default, and have changed auto-hide tabs to require a click (instead of hover) to open.  These updates match Visual Studio 2013 behavior.

We've added new events for the auto-hide popup (flyout) that fire when it is opened or closed.  The popup is also now displayed using a faster default animation speed.

When the DockSite.AutoHidePopupOpensOnMouseHover property is false, clicks on auto-hide tabs are required to toggle the auto-hide popup opened and closed.

ProductHeadingWPFPropertyGrid

New built-in property editors for FontFamily, FontStretch, FontStyle, and FontWeight type properties have been added.

PropertyGridFontFamily

ProductHeadingWPFRibbon

New key tip specific theme resources have been added and key tips in Metro themes now render more like Office 2013.

CheckBox-based menu items now are capable of supporting tri-state display.

ProductHeadingGenericSyntaxEditor

Delimiter auto-completion logic for insertion and subsequent scope tracking has been greatly improved.  Delimiter indent provider can now optionally support square braces.

Added a new property that allows SyntaxEditor to measure itself based on text contents.  This works great for smaller documents in both multi-line and single-line modes.

SyntaxEditorAutoSize

Updated single-line mode to support word wrap, which is very useful when combined with the new view line measuring option.

SyntaxEditorSingleLineWrapped

Bookmark indicators now support an IsEnabled state.

LipsumGenerator class added to support generation of "lorem ipsum" placeholder text.

Changed block indent mode to retain whitespace after the caret when Enter is pressed.

.NET Languages Add-on

Numerous improvements to the VB language's handling of identifiers and variable declarations that don't include a type.

Web Languages Add-on

Added IntelliPrompt completion for keywords and symbols to the JavaScript language.

JavaScriptCompletion

Added a new advanced JSON language that can be used to view/edit JSON files, along with a new related QuickStart.

JsonLanguage

Updated JavaScript language to support multi-line strings via backslash continuation.

ProductHeadingWPFThemes

Many improvements to Metro themes (mostly in the Docking/MDI area described above), and improved WindowChrome (and RibbonWindow) rendering when maximized.

ProductHeadingGenericShared

WPF/Silverlight Only

Added the RadialSlider control, which is a circular slider that can be used to input any scalar value.

RadialSliderIntro

Added the RingSlice control, which renders a portion of a ring at designated angles and radius.

RingSliceProgressIndicator

Added the CircularThumb control, which is a thumb gripper with a circular shape and arrow adornment.

Added three samples for new Shared Library controls.

WinRT/XAML Only

Added the AppBarHint control, which is a visual hint to users that app bars exist on a page, and can be tapped to toggle them open. 

AppBarHint

Added a related QuickStart.

ProductHeadingMisc

Sample Browser (WPF/Silverlight only)

Added the ability to toggle description sidebar on some samples.

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Tags: wpf, silverlight, winrt, docking, propertygrid, ribbon, syntaxeditor, shared library, themes
Filed under: Actipro, New features, WPF, Silverlight, WinRT
Permalink | Comments (0)

New Font-Related PropertyGrid Editors

March 7, 2014 at 5:19 AM
by Bill Henning (Actipro)

PostBannerWPFControlsDevNotes

We've got some more new features coming to our WPF PropertyGrid control in the upcoming 2014.1 version. 

In the new version, when an object with any sort of font-related property (like FontFamily, FontStretch, FontStyle, or FontWeight) is edited in PropertyGrid, it will automatically use new built-in editors designed specifically for those property types.  The editors kick in based on the return type of the property.  For instance, you could have a property defined as this and the FontFamily property editor will be used:

public FontFamily HeaderFontFamily { get; set; }

Example Screenshots

Let's see the new features in action.  Here are some screenshots:

PropertyGridFontFamily

The screenshot above shows the FontFamily drop-down.

PropertyGridFontWeight

The screenshot above shows the FontWeight drop-down.

Summary

These new features will be available in the 2014.1 version of PropertyGrid for WPF.

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Tags: wpf, propertygrid
Filed under: Actipro, In development, New features, WPF
Permalink | Comments (0)

Code Writer v2.3 Released

March 6, 2014 at 2:17 AM
by Bill Henning (Actipro)

CodeWriter23BlogPostBanner

Code Writer v2.3, our free text/code editor app, is now live in the Windows Store.

Are you interested in adding code or text editing abilities to your own Windows Store apps?  SyntaxEditor for WinRT/XAML was recently released, allowing you to build apps just like Code Writer.  Download a free evaluation to try it out.

Check out all the new features added to Code Writer…

Mouse Context Menus

Mouse users have been asking for context menus to be added to the editor so that they can quickly access clipboard and undo functionality without having to use keyboard shortcuts.  This version delivers that functionality.  Now when you right-click over the editor surface, a context menu will be displayed:

ContextMenu

This begs the question, how do you access the app bars that used to display on right-click?  There are several ways to show them:

  • Mouse right-click at top/bottom of the screen.
  • Left-click the status bar on the lower left, where the ellipses show (see screenshot below).
  • Press the Windows+Z keyboard shortcut.

StatusBar

And if you'd like to restore the old functionality where mouse right-click always showed the app bars?  We've got you covered there too!

ContextMenuSetting

A new option on the Editor page in Settings lets you determine whether context menus are enabled for right-click or not.

JSON File Type Added

JSON is a very popular data serialization format that is widely used in web technologies these days.  We just finished work on a new JSON syntax language for our SyntaxEditor control, and have added a new JSON file type option to Code Writer as well.

JSON

The new file type has everything from syntax highlighting to code outlining and even syntax error squiggles.  This makes Code Writer an ideal app to view/edit JSON files.

JavaScript Completion Lists

Completion lists have been added to the JavaScript file type.  The completion lists work similarly to other popular editors where all the identifier symbols that are located in the current document are presented in a list in response to Ctrl+Space being pressed.

JavaScriptCompletion

As you type, the list filters down to only show matching items.  This makes entering identifiers much faster since you can easily auto-complete instances of already-inserted identifier names.

Keywords are also included in the completion lists.

Per-Document Character Encoding Option

In past versions, you could set an option in Settings that would affect the character encoding used for all documents.  In this update, we have changed that setting so that it only affects new and opened documents.  From that point on, each document tracks its own character encoding setting, which can be altered from the Document Properties pane:

DocumentProperties

This allows for different documents to be saved in different character encodings.

Miscellaneous

Numerous miscellaneous improvements have also been made:

  • Improved delimiter auto-completion logic.
  • Block indent mode retains whitespace after the caret when Enter is pressed.
  • General settings option for analytics (error/anonymous usage stats) reporting.
  • .log and .srt files open with text file type.
  • .ass and .ssa files open with INI file type.
  • Fixed bug where documents saved with char encodings may not completely clear old file contents.

Summary

This update adds several features that have been highly requested by our users, and we're excited to get it into your hands.

You can also download a free evaluation of our SyntaxEditor control for WinRT/XAML, which lets you add advanced code and text editing to your own Windows Store apps.

TaskWideLearnMore TaskWideWindowsStore

Tags: apps, code writer
Filed under: Actipro, Apps, New features
Permalink | Comments (0)

JSON Language Coming to SyntaxEditor

March 5, 2014 at 2:08 AM
by Bill Henning (Actipro)

PostBannerSyntaxEditorDevNotes

We recently posted that the advanced JavaScript syntax language implementation in our SyntaxEditor Web Languages Add-on (WPF, Silverlight, and WinRT/XAML versions) is getting IntelliPrompt completion lists in the upcoming 2014.1 version.

In today's post, I'd like to announce that a brand new JSON syntax language is coming to the add-on as well!

Features

JSON is a lightweight data-interchange format that is a subset of JavaScript syntax, and is commonly used with many web technologies.  With the new syntax language, you'll be able to provide a great editor/viewer for JSON data.  Here's a screenshot:

JsonLanguage

The JSON syntax language has these features:

  • Syntax highlighting
  • Abstract syntax tree (AST) generation
  • Automatic code outlining based on AST structure
  • Reporting and automatic squiggle display of errors for invalid syntax
  • Mouse hover quick info for syntax errors
  • Smart indent
  • Code block selection
  • Delimiter (bracket) highlighting and auto-completion

Summary

This new syntax language will be available when the 2014.1 WPF, Silverlight, and WinRT/XAML versions are released in the next couple weeks.

TaskDownload TaskLiveDemo TaskBuyNow

Tags: wpf, winrt, silverlight, syntaxeditor
Filed under: Actipro, In development, New features, WPF, WinRT, Silverlight
Permalink | Comments (1)

AppBarHint Control for WinRT/XAML

February 28, 2014 at 8:39 AM
by Bill Henning (Actipro)

BlogPostBanner

We're including a helpful new control in the upcoming 2014.1 version of our WinRT/XAML Controls:  The AppBarHint control.

What is an App Bar Hint?

The AppBarHint control makes it easy to inject an ellipses (three dot) area at the bottom of an Windows Store app page that can be tapped by the end user to display the page's app bars.  Here's a screenshot showing what it looks like:

AppBarHint

Just dock the AppBarHint at the bottom of the page, set a background, and that's all there is to it.  The control automatically opens the app bars when it is tapped.

AppBarHint is also a ContentControl so that custom content can be inserted to the left of the ellipses if desired.

Real-World Usage

We already use the AppBarHint control in our free Code Writer app.  You can see it here in the lower left.

CodeWriterAppBarHint

In this usage scenario, we insert the line/column information as content within the AppBarHint control.  Then when the user taps anywhere inside of the green hint, the app bars display.

Summary

This new control will be available when the 2014.1 version of our WinRT/XAML Controls versions are released in March.

TaskDownload TaskLiveDemo TaskBuyNow

Tags: winrt, xaml, shared library
Filed under: Actipro, In development, New features, WinRT
Permalink | Comments (0)

SyntaxEditor JavaScript Completion

February 27, 2014 at 8:09 AM
by Bill Henning (Actipro)

PostBannerSyntaxEditorDevNotes

Last year we added an advanced JavaScript language implementation to the SyntaxEditor Web Languages Add-on.  This language implementation (available in the WPF, Silverlight, and WinRT/XAML versions of the add-on) includes features like syntax highlighting, parsing with AST generation, syntax error reporting, code outlining, etc.

In today's post I'd like to announce that we have added a simplistic completion provider to the language that should help end user coding productivity.

Completion Provider

The new completion provider displays a completion list when Ctrl+Space is pressed:

JavaScriptCompletion

The concept is similar to completion lists found in other popular IDEs like Sublime, where the list includes JavaScript keywords and identifiers found throughout the document.  The list has been set up to accept acronym and shortcut item matchers, meaning that any loosely-matched text will select items.  The list also auto-shrinks to only show matching items.

Summary

These great new features will be available when the 2014.1 WPF, Silverlight, and WinRT/XAML versions are released in March.

TaskDownload TaskLiveDemo TaskBuyNow

Tags: wpf, silverlight, winrt, syntaxeditor
Filed under: Actipro, In development, New features, WPF, Silverlight, WinRT
Permalink | Comments (5)

SyntaxEditor Auto-Sizing

February 26, 2014 at 9:34 AM
by Bill Henning (Actipro)

PostBannerSyntaxEditorDevNotes

One feature that several customers have asked for is the ability for SyntaxEditor to automatically resize itself based on its text contents.  We didn't originally have this feature since it can be time-consuming (relatively speaking) and when editing huge documents, we didn't want to add any performance hits.

That being said, in the upcoming 2014.1 version of SyntaxEditor for WPF, Silverlight, and WinRT/XAML, we have added a new SyntaxEditor.IsViewLineMeasureEnabled property that can be set to true to activate view line measure behavior.  This means that you now can use SyntaxEditor in a layout scenario where its measured size will have an effect on its arranged size.

Multi-Line Editing Example

Let's check out an example of this in action.  Here we have a SyntaxEditor that has an XML language loaded and the new view line measure features enabled.  It's resizing itself vertically according to the number of lines in it:

AutoSizeMultiLine1

Now if we press Enter a couple times, it auto-sizes to a larger height:

AutoSizeMultiLine2

You can see how this would be useful when SyntaxEditor is hosted in controls like a StackPanel.

Single-Line Editing Example

We've also enhanced our single-line edit mode with a neat new feature.  Now if you set word wrap mode on and also have the view line measure features enabled, the single line will grow to render on multiple lines but will still not allow Enter to be pressed or inserted via pastes, etc.

This sort of feature is useful for scenarios where you want to allow a single line snippet of text to be edited but for the entire text to be visible.  Let's have a look:

AutoSizeSingleLine1

Above we have a SyntaxEditor in single-line mode, with word wrap on, and view line measure enabled.  Let's type some more text:

AutoSizeSingleLine2

Even though the text is still a single line (no line feeds are allowed in single-line mode), the word wrap caused the editor to grow taller.

Summary

These great new features will be available when the 2014.1 WPF, Silverlight, and WinRT/XAML versions are released in March.

TaskDownload TaskLiveDemo TaskBuyNow

Tags: wpf, silverlight, winrt, syntaxeditor
Filed under: Actipro, In development, New features, WPF, Silverlight, WinRT
Permalink | Comments (0)
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