The Actipro Blog

Today I'd like announce a great new feature coming to the SyntaxEditor Web Languages Add-on (WPF, Silverlight, and WinRT/XAML versions): a XML navigable symbol provider. 

Features

If you are new to SyntaxEditor, you may be wondering what is a navigable symbol provider.  Navigable symbol providers allow SyntaxEditor to provide a set of drop-downs above it that indicate the current context of the caret.  They also allow an end user to select items in the drop-downs to move the caret directly to the related definition.

Our .NET Languages Add-on's C# and VB languages already support this feature and the two drop-downs above the editor show the current type and member context.

With the addition of this feature to XML, two drop-downs above the editor can show the current element and attribute context.  Let's see a screenshot:

In the screen above, the caret is on line 12 in the "id" attribute.  The attribute drop-down (top right) properly shows the "id" attribute as context.  If we would click the "book" element in that drop-down, the caret would move to the "book" tag's name.

In this screenshot, we have displayed the element drop-down while still on the "book" start tag.  It has selected the current element for us and also shows the hierarchy of elements up to the root element ("catalog").  It also shows us the elements that are direct children of the current element.  In this case, elements like "author", "title", etc. are the direct children of "book".  Any of the items in the drop-down can be clicked and the caret will jump right to that element.  In this sense, it provides somewhat of a mini-document outline.

Summary

This great new feature will roll out in the upcoming 2014.1 WPF, Silverlight, and WinRT/XAML controls maintenance releases.

Our WPF PropertyGrid control allows you to embed an object editing interface into your applications that can make use of any type of custom editor, including our own powerful WPF Editors controls.

In today's post I wanted to review a new small, but very useful, enhancement coming to PropertyGrid in the next maintenance release: the ability to double click on a name cell and cycle through available standard values.

Example Usage

Let's have a look at how this works.

Here we have a PropertyGrid and you'll notice that the CharacterCasing property has standard values of Normal, Lower, etc.

By double-clicking on the name cell, the value cycles to the next value in the standard values list. 

Summary

This new feature makes it quick and easy for end users to cycle through standard values without having to show a drop-down list.  It will appear in the next maintenance release of our WPF controls.

Yesterday we posted about a UniformGrid panel control that was being added to our WinRT/XAML and Silverlight Shared Libraries.  This sort of panel is already available in native WPF so no implementation was necessary there.

In today's post, I'd like to show another new control coming to our WPF, Silverlight, and WinRT/XAML control platforms: HorizontalListBox.

Features

The HorizontalListBox control is… wait for it… a standard ListBox that uses a horizontal layout.  In fact it uses a UniformGrid panel with a single row specification to achieve its layout.  This has the benefit of ensuring that each item in the list has an equal width.

This sort of design is great for toggle sorts of controls where there are two or more values from which to choose.  In multi-selection mode, you can also toggle each item individually.

Let's have a look of the WinRT version:

Here we have a couple HorizontalListBox controls in place.  One for selecting gender and one for doing multiple selection of days of the week.  Everything is simple and touch-friendly.  Any content can be rendered in the list box items as well.

And here is the WPF version:

It's the same exact control and API but here it renders in the current theme (in this case Metro Light) via our WPF Themes infrastructure.

Best of all, since this restyled control simply inherits the native ListBox, you have all the features available to you that come from the base native ListBox control.  Our control has some enhancements such as Left/Right arrow key navigation too.

Summary

The HorizontalListBox control will be available in the next 2014.1 maintenance releases of our WPF, Silverlight, and WinRT/XAML Shared Libraries, and will be licensed for use by any of our customers of those control platforms.

We've been working on some new controls and while developing one in particular that we'll post about next time, we had a need for a UniformGrid panel.  The UniformGrid panel is already available in native WPF, but isn't available in WinRT/XAML or Silverlight. 

For the next maintenance releases of our WinRT/XAML and Silverlight controls, we rolled our own UniformGrid that has the same properties as the WPF version, making it easy to reuse code across platforms.

Features

The UniformGrid automatically lays out items in a grid such that the row and column counts are the same, and each item in the panel has the same size.

In this screenshot, the panel has four items in it.  Thus a 2x2 grid is created to display them all.

In this screenshot, we have seven items so a larger grid is necessary.  A 3x3 grid is used instead.

You also have the option to specify a certain number of rows or columns that should be used.

In this screenshot, we have specified that two columns should be used.  The panel therefore creates a 2x4 grid (two columns and four rows).  Note that regardless of layout, items always appear in the same size.

You can see that UniformGrid provides for a lot of interesting layout scenarios, especially when you tell it a certain number of rows or columns to use.

Summary

The UniformGrid panel will be available in the next maintenance release of our WinRT/XAML and Silverlight Shared Libraries and is licensed for use by any of our customers of those control platforms.

Our next blog post will show off another new control coming to our XAML platforms that makes use of this new panel.

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:

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.

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:

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

WPF/Silverlight Only

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

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

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. 

Added a related QuickStart.

Sample Browser (WPF/Silverlight only)

Added the ability to toggle description sidebar on some samples.

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:

The screenshot above shows the FontFamily drop-down.

The screenshot above shows the FontWeight drop-down.

Summary

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

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:

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.

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!

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.

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.

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:

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.