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.

What We Accomplished

In this quarter we published the 2014.1 versions of our WPF, Silverlight, WinRT/XAML, and WinForms controls.  These versions included a lot of new controls and feature enhancements for our existing controls.  Check out the release posts for more detail.

Our free Code Writer Windows Store app had a couple releases that added context menus, new file types like JSON, many find/replace improvements, and much more.

Blog Post List

Control Product Development

• RadialSlider Control
• RingSlice Control
• New Font-Related PropertyGrid Editors
• JSON Language Coming to SyntaxEditor
• AppBarHint Control for WinRT/XAML
• SyntaxEditor JavaScript Completion
• SyntaxEditor Auto-Sizing
• WinForms Metro Toggleable Auto-Hide Flyouts
• Metro Light Theme Coming to WinForms Controls
• Docking/MDI for WPF - Huge Metro Theme Updates
• SyntaxEditor for WPF - ANTLR v4 Support?
• Docking/MDI Getting Events for Auto-Hide Popups
• SyntaxEditor Delimiter Auto-Complete Improvements

Control Product Releases

• WPF, Silverlight, and WinRT/XAML Controls v2014.1 Maintenance Releases
• WPF, Silverlight, and WinRT/XAML v2014.1 Released
• WinForms Controls 2014.1 Released

Code Writer App

• Code Writer v2.3 Released
• Code Writer v2.2 Released

The 2014.1 versions of our WPF, Silverlight, and WinRT/XAML controls were released last week and all contain several handy components in them, such as the RingSlice control we talked about several days ago.

In today's post, I'd like to show off the new RadialSlider control.

What is RadialSlider?

The RadialSlider control allows for quick selection of a degree value, which can easily be converted to some form of scalar value.  The control uses an embedded CircularThumb control, but is otherwise transparent.  It is meant to be used in conjunction with the RingSlice control and have that control render the slider's value UI.

Radial sliders function just like normal linear sliders however instead of moving the slider thumb in a straight line, the thumb can move in a circular fashion around the slider's center point.  This sort of UI allows for additional precision when compared to linear sliders, especially with touch interaction.

RadialSlider supports minimum/maximum ranges, infinite wrapping mode, customizable thumb styles, and more. 

Combine two RadialSlider controls on top of each other to enable range-based selection.

Real World Usage Scenario

RadialSlider and RingSlice controls can be used to create radial input controls such as in this sample (included in our download), which mimics a countdown timer in the Windows Alarms app:

The end user simply grabs the thumbs, either via touch or mouse, and drags in a circular fashion to alter the values.  The RingSlice controls that render the current values track with the dragged thumb.

Summary

The RadialSlider control is available in our WPF, Silverlight, and WinRT/XAML Shared Libraries and is licensed for use by any of our customers of those control platforms.  Download v2014.1 and check it out!