Denis Basaric: DevComponents Blog

We have another big DotNetBar release for you with 3 new controls: Time Selector, Touch Keyboard and Page Slider controls.

Time Selector

Time selector enables easy time input without typing. It works great with mouse but also on touch enabled screens. DateTimeInput will also use it automatically if it requires time input. Control supports 12-hour and 24-hour formats completely automatically. Here is image of Time selector with 12 and 24-hour views:

Touch Keyboard

Touch Keyboard is an multi-touch enabled virtual keyboard control that you can attach to controls, customize its layout, change colors and render completely on your own. What is special about our keyboard is that it has built-in multi-touch support which makes it possible to type fast on multi touch screens:

Control supports multiple layouts out of box:

And you can render all parts of control yourself if you choose:

Page Slider

PageSlider control is an multi-touch page slider control which can be used to present any content on pages. Pages can be changed using the optional scroll-bar or by dragging the page with mouse into the view. However, preferred method of operation is using touch gestures to flick pages in and out of the view. Page slider also support inertial scrolling so if you quickly flick with the finger on the screen it will continue page scrolling and slow down gradually.

All in all, there are over 55 new features and enhancements in this release. And here are detailed Release Notes.

If you have current DotNetBar license download latest release on Customer Only web site. Fully functional trial version is also available. We are working on even more major new exciting features, but please do not hesitate to send me your feedback and wishes. Thank you for using our controls and please let me know how you like them.

We make WinForms, WPF and Silverlight components to help you create professional looking apps with ease. Check them out here.

Recently we added the Time Selector control to DotNetBar for WinForms which allows you to select time using mouse or touch. Here is screen-shot of that:

Now we have added new Time Selector style so it visually fits the Month Calendar. You can select this new style by using SelectorType property.

Here is screen-shot of new style:

New time selector style also supports 24-hour format automatically based on current system settings so time selector in that case looks like this:

You can select time format explicitly using the TimeFormat property.

Now notice how new style fits with the Month Calendar once it is automatically used when time input is required in our DateTimeInput control:

DotNetBar available right now includes this new Time Selector style.

Thank you for using our controls!

We make WinForms, WPF and Silverlight components to help you create professional looking apps with ease. Check them out here.

New Year starts with the bang so here is new DotNetBar for you. 2 new controls: SuperGrid a powerful data-grid we built from scratch and worked on for better part of last year and MetroTilePanel a dedicated Metro Tile panel control with touch support.

SuperGrid

SuperGrid is complete grid/editors control for your applications. It includes built-in data-binding, numerous editors, master-detail support, nested tables, built-in virtualization and much more. Here is screen-shot to give you just small taste of what this control can do:

Some features of SuperGrid control:

Master-Detail Views
Nested Tables
Virtual Data Support
Numerous Cell Editors + Custom Editor Support
Data-Binding to DataSets, IList, IListSource, IBindingList etc.
Office 2010/2007 and Metro Styling
Complete Custom Grid Styling
Built-In Formula Engine
Sorting
Much, much more…

To get you started please check out SuperGrid Quick Start Guide in our Knowledge Base.

We’ve been working on this control for good part of last year and this is just beginning. There is much more planned in coming months… Please see SuperGrid sample project you can find at My Documents\DotNetBar WinForms Samples\SuperGrid.

MetroTilePanel

Metro Tile Panel is dedicated control to host Metro Tiles. It has built-in support for drag & drop arranging of tiles and it includes very nice tile move animation after drag & drop is performed. Of course touch support is included. Check it out in MetroTilePanel sample. Here is screen-shot of MetroTilePanel control in action:

All in all, there are over 60 new features and enhancements in this release.

Here are detailed Release Notes.

We make WinForms, WPF and Silverlight components to help you create professional looking apps with ease. Check them out here.

Today we have another new DotNetBar release for you with 2 new controls: Binding Navigator and RichTextBox controls. Both controls are designed to be replacement for corresponding system controls so you can maintain consistent look and feel with our other controls and visual styles. Here is screen-shot of both controls:

Other changes in this release:

MetroForm support for SETTINGS and HELP buttons in form caption added
MessageBoxEx.TextMarkupEnabled property added to control whether text-markup is rendered
TouchKeyboard.CurrentKeyboardTarget property added to retrieve current target control for keyboard input
Many improvements to SuperGrid control
And much, much more…

All in all, there are almost 60 new features and enhancements in this release.

Here are detailed Release Notes.

If you have current DotNetBar license download latest release on Customer Only web site. Fully functional trial version is also available. Thank you for using our controls and please let me know how you like them.

We make WinForms, WPF and Silverlight components to help you create professional looking apps with ease. Check them out here.

This week we have released DotNetBar for WPF 7.1 with new advanced Data-Grid control. Data-Grid control provides you with easy data presentation control including built-in editors and Office like styling. Following screen-shot shows our new AdvGrid control in action:

AdvGrid includes following major features:

Built-in editors with complete editing framework so you can create custom editors
Built-in data virtualization
Row pinning to either top or bottom of viewport
Column pinning to left or right of viewport
Sorting by multiple columns
Office 2010 like styling
Column definition properties can be data bound to elements in the visual tree and to the data context of the grid
Extended selection functionality and ability to select an entire column or range of columns

Built-in editors allow easy data editing and you can also create your own editors:

There is much more to our new AdvGrid control. Make sure to check the sample project that you can find at: My Documents\DotNetBar for WPF Samples\AdvGridSample

Getting started with AdvGrid Knowledge Base article is great resource to help you start using new controls. Please use it.

Here are detailed Release Notes. If you have current DotNetBar license download latest release on Customer Only web site. Fully functional trial version is also available. We are working on even more major new exciting features, but please do not hesitate to send me your feedback and wishes. Thank you for using our controls and please let me know how you like them.

We make WinForms, WPF and Silverlight components to help you create professional looking apps with ease. Check them out here.

Hi Everyone,

Today we released new DotNetBar for you with first implementation of Metro Office styling, VS.NET 11 support and more. Here is screen-shot of all new Metro Office styling:

Since final look and feel of Metro Office is not known you can expect our style to change so to match final look and feel of next version of Office. We have also added new StyleManagerAmbient component which is used to manage Metro style ambient properties assignment for child controls on the form. You can read about that in Metro KB article.

We also added support for Visual Studio 11 which is in Beta right now. You should see DotNetBar controls appear in VS.NET 11 toolbox. VS.NET 11 has completely new property grid so if you experience any design-time issues with DotNetBar and VS.NET 11 please let us know.

Also new is year/century selector for our month calendar control. Here is small animated image showing selector in action:

There are over 80 new features and fixes in this release including many refinements for our incredibly well received SuperGrid control. Here are detailed Release Notes.

Please do not forget that our online Knowledge Base is getting updated constantly and is great source of information and tips on DotNetBar usage.

We make WinForms, WPF and Silverlight components to help you create professional looking apps with ease. Check them out here.

Hello Good People,

Today we released new version of DotNetBar with SuperGrid Data-Grouping feature. The SuperGrid now supports single and multiple Column grouping, with the ability to specify the sort direction for each group. It provides the end-user with user interface for creating groups and sorting. The grouping section displayed on top of the grid shows current grouping. To perform data-grouping you simply drag & drop column into the group section. Following screen-shot shows grouping in SuperGrid control:

The SuperGrid supports user rendering of additional “detail” group rows through the dynamic use of the GetGroupDetailRows event. Group Detail Rows are temporary rows that can be added by the application following a SuperGrid grouping operation. Group Detail Rows are automatically removed when the grouping changes (either cleared or set/reset to another group criteria). Group Detail Rows are totally defined and rendered by the user application – the row’s content is neither known nor managed by the grid. Following screen-shots from sample app included with DotNetBar shows how detail group rows are used to add totals to the SuperGrid:

There are 60 new features and fixes in this release. Here are detailed Release Notes. If you have current DotNetBar license download latest release on Customer Only web site. Fully functional trial version is also available. Thank you for using our controls and please let me know how you like them.

We make WinForms, WPF and Silverlight components to help you create professional looking apps with ease. Check them out here.

Today we released new version of DotNetBar with world’s first Office 2013 style Ribbon control. Then we top that with built-in 220 symbols library which can be used on our buttons (courtesy of FontAwesome). And there is much more. Here is screen-shot of new Office 2013 style:

We’ve also updated the Backstage Application Menu to fit new Office 2013 appearance:

Our new Office 2013 styling comes with unlimited color schemes generator which will generate complete color scheme based on single color you specify:

We have also included 220 symbols library (courtesy of FontAwesome) that you can use instead of images on our buttons. Simply set Symbol and SymbolSize properties using designer. Nice thing about these symbols is that they are vector based which means they will render well in wide range of sizes and they will use current color scheme settings for button to render themselves. They are perfect fit for Office 2013 and Metro/Modern UI applications. Here is screen-shot of symbols:

And here is a simple button using a Symbol as image:

There are more than 65 new features and fixes in this release. Here are detailed Release Notes. If you have current DotNetBar license download latest release on Customer Only web site. Fully functional trial version is also available. Thank you for using our controls and please let me know how you like them.

We make WinForms, WPF and Silverlight components to help you create professional looking apps with ease. Check them out here.

Hi Everyone,

We are releasing DotNetBar for WPF 7.2 with Office 2013 styling for the Ribbon, Docking, Editors and Schedule controls. Core to new styling is our Office 2013 color scheme generation algorithm which will create complete color scheme for controls based on single base color you specify. So having as many color schemes as you want is super easy:

There is also updated Backstage application menu:

Our docking control also receives new Office 2013 inspired styling:

Schedule control styling has been updated as well, here is screen-shot of the new month view:

We make WinForms, WPF and Silverlight components to help you create professional looking apps with ease. Check them out here.

Today we’ve released new version of DotNetBar with brand new Toast Notification component. Toast notifications are messages that appears on the surface of the specified parent control for a short period of time. They do not receive focus (or pause the current activity), so they cannot accept any user input. They are ideal for status update type of the message. Here is an example of two toast notifications in different color schemes:

And here is how toast notification appears when used in an app:

Toast notifications are really simple to use and single line of code is used to display them, for example:

        ToastNotification.Show(this, "Establishing connection...")

We have also added very simple Line control. While drawing lines is easy, sometimes its much more convenient to have control which draws a line. This control is for those times.

There are more than 70 new features and fixes in this release. Here are detailed Release Notes.

Do not forget that our online Knowledge Base is getting updated constantly and is great source of information and tips on DotNetBar usage. If you have current DotNetBar license download latest release on Customer Only web site. Fully functional trial version is also available. Thank you so much for using our controls.

We make WinForms, WPF and Silverlight components to help you create professional looking apps with ease. Check them out here.

Today we released first new version of DotNetBar in 2013 with brand new Radial Menu control, notification marks for buttons and tiles as well as countless improvement to our very popular SuperGrid control.

Radial Menu control provides fast and visually pleasing way to execute commands in user interface using minimum movement of finger or mouse. It is very well suited for both touch based and mouse only based configurations. Following image shows Radial Menu control:

DotNetBar Radial Menu Control

Radial Menu control included two menu types. Segment menu type as shown in image above and Circular menu type as shown in image below:

DotNetBar Radial Menu

What these screen-shots do not show is animation and fluidity this control works with. Please check out the short videos that show-off fluid animation we built into the this control on Radial Menu web-page. We also wrote an knowledge base article which covers most of what you need to know to work with control effectively.

There is new sample project (RadialMenu) included with this release which shows how to use the control from code and how to customize its color scheme.

Also new are handy notification marks that you can display on top of the ButtonItem buttons and Metro tiles. This is how that looks like:

DotNetBar Notification Marks

Make sure to check out our redesigned samples explorer which runs after install is complete. I think you will be pleasantly surprised by new design.

There are more than 130 new features and fixes in this release. Here are detailed Release Notes.

Do not forget that our online Knowledge Base is getting updated constantly and is great source of information and tips on DotNetBar usage.

We make WinForms, WPF and Silverlight components to help you create professional looking apps with ease. Check them out here.

Hello Good People!

Today we releasing 11.1 version of DotNetBar with often asked for multi-column support on ComboBoxEx drop-down and virtual data mode in SuperGrid when using data-binding for quick, easy, and fast automatic binding to existing data with thousands or millions of rows.

Multi-column drop-down is now built into the ComboBoxEx control and its activated when you set DataSource and DropDownColumns properties. Control will switch to multi-column display mode and it will display specified fields on drop-down:

Multi Column ComboBox Control

Multi-column drop-down by default can be resized and close button for drop-down is visible. Control will automatically create column header text based on field names, but they can be easily changed by setting DropDownColumnsHeaders property.

SuperGrid control now can be used in virtual mode while using data-binding. Virtual mode can be enabled for every type of supported bound data (IList, IListSource, IBindingSource, DataTable, DataSet).

To do this, simply set the VirtualMode property and establish your DataSource and DataMember bindings as normal. Do not set the VirtualRowCount as this will be maintained automatically from the bound data-source. The SuperGrid will do the rest and perform all on-demand loading, updating, and purging of bound data rows. All row insertions, deletions, and updates are fully supported for both Virtual and non-VirtualMode bound data.

Note that all the inherent characteristics of VirtualMode interaction apply to bound data just as they do to non-bound data – in particular, nested panels and nested rows are not permitted and all rows are of equal set height (VirtualRowHeight).

There are more than 45 new features and fixes in this release. Here are detailed Release Notes.

Do not forget that our online Knowledge Base is getting updated constantly and is great source of information and tips on DotNetBar usage.

You can download the latest build of DotNetBar at http://www.devcomponents.com/

We make WinForms, WPF and Silverlight components to help you create professional looking apps with ease. Check them out here.

Howdy Good People!

Today we releasing 11.2 version of DotNetBar with Visual Studio 2012 inspired Light and Dark themes. Here are two screen-shots of Light and Dark theme from our sample:

And dark theme:

Both of these themes are Metro based themes which means that they will also affect ambient colors (BackColor, ForeColor) of controls on the form. Using StyleManager you can switch to one of these new themes and using StyleManagerAmbient component on your form you can control which controls receive ambient settings from StyleManager.

There are more than 70 new features and fixes in this release. Do not forget that our online Knowledge Base is getting updated constantly and is great source of information and tips on DotNetBar usage.

You can download latest build of DotNetBar at http://www.devcomponents.com/

We make WinForms, WPF and Silverlight components to help you create professional looking apps with ease. Check them out here.

Today we are releasing 11.4 version of DotNetBar with new Range Slider control. Range Slider control provides your applications with ability to input numerical range selection. Here is screen-shot of this new control:

Range is selected by user moving the range buttons while control displays customizable tooltip which shows current range:

RangeSlider also supports horizontal and vertical orientations:

Tick marks can be placed above, below or on both sides of range buttons:

Custom images can be set to be used instead of built-in range buttons:

To learn more about RangeSlider please read following Knowledge Base article.

There are over 30 new features and fixes in this release. Here are detailed Release Notes.

If you have current DotNetBar license download latest release on Customer Only web site. Fully functional trial version is also available. Thank you so much for using our controls.

Stay tuned. We are working on some big stuff for this year…

We make WinForms, WPF and Silverlight components to help you create professional looking apps with ease. Check them out here.

8StartButton is very nicely executed app and new addition to our Application Gallery . 8StartButton adds back the Windows Start Menu that was removed in Windows 8 and adds many other useful options above and beyond what Start Menu provides and all for very reasonable price. Its fantastic looking application and if you are using Windows 8 and are missing Start Menu, like most do ;-) , I recommend checking it out. Free trial download is available. 8StartButton uses many of our controls like Radial Menu control, Metro Tiles, Item Panels etc.

Here are couple of screenshots:

8StartButton usage of DotNetBar RadialMenu control

8StartButton usage of DotNetBar Metro Tiles, Item Panels and other controls.

Thank you Stefan!

We make WinForms, WPF and Silverlight components to help you create professional looking apps with ease. Check them out here.

Today we are releasing DotNetBar for WPF 7.3 with shiny new DataForm control which makes it easy for you to create editable forms. DataForm control can create editable form without any input on your parts by examining properties on your object and creating appropriate editors for each editable property. Of course, you can specify which properties will be displayed and which editors will be used by either marking your properties with our custom attributes or by providing 100% XAML based definitions as well as using code only.

Here is screen-shot from included sample which also shows the sub-fields functionality implemented in address group:

Validation can be performed at both property level and form level. On form level you define validation rules on DataForm control, while on property level you use standard WPF validation. Please make sure to check out DataFrom Knowledge Base article for more details.

New Samples Explorer

New release of DotNetBar for WPF 7.3 also includes our new samples explorer which is by default started after you complete the install. You can find complete source code for this app as well in My Documents\DotNetBar for WPF Samples.

Here are detailed Release Notes. If you have current DotNetBar license download latest release onCustomer Only web site. Fully functional trial version is also available. We are working on even more major new exciting features and please do not hesitate to send me your feedback and wishes. Thank you for using our controls and please let me know how you like them.

We make WinForms, WPF and Silverlight components to help you create professional looking apps with ease. Check them out here.

Often I am asked how to do something in code that is done using VS.NET designer. And answer is actually very simply since in most cases everything that you do using VS.NET designer, ends up being serialized into code. InitializeComponent() method in Visual Studio.NET C# or VB.NET is method that is automatically created and managed by Windows Forms designer and it defines everything you see on the form. Everything done on the form in VS.NET using designers generates code. Every single control added and property set will generate code and that code goes into InitializeComponent() method. So when you create anything using VS.NET designer, it will end up in this method. This means you can use this to your advantage to learn how to create any UI element using code.

When you run the app (or open the form in VS.NET), code from InitializeComponent() method creates and configures controls just as you did in the designer. So every single change you make gets reflected in InitializeComponent() method. This means that doing things at design-time and run-time is essentially the same. Note that you should not modify this method manually since it might confuse the VS.NET designer. However you should use it to learn how to do things from code and how to setup controls and components correctly.

In C# access to this method is always visible through form constructor. Simply position the cursor in InitializeComponent method call and press F12 in VS.NET and Form .designer file will open to show the implementation of the InitializeComponent method.

In VB.NET the Visual Studio hides the access to InitializeComponent method. Actual method implementation is in Form.designer.vb file for that form. File is accessible via Solution Explorer once you have clicked on the Show All Files toolbar button which you can find on top of the Solution Explorer window. Following video shows how to do this:

So if you want to find out how to create controls or setup things from code you can easily discover how to do that by doing what you want to do from code in VS.NET designer, say adding controls to the form and changing their properties, then you go to InitializeComponent() method and look through code that is generated and which shows how to create everything you see on the form. The easiest is to start with new form and simply add the controls to it and change their properties then go to InitializeComponent method to see how its done from code.

We make WinForms, WPF and Silverlight components to help you create professional looking apps with ease. Check them out here.

Today we are releasing 11.5 version of DotNetBar with brand new Layout Control. LayoutControl helps you create resolution and DPI independent user interface data entry forms. Its built-in layout logic will re-flow its content to fit available bounds and size constraints. Following screen-shot shows the layout control in action with two different sizes of host form and without any code necessary on your part:

LayoutControl allows for fixed and relative sizing of controls added to it and you can create both flow and table like layouts easily. Additionally it provides built-in text labels with symbols and images as well as text-markup support. Layout Control is something that we will grow over coming weeks so expect many new features to be added.

To learn more about Layout Control please read following Knowledge Base article.

There are over 50 new features and fixes in this release. Here are detailed Release Notes.

If you have current DotNetBar license download latest release on Customer Only web site. Fully functional trial version is also available. Thank you so much for using our controls.

Stay tuned. We are working on some big stuff for this year…

We make WinForms, WPF and Silverlight components to help you create professional looking apps with ease. Check them out here.

Hello Good People!

Today we are releasing 11.5.1 version of DotNetBar with grouping support for our new layout control. Groups are like nested layout controls inside each other and allow you to create layouts that otherwise would not be possible. Here is an example of layout that cannot be created unless you use new LayoutGroup item:

Notice two groups that have Width=50% are displayed side by side with left group containing 3 text-boxes and right group containing the text-box and RichTextBox controls. Notice how group on the right has customized background and border through LayoutGroup.Style properties.

Each LayoutGroup can also display captions/headers. Here is caption displayed on left with customized appearance through CaptionStyle property:

Using Appearance property you can specify that LayoutGroup should be drawn using one of our predefined system appearances so group is rendered like PanelEx or GroupPanel:

To learn more about Layout Control and new grouping support please read following Knowledge Base article.

If you have current DotNetBar license download latest release on Customer Only web site. Fully functional trial version is also available. Thank you so much for using our controls. Stay tuned for more :-)

We make WinForms, WPF and Silverlight components to help you create professional looking apps with ease. Check them out here.

Visual Studio.NET templates are canned bits and pieces of code that you can choose for example when adding new item like form to your VS.NET project. The templates are stored in your My Documents folder like so:

Item Templates: My Documents\Visual Studio 2012\Templates\ItemTemplates
Project Templates: My Documents\Visual Studio 2012\Templates\ProjectTemplates

In each of these folders there are sub-folders to target specific language like Visual C#, Visual Basic etc.

Project templates are templates for complete VS.NET project. Templates are a set of zip files that get expanded into the template by VS.NET. Once you copy your .zip files into the templates directory, you need to instruct the VS.NET to rebuild its cache of templates or otherwise they will not show up:

Open a Visual Studio command line shell
Execute devenv /installvstemplates

You can find in-depth overview of how to work with templates on MSDN site: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/6db0hwky.aspx

We make WinForms, WPF and Silverlight components to help you create professional looking apps with ease. Check them out here.

DotNetBar for WinForms 10.1 Released with 3 NEW controls

Time Selector

Touch Keyboard

Page Slider

New Time Selector Style for DotNetBar for WinForms

DotNetBar for WinForms 10.2 Released with NEW SuperGrid Control

SuperGrid

MetroTilePanel

DotNetBar for WinForms 10.4 Release with 2 NEW Controls

DotNetBar for WPF 7.1 Release with NEW Data-Grid Control

DotNetBar for WinForms 10.6 Released with Metro Ribbon Styling, VS.NET 11 support and more

DotNetBar for WinForms 10.7 Released with SuperGrid Data Grouping Feature

DotNetBar for WinForms 10.8 Released with Office 2013 Styling and 220 Symbols Included

DotNetBar for WPF 7.2 released with Office 2013 like styling for the Ribbon, Docking, Editors and Scheduler controls

DotNetBar for WinForms 10.9 released with Toast Notifications component

DotNetBar for WinForms 11.0 Released with Radial Menu Control

DotNetBar for WinForms 11.1 Released with Multi-Column ComboBox and Virtual Data-Binding in SuperGrid

DotNetBar for WinForms 11.2 Released with Visual Studio 2012 Inspired Light and Dark Themes

DotNetBar for WinForms 11.4 Released with NEW Range Slider Control

Apps Using DotNetBar: 8StartButton

DotNetBar for WPF 7.3 With New DataForm Released

New Samples Explorer

How to learn to create controls from code using InitializeComponent() method

DotNetBar for WinForms 11.5 Released with Layout Control

DotNetBar for WinForms 11.5.1 Released with Grouping support in Layout Control

How to Install Visual Studio.NET Templates