ASP.NET New Features - 2009 Volume 1

In the first release of ASP.NET controls for 2009, we have packed 4 new ASP.NET AJAX controls, a new and interoperable framework enabling drag-and-drop operations within the browser, enhancements to the WebDataGrid™ that we introduced in our last release, and even more new features to benefit and further empower your Web development. Let's dig down into these new features here and now.

 

WebDataTree™ - NEW!

The no-touch ASP.NET AJAX data tree control that allows users to navigate through hierarchical tree nodes. Here are some of its greatest features:

Hierarchical data that can be edited within the WebDataTree.
  • Hierarchical View – Hierarchical tree view of your data in the form of nodes can be populated by data binding to any Hierarchical DataSource including the Infragistics WebHierarchicalDataSource™ control.
  • Single/Multi Node Selection – Users can select one or multiple tree nodes by either Shift- or Ctrl- clicking multiple nodes. At any given time, one node on the tree can be the active node and the tree can persist this active node even as the user moves focus to other controls on the page.
  • Keyboard Navigation – Users can move around the tree, collapsing and expanding nodes, using intuitive keys like the arrow keys, Enter key and Space bar.
    Load submenus on-demand in the WebDataTree.
  • Load on Demand – For best performance, nodes are only data bound when the user expands their parent node. This can be handled automatically in the case of data sets with a few declarative property settings, or for greater control you can manually manage how the tree loads additional nodes from your data source. As the tree is loading, it can display a loading message to the user that you can customize through its template.
    Bi/Tri-state checkboxes in the WebDataTree.
  • Bi/Tri State Checkboxes – Enable checkboxes on tree nodes that allow users to individually check/uncheck them. Tri-state logic allow nodes to be in either a checked, an unchecked or an indeterminate state.
  • Animations – When child nodes come into view or collapse out of sight, they can do so using a variety of different animation effects.
    Use ASP.NET templates to customize nodes in the WebDataTree.
  • Customizable Nodes – Tree nodes can have their own image, present themselves as a template (for instance, perhaps with a checkbox), and they can even be edited by the user if your tree were presenting heterogeneous data.
    Plenty of style sets are included with the WebDataTree.
  • Plenty of Stylable States – Custom style the appearance of activation, selection, disabling of nodes, the default node appearance, specific individual nodes, and the mouse over effect.

WebDataMenu™ - NEW!

This new hierarchical navigation control empowers users to navigate your Web site or application as the main menu or a custom context menu. Orient your menu as your environment requires, and the ASP.NET AJAX menu control will have no trouble appearing either horizontally or vertically in the direction in which there is enough room available. It generates its hierarchy in two ways: you can add items and subitems, or you can databind to a hierarchical data source like the SiteMapDataSource. Check out these features of the WebDataMenu:

Horizontal cascading menus dropdown from the WebDataMenu.
  • Hierarchical View – Enable expeditious navigation around your Web site with any degree of nesting of its cascading menu items.
    Vertical cascading WebDataMenu intelligently opens away from the left edge of its enclosing window.
  • Auto Positioning – Whether you orient the menu vertically or horizontally, place it near the edge of the screen or in the middle, its ability to intelligently position its submenus where they will have enough space to expand keeps your user on track at all times.
  • Selection and Activation - Users can select menu items with their mouse or keyboard. At any given time, one item in the menu can be the active item, and the menu can optionally persist this active menu item even after your user leaves the menu so that when they return, they can pick-up from where they left off.
    Turn any SiteMapDataSource into a sophisticated-looking menu in no time with the WebDataMenu.
  • Data Binding – The menu supports direct data binding to a SiteMapDataSource control to integrate with the sitemap files you have today, and any hierarchical DataSource as well as to our Infragistics WebHierarchicalDataSource™ control.
  • Keyboard Navigation – Users can move around the menus entirely with their keyboard, using keys intuitively like the arrow keys to expand submenus or the Space bar to select a menu item.
    WebDataMenu items showing their default tooltip text.
  • Tooltips - Menu items can project customizable tooltip text, and offer the end user helpful advice.
  • Animations – Submenus can appear or disappear using many different animated effects.
    WebDataMenu used as an ASP.NET pop-up context menu.
  • Context Menu – Users can bring up a context menu, that you can populate with context-sensitive tasks that you would like them to be able to perform.
    Menu items show their elaborate customizability when ASP.NET templates are applied.
  • Customizable Menu Items - Menu items are templatable so you can control how they look and feel, for example you could create a template for checkable menu items. Menu items can be given their own image, they can also be set to act as separators.
    There are many style sets included with the WebDataMenu.
  • Plenty of Stylable States – Custom style the appearance of activation, selection, disabling of menu items, the default menu item appearance, specific individual menu items, and the hover effect a menu item should display when it is moused over.

WebDropDown™ - NEW!

At Infragistics we try to deliver what our customers ask for, and we heard requests for a new, lightweight dropdown control as an alternative to the multi-column WebCombo™, so that is what we are delivering to you. This new dropdown features auto-suggest and an editor display much like a combo box, but can also display multi-columns (through templating), and has full ASP.NET AJAX capabilities built-in so that it loads its items on demand for optimal performance. Here are some of its key features:

WebDropDown with template multi-column view of its list items.
  • Templatable Dropdown – Whether you use it as a combo box or a multi-column drop down like the one shown above, the flexibility of WebDropDown's template support, ASP.NET AJAX load on demand capabilities, and data binding make WebDropDown™ the last dropdown control you will ever need.
    WebDropDown with checkbox list items shows one way in which users can select multiple items.
  • Single and Multi-Selection – Your users can select one or multiple items from the drop down list, as necessary. These item values are furnished back to you in an easily parsed manner. At any time, one item in the drop down can be the active item and is shown with a distinguished style that sets it apart from non-active items, or selected items.
  • Auto-Sort – Drop down items can appear automatically sorted, making it easier for the user to find the item they wish to pick from an alphabetical listing.
    WebDropDown showing a suggestion after the user starts typing.
  • Auto-Suggest – Give users a suggestive hint as they type in a value, and they can choose an item from the drop down more quickly saving them time and making them more productive. As the user types, the matching text in drop down items below are automatically highlighted to call attention to themselves.
    WebDropDown auto-positions its cascading dropdown window where there is the most space.
  • Automatic Positioning – No matter what orientation you place the drop down in on your form, its intelligent auto-positioning will open its contents in the direction that ensures the easiest user experience.
    When users enter custom values into the WebDropDown, it can persist those values for you.
  • Custom Value Persistance – You can opt to restrict input to only the values in the drop down or allow the user to enter their own value, much like in a combo box. Any custom entered value will be remembered by WebDropDown.
    When there are a large number of items, the WebDropDown allows you to set-up paging.
  • Data Paging - When you have a large number of drop down items, it can display a pager so that the user can flip through options, loading them one page at a time.
    WebDropDown supports Scroll-on-Demand which only loads list items when the user is about to scroll them into view.
  • Scroll on Demand – With its No-Touch ASP.NET AJAX, the WebDropDown can callback to load additional drop down items only when the user is about to scroll them into view.
  • Keyboard Navigation – Instead of scrolling with the mouse, users have the option of using the keys on their keyboard to jump or scroll through the drop down listing.
  • Animation Effects – A variety of animation effects can be chosen that control how the value list drops down from the control.
    There are many style sets that you can apply to the WebDropDown to give it a variety of appearances.
  • Plenty of Stylable States - Custom style the appearance of activation, selection, disabling of value choices, the default value choice appearance, and the mouse hover effect.

WebProgressBar™ - NEW!

Increase user awareness of long-running Web page operations with the new ASP.NET AJAX progress bar control, WebProgressBar. Its complete client-side and server-side APIs give you freedom to update users of your operation's progress on-the-fly. With its animation support you can tailor how you want the progress bar to update itself, and with its stylability you can align and format labels at key points along the progress bar. You'll struggle to remember it's a Web control when you see it simulating the look and feel of how a desktop progress bar always styles its text label so that it can standout from the bar background behind it.

The key features of the new WebProgressBar include these just to mention a few:

You can give your animated progress bar any appearance you like to indicate the progress of lengthy operations to your Web users.
  • Animated Progress – Show users the progress of lengthy operations with this customizable progress bar.
    You can format the progress bar labels and use it inside of the WebDataGrid to display cell values like a linear gauge.
  • Formattable – The label and any tooltips can be custom formatted to present values like the percentage complete in the manner your application requires.
    WebProgressBar can be oriented vertically.  WebProgressBar can be oriented horizontally.
  • Orientations – You can give the WebProgressBar a horizontal or a vertical orientation.
    Observe how the text label in the foreground stands out against the moving progress bar in the background.
  • Looks Like a Windows Forms Progress Bar – The percentage complete label can be aligned to run across the length of the progress bar as it continuously updates. When the percentage complete label overlaps the progress bar, it will partially re-style itself so that it maintains contrast with the bar background color behind it.

WebDataGrid - Enhanced

We have added two great new features to the Infragistics ASP.NET AJAX data grid control, WebDataGrid, that make it much more interactive for your end users.

Column Moving

With the new Column Moving behavior that we have added, you can configure the WebDataGrid to allow users to drag column headers to new locations where they would like that column to go. This lets users have a great deal of configurability in the layout of the data grid as they are working with it. Dynamic features like sensing how closely the user is dragging a floating column header to the other column headers of the data grid, and then intuitively fading out if the user moves his or her mouse pointer away from the data grid (as if to abandon the drag operation), help make the user interface sympathetic to the user's change of heart.

An end user drags the Company column over so that it appears before the Address column in Infragistics ASP.NET AJAX data grid.

There are several client-side events for Column Moving, some firing before and after a column is moved, that you can handle with your own Javascript so as to cancel moves of certain columns based on arbitrary logic, or just to prevent certain columns from being dropped at particular positions.

Drop Down Editor Provider

Now you can use the new WebDropDown control that we have introduced as an editor within the ASP.NET AJAX grid control itself. When one of the grid's cells goes into edit mode, you can have it use WebDropDown to show a value list from which your users can choose.

Using the WebDropDown editor to present a value list of Product Names in the Infragistics ASP.NET AJAX data grid.

You can also make use of any of the other rich features the WebDropDown makes available. The lightweight editor provider model always has minimizing markup rendering and high performance goals in mind, by sharing one WebDropDown instance for all of the cells in a column it substantially cuts down on the weight of your Web page.

 

Infragistics Drag & Drop Framework - NEW!

The Infragistics Drag & Drop Framework gives you generic drag-and-drop in your ASP.NET AJAX applications that is simple to use and operates in a completely cross-browser fashion based on the Document Object Model (or DOM). Because it works directly with nodes from the DOM, it can be used in your Web applications interoperably with not just Infragistics controls, but also in-box or third-party controls.

Drag and drop items from one area to another using the Infragistics Drag & Drop Framework.

Here are some of the Infragistics Drag & Drop Framework's major features:

  • Comprehensive Drag & Drop – The Infragistics Drag & Drop Framework is completely client-side and works based on the HTML DOM elements on the page, so you can use it to enhance and enrich the behavior of not only Infragistics ASP.NET AJAX controls but other content on your page, even third-party controls.
  • Customizable Mouse Cursors – You can control the mouse Cursors users can use, and what their effect will be, all in very little code.
  • Customizable Drag Element – As your users drag an element from one place to another, you can customize what they see floating across the screen with their mouse pointer. Clone and/or ghost the element being dragged, or use something entirely different like a “document” icon if that’s what your application needs.
  • Copy and Move – You can copy an element from one place to another with the Infragistics Drag & Drop Framework, or just move it to a new location.

 

Application Styling Framework™ - Enhanced

The Application Styling Framework for ASP.NET has been enhanced with the addition of consolidated page management, and custom CSS class registration.

  • Consolidated Page Management - A single Application Styling setting now manages the styling of all of your ASP.NET AJAX and ASP.NET controls on the page.
  • Custom CSS Class Registration – You can now create custom CSS styles from within code and register them with the Application Styling Framework's CSS registry, enabling you to enjoy greater centralized management of your CSS styles.

 

Browser Support for Google® Chrome™ - NEW!

This release of the NetAdvantage ASP.NET controls adds support in all ASP.NET AJAX (i.e., Aikido Framework-based) controls and the WebSchedule™ controls  for Google's recently released browser, Chrome.  We've leveraged our standards compliance, and done plenty of testing to assure these controls in the 2009 Volume 1 release will work well for your users when they have chosen this new, high-performance browser.