Application Styling for ASP.NET - ALL NEW !

Application Styling is a ground-breaking concept in ASP.NET development that allows developers and graphic designers to collaborate more efficiently. The developer creates the application, while graphic designer simultaneously creates styles that can be used in that application. When finished, the graphic designer delivers the style library to the developer who then loads it into the application with minimal coding. Developing world-class applications with a stylish look and feel to go along with it has never been easier. Whether you're a one-person shop or an enterprise-level business, everyone can reap the benefits of Infragistics' Application Styling Framework™ (ASF) – and the key to realizing these benefits is the new NetAdvantage AppStylist® for ASP.NET product.

NetAdvantage AppStylist for ASP.NET is a stand-alone application that runs outside of the Microsoft® Visual Studio® IDE. NetAdvantage AppStylist for ASP.NET lets you style every detail of your application leveraging industry standard Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) technology. Use the simple point-and-click interface to repaint styles on the canvas like an artist. The user interface is divided into three intuitive sections:

• Canvas – This section shows an example of your current style as it appears on a control. Whenever you change a style's settings it dynamically updates to give you immediate visual feedback.
• Style Explorer – This section lets you select styles that you want to modify based on the role they play in either the user interface or on a particular type of control.
• Properties Panel – This section is where you will enjoy flexibility experimenting with the look and feel of different style settings. Use either its ribbon of intuitive property editors or, for the more advanced designer, edit CSS classes directly in a syntax coloring editor.

NetAdvantage Application Styling Configuration

The NetAdvantage Application Styling Configuration Add-in plugs into the Visual Studio .NET Tools menu so that it can be used at design-time to configure and modify the ASF-related settings for your application. This Add-in allows you to:

• Enable/disable Application Styling for a project.
• Change the StyleSet Path.
• Change the default StyleSet that is applied when Application Styling is enabled.
• Import one or more StyleSets from a control's Style Library.
• Choose the default options for Application Styling.

WebGauge™ PUBLIC BETA – ALL NEW!

The WebGauge combines separate visual components and graphics to create multifaceted gauges for 3 main types of visual display: Radial, Linear and Digital. This full featured beta will be distributed as part of the NetAdvantage for .NET install, although some features will be subject to change by final release.

Linear Gauge

Represents a range of values arranged rectangularly and these values can be arranged horizontally or vertically. This control usually contains one or more sections that represent a specific range. The Needle or Bar markers then move along the axis to mark one or more values. A horizontally oriented gauge is similar to a fuel gauge; a vertically oriented gauge is similar to a thermometer.

Radial Gauge

Displays data in a circular fashion. Although a Radial Gauge can also be square, the Needle and Bar markers that represent current values, rotate much like the hands of a clock.

Digital Gauge

Represents values similarly to a digital watch or alarm clock. Each digit within the value is rendered by arranging various “Sections". A Digital Gauge can provide an odometer-like view to an existing gauge, or stand alone. Also in WebGauge, alpha and numeric characters are supported in the digital gauge function.

Additionally, you can combine types of gauges to create a multi-faceted control that displays more than one style of gauge, as shown below. Essentially, all objects in WebGauge can be fully customized using any of the three types of gauges.

WebGrid™ – Enhanced

Explore the powerful new WebGrid™ features that were added in the 2007 Volume 1 release:

Filter Row Added To WebGrid

The Filter Row feature places an empty row at the top or bottom, depending upon the setting of WebGrid's FilterRowView property. The filter row contains a button, that allows you to choose the type of filter operation/condition that should be applied to the value provided by the end user. Currently, the operators available are as follows:

• Equals
• Not Equals
• Like
• Not Like
• Less Than
• Less Than Or Equals
• Greater Than
• Greater Than Or Equals
• Starts With
• Does Not Start With
• Ends With
• Does Not End With
• Contains
• Does Not Contain

Previously, WebGrid used a Quicksort algorithm to sort data in a specific column or band. However, the issue was that it wasn't always the fastest algorithm for the data that needed to be sorted. Another problem with the Quicksort algorithm is that WebGrid cannot automatically determine the data dispersion, and cannot select the proper algorithm to use based on this information.

In 2007 Volume 1, WebGrid was enhanced to allow you to select the most appropriate sorting algorithm for your data, based on your knowledge of the data dispersion.

Support for Copy and Paste Between Microsoft Excel and WebGrid

The ability to copy and paste data to and from Microsoft Excel to WebGrid is a very common need. In 2007 Volume 1, the functionality to accomplish this task was added to WebGrid, with the addition of Cut/Copy/Paste Operations. Minimal effort is required on the part of the developer to allow copy and paste functionality to an end user, because the copy and paste operations use the standard shortcut keys like many standard Windows programs.

WebGrid Support For Cut/Copy/Paste Operations

A common feature in most spreadsheet applications is the ability to cut or copy items in a cell and paste the data into multiple cells aswell as cut or copy columns/rows and paste them into multiple columns/rows. This cut/copy/paste functionality is available in Microsoft's® Excel, and has become in high demand in other applications. WebGrid now allows for Excel-style cutting, copying and pasting of data. The functionality available for copying, cutting and pasting is as follows:

• Cut or copy single cell values and paste it into multiple cells.
• Cut or copy multiple cells and paste them into multiple cells.
• Cut or copy columns or rows and paste them into other columns or rows.
  

If an invalid paste operation is attempted exceptions will be raised by WebGrid, which can be caught in the ClipboardError event. For example, trying to paste an entire row into a single cell, or attempting to paste multiple cells into cells that do not match in structure or count will throw an exception.

XML Support for Mozilla Firefox

When utilizing AJAX behavior, it is key to make the data transmissions as light and fast as possible. One way to achieve this optimized data flow is to use XML data transfer between the client and server. Once the data arrives to the client, the XML is transformed into the proper HTML using XSLT. For several volume releases, WebGrid has been able to transfer XML data this way in Microsoft® Internet Explorer. Starting in 2007 Volume 1, WebGrid's XML data transfer mechanism was extended to Mozilla® Firefox for AJAX-enabled features.

WebResizingExtender™ – ALL NEW!

Resize the following containers on a Web page:

1. Microsoft Panel
2. UpdatePanel™
3. Infragistics WebPanel™
4. Infragistics WebAsyncRefreshPanel
5. The following HTML elements - TABLE, SPAN, TD, DIV, INPUT

The WebResizingExtender control requires Microsoft's ASP.NET AJAX Extensions framework to be installed. You essentially attach the WebResizingExtender control to a container on the page, and it causes the target element to wrap.

WebAsyncRefreshPanel™ (WARP Panel™) – Enhanced

Many additional properties, events and methods to fine tune your programming options

Adding Custom Scripts to Owner of an Async Postback

The new CallBackManager.AddScriptBlock method allows custom scripts to be added to a particular owner of an asynchronous postback. The added block will execute within the asynchronous response.

Enabling the Processing of Scripts and Styles

You can use the following new methods to enable or disable the processing of scripts and styles:

• EnableScriptSrcProcessing - This method controls the processing of script blocks that contain JavaScript files, which are registered with the page. Used for JavaScript files that have already been loaded, so that the files aren't double-loaded. This method defaults to True, so JavaScript blocks are processed and passed to the client. Disabling this method can improve overall performance in an application.
• EnableStyleProcess - This method controls the processing of style objects in the page header or style objects that are registered with the page. This method defaults to True, so styles are processed and passed to client. Disabling this method can improve performance in an application.
  

Cancelling Async Postbacks or Responses Client-Side

A new client-side event handler, addCBSubmitListener, has been added. This handler can be used to cancel an asynchronous postback or response by setting the following new properties to True:

1. cancelSubmit - A boolean property that, cancels the submission.
2. cancelResponse - A boolean property that, when set to True, cancels the Response.
   

Triggering an Async Postback Client-Side

A new client-side method called "refresh" has been added that can be used to trigger an asynchronous postback for the WARP panel.

Auto-Triggering a Postback Using a Refresh Interval

A new server-side property, RefreshInterval, has been added that allows you to specify a time interval, which can be used to automatically trigger a postback. The interval is measured between the last response and the next new request, and incoming responses will disrupt the editing process in fields located in the panel.

In addition to the server-side RefreshInterval property, two new client-side methods were added:

• getTimer - Returns the refresh interval in milliseconds.
• setTimer - Sets the refresh interval in milliseconds.

Specifying a Wildcard Character in TriggerControlIDs

You can now specify the wildcard ('*') character for common parts of the ID string, and all controls with UniqueIDs that match against the wildcard will be included. This is very useful when the control is located in an INamingContainer such as a UserControl.

Specifying Controls to Watch

Two new properties have been added to the WARP Panel that allow you to specify controls to watch.

• TriggerPostBackIDs - Gets/sets a list of child control IDs located inside an associating WARP Panel that may a trigger full postback. Allows wildcard usage.
• TriggerPostBackNoResponseIDs - Gets/sets a list of control IDs that trigger an asynchronous postback with a suppressed response. This property is designed to notify the server about an event on a client without processing a response.

Client-Side Error Event

A new client-side event called Error has been added. This event fires when an error has occurred.

Parameter Added to the RefreshRequest Client-Side Event

A third parameter has been added to the client-side event, RefreshRequest. This parameter is the ID of the HTML element that triggered the postback. You can also cancel the event currently using the Cancel property off the oEvent parameter.

WebTab™ – Enhanced

Vertical text orientation is now honored in Firefox

In previous releases, when the TextOrientation property was set to Vertical only Microsoft® Internet Explorer would render the tabs vertically; all other browsers would ignore the setting. In 2007 Volume 1, the Vertical setting is now honored in Firefox. To make this happen the text on the tab is broken into vertical lines, and each line contains one character.

BeforeAsyncSubmit client-side event improvement

The BeforeAsyncSubmit client-side event now has a fourth parameter that can be passed in. This parameter is the ID of the HTML that triggered the postback.

Another enhancement was made to the BeforeAsyncSubmit client-side event. Off the oEvent parameter, you can now cancel the response or trigger a full postback by specifying the following two new properties:

• cancelResponse - A boolean property that, when set to True, will cancel the response.
• fullPostBack - A boolean property that, when set to True, will force a full postback.

WebMenu™ – Enhanced

We modified the Enhanced Rendering feature so that when you create a new instance of WebMenu, the Enhanced Rendering feature is now enabled by default.

WebSpellChecker™ – Enhanced

Adding Canadian and Australian Dictionaries. Now with a total of nine languages, WebSpellChecker dictionaries are more adaptable to client’s needs based on specific geographic areas of language.

Below are the languages that WebSpellChecker dictionaries now support:

• Australian
• Canadian
• Dutch
• English
• French
• German
• Portuguese
• Spanish