Silverlight Controls New Features - 2009 Volume 1

In this premiere release of NetAdvantage® for Web Client – Silverlight controls for your line of business application development we give you a broad-based toolset that immediately augments your Visual Studio 2008 toolbox with rich, relevant, high performance UI controls. We summarize their major features here for you to review, but also check out each control for additional information and our online Silverlight samples which you can explore.

 

xamWebGrid™ - NEW!

Introducing our new Silverlight grid control: the xamWebGrid. This grid has been proven to be faster than other Silverlight grid controls on the market. It is the high performance, hierarchical data grid for giving your end users a wide range of features and functionality they will instantly recognize and appreciate. Many of its features and behaviors they will already be familiar with from working with the Microsoft® Excel® spreadsheet software. Now you can give them these capabilities all within a Web-based application and while maintaining a superior level of performance.


In-Cell Editing

We've done in-cell editing right for a really seamless Silverlight editing experience that we think your users will enjoy and which is really easy to set-up in xamWebGrid. Your users can place editable cells into edit mode in many ways, including (but not limited to) double-clicking on them, or pressing F2 while in the cell.

In-cell editing enabled for the Silverlight grid control just by double-clicking or pressing F2.


Fixed Columns

Sometimes your users have to work with large numbers of columns in their data, just like in an Excel spreadsheet, and xamWebGrid is up to that task because it supports fixed columns. Users have only to fix a column to either the left or right side of the grid by dragging it there, and that will cause it to fix itself in place (a grid column can also be designated as fixed programmatically).

Now when your users scroll through their columns horizontally, their important reference columns will remain stationary. This makes comparisons between columns that much more efficient for your users, resulting in improved productivity. For example, your users can easily compare columns that would otherwise be far to the right, to the contents in a left-fixed column (like "Last Name") that remains in place.

Fixed column support in the Silverlight grid control makes users more efficient and productive when performing data analysis.


Column Moving

Column moving makes it easy for your users to rearrange the columns of the Silverlight grid control into any sequence that they want. All your users have to do is click and drag a column to their left or right, until they reach the position at which they would like and then they drop it. Your underlying data remains the same, and you don't need to change the order of fields in your database queries or anything. No trip to the server is necessary. The column moves entirely within the client's browser delivering the best performance possible in a Web-based application.

Users can drag and drop columns to a new position within the Silverlight grid control with ease.


Paging

The Silverlight data grid control allows your users to page through data using a customizable pager element which you can position and align within the grid (for example, you can have it appear on the bottom left or right), and fully style by template. Users can jump to the beginning or end of the data, move forward or back one page at a time, or go to specific page numbers. Quick paging will confine the number of page indices displayed to a reasonable quantity when there could be hundreds of pages (too many to display), enabling users to quickly jump to close-by pages while concealing those that lie further away.

New templatable pager in the Silverlight data grid.


Resizable Columns

Column resizing provides your users with the ability to intuitively rearrange and personalize the layout of their Silverlight grid, enabling you to create richer, data-intensive Line of Business applications.

Users can simply mouse over the edge of column headers, and drag them from side to side (in either indicator or immediate mode) to resize that column. Users can also select multiple columns, to resize them all at once. We also enable double-clicking of the column to auto-size its width so that it best accommodates its content. All of these settings can be customized, or overridden within child bands.

Drag and drop column resizing is enabled in the Silverlight data grid.


Add New Row

Simplify data entry for your users by positioning an empty add new row at the top or bottom (or both) of your Silverlight grid application. When you choose to display an add new row on the Silverlight grid control, your users will have at their disposal a completely blank row that they can fill-in with values. When they are finished editing that row, it is automatically inserted into the rows collection at the appropriate position.

An empty Add New Row awaiting data entry in the Silverlight data grid.
 

Row Filtering

Users enjoy having a row filtering mechanism for when the Silverlight grid has loaded a lot of information, and as you have seen xamWebGrid can load a lot of information! That is why we have included a Filter Row into which your users can fill-in values and then select from a convenient drop down of conditions what kind of filtering they want to perform (examples include less than, greater than, equal to, contains, starts with, etc.).

Data filtering is initiated within the Silverlight data grid.


Row, Column and Cell Selection

Complete activation and selection support for the grid rows, columns, and cells within the rows gives your users freedom to select what information they want. We relieve you from workarounds like having to handle mouse events yourself, or having to include a checkbox column with selection built into the control. You can easily identify and style the rows, columns and cells that your users have selected.


Single and Multi-Column Sorting and Grouping

Users can sort and group rows within the xamWebGrid on single and multiple columns (multiple columns can be selected for sorting when the user holds down his/her Control key, and clicks more than one with their mouse.) Sorting and grouping can go in both ascending or descending order, and is shown by a sort indicator on each column.

You can supply your own custom IComparer interface for sorting if you have complex data that needs to be sorted within the column (the IComparer we provide by default should work for your everyday data types).

 

Infragistics.Excel – NEW!

Work with spreadsheet data using familiar Microsoft® Excel® spreadsheet objects like Workbooks, Worksheets, Cells, Formulas and more. We supply you with the Infragistics.Excel class library and its comprehensive object model that executes entirely on the client-side, and works perfectly with Silverlight 3 serialization.

By using Silverlight 3 serialization, you can save/load a Stream containing your Workbook object into widely-compatible .XLS file format. Now your Rich Internet Application can seamlessly interop with many spreadsheet applications including Excel, and your users can take data with them to work offline or while disconnected from your application.

We want to stress that there are no wrappers around native executable code like OLE32.DLL, and this Silverlight class library is not a stub that directs the load and burden of having thousands of distributed users working with an Excel file onto your Web server (your Web server has enough to do already, we want you to be scalable!) Infragistics.Excel really does bring the spreadsheet sensation to the client by running as fully managed code in the safe and secure Silverlight sandbox.

Although this release presently lacks support for Image objects in your Workbook, you will be happy to know that you can use Bitmaps for background images.

Build data-driven web-based solutions on top of the workbook object models with Silverlight.

 

xamWebChart™ - NEW!

We have included a lightweight, business-focused Silverlight charting component based on the chart types that are most prevalent in line of business application development:

  • Pie chart
  • Bar chart
  • Bubble chart
  • Column chart
  • Line chart
  • Scatter chart

Each of these chart types allow you to utilize the full benefits of Silverlight such as animation, storyboarding, styling and more in creating a presentation of your application’s business data. Their focused nature allows xamWebChart to remain lightweight and high performance, making your line of business applications not only rich and relevant to your users’ needs—but also fast!

Infragistics charting control fits into the scene of your application at any perspective.

 

xamWebOutlookBar™ - NEW!

Many professional line of business applications share a great deal in common with Microsoft Outlook®, so it's no surprise that many developers have demanded a navigation bar that follows the Outlook 2007 look and feel out of the box. xamWebOutlookBar delivers on those wishes, giving your Silverlight line of business application the capability of creating its own modern Outlook 2007 look and feel without having to involve yourself in any of the intricacies of accordion-style grouping or designing dynamic splitters. Easily drag-and-drop your way to user interfaces like that of Outlook with little to no code.

Present users with a common user interface control as used in Microsoft Outlook 2007 navigation bar.

 

xamWebTileView™ - NEW!

This new Silverlight tile view is a container that facilitates your users browsing through any number of content panes which can contain rich, templated content. Tiles can appear in full display, or you can minimize them so that they appear out of the way (for instance, they can run along the container's border.) We think you'll find the tile view behaving with such richness and responsiveness, that your users may forget they are using a Web application at all, and think they are exploring their own desktop!

Silverlight tile view facilitates browsing content panes interactively, diving into some and minimizing others, all with the richness that you would think you were exploring your own desktop.

 

xamWebTagCloud™ - NEW!

When it's raining tags, it's pouring with the new Silverlight tag cloud control. Choose key words or phrases ("tags") and you can weight them by their frequency of occurrence, importance, or other scoring algorithm you devise and the tag cloud control will display them. Tags deemed most important stand out with a heavyweight font size greater than their peers, while little-used tags appear diminutive in size. Users will have no trouble identifying what the most prevalent tags are when you're using xamWebTagCloud to show them.

Silverlight tag cloud control organizes key words and phrases to give them different weights by how frequently they occur, so that the most important tags stand out loudly.

 

xamWebMenu™ - NEW!

xamWebMenu is our premier Silverlight menu control for organizing your applications with its dropdown, popup and nested menus. It allows you to give your Rich Internet Applications for Silverlight a multi-level, hierarchical menu structure delivering an end user experience straight out of the Windows® menuing system, but all in a Web application. Like all of our Silverlight controls, it’s fully templatable and has numerous features added on such as icons, checkboxes, and smooth sliding effects.

Multi-level, hierarchical menu control for organizing your applications.

 


Silverlight 3 Navigation Framework Support

xamWebMenu supports the new navigation framework introduced by Microsoft Silverlight 3. Your line of business application enjoys the benefits of maintaining a journal history, working seamlessly with the browser Forward and Back buttons which have historically been such a pain point for Web-based applications. All of this can be instantly taken care of with the NavigationElement attribute that you can set to the frame whose journal you want all navigation to use.

 

xamWebTree™ - NEW!

xamWebTree organizes your hierarchical data in an easy-to-navigate, tree-structured format. Your end users will find it easy to navigate through your application's contents, categories and functions when they are presented in expandable/collapsible tree nodes that expose just the right level of detail your users want to deal with at any given time. xamWebTree functions as either an unbound tree or a bound tree, where you can supply and map your own hierarchal data to different levels of tree nodes.

Designed for Silverlight 3 from the start, every tree node can be selected, reordered and templated to present arbitrarily-complex content. The nodes' expansion and collapse animations give this Silverlight tree view a fluid feel. xamWebTree is the natural choice for naturally tree-structured navigation.

Deliver virtual, on demand load binding to thousands of nodes via a feature-rich tree structure.

 

xamWebDialogWindow™ - NEW!

Another new Silverlight control we have unveiled is the xamWebDialogWindow, a complete Silverlight dialog window control for displaying rich, desktop-style pop-up windows within your Silverlight applications. It has all of the features you would expect such as minimize, maximize and close buttons - and of course it is fully templatable. This is a control you'll definitely want to check out.

Pop-up windows prompt users with questions or instructions on how to proceed.

 

xamWebEditors™ - NEW!

xamWebEditors deliver easy-to-use data entry for your line of business applications. There are two separate controls, each of which you can use to satisfy many of your data entry requirements:

  • xamWebMaskedEditor™ - Use the xamWebMaskedEditor when you have data formatting constraints such as telephone numbers, taxpayer ID numbers, healthcare plan participant numbers, dates and more. The input mask guides your users into entering data in the proper format every time.
  • xamWebNumericEditor™ - When you have numeric quantities or currency values that you need entered with optional min/max validation and spin buttons for fast increment and decrement, choose xamWebNumericEditor. It makes it easy for users to enter amounts that meet the constraints of your application.

Flexible data entry/editing of numerical values used in calculating anything from tips to your portfolio's return on capital.


Silverlight 3 Binding Validation UI Support

xamWebEditors have built-in support for the new binding validation introduced by Silverlight 3. When you specify ValidatesOnExceptions=true in binding the xamWebEditors to a property of your data source for which the user is entering a value, xamWebEditors will react to any exceptions that the property setter throws to display a validation UI to the user. By default, xamWebEditors appear with a red border but this UI is something that you can fully customize as it is a style in the control’s default template.

 

xamWebSpellChecker™ - NEW!

xamWebSpellChecker is a UI control that allows line of business applications you create in Silverlight 3 to easily perform all kinds of spell-checking operations within their applications, using any of included dictionaries for 9 languages.

Now your users can spell check documents any or even multiple text input fields. Its forms-based spell checking dialog guides your users interactively through the spell checking process, mimicking the user experience they would have if they were using professional word processing software. It can even suggest corrections when the inevitable typo or mis-spelling is found.

Check spelling in any of 9 languages or add your custom dictionary to expand its repertoire.

 

Commanding Framework – NEW!

Have you ever used routed commands in Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and wanted the same kind of separation of view from business logic for your Silverlight applications? Now you have that with the Silverlight controls for line of business applications in this release. We have incorporated what we call the Commanding Framework into these controls. It allows you to leverage the advantages in the Command pattern, and route operations from Infragistics controls such as the click of an OK button on xamWebDialogWindow to the logic responsible for handling that operation in your line of business application.