Application Styling – Enhanced

Express Styling

Styling every single UI role in a StyleSet is admittedly a long and arduous task, even though the concept of a completely customized style is rewarding. Infragistics would like to assist in this area by offering Style Library Templates that automatically generate complete StyleSets at the click of a button.

Creating a themed Style Library based from a template becomes as easy as choosing a color. When you select the File | New Style Library | New Style Library from Template menu command the New Style Library From Template dialog box will appear. Once you've selected a Style Library Template to modify, you can match colors using color categories for a unique appearance. Clicking the OK button automatically creates an entirely new Style Library for you.

Creating a Style Library Template for use in generating a themed Style Library can also save you a great deal of time, and give you the ability to customize colors for several different roles. It is possible to take regular Style Libraries for use as templates, but you can also customize the colors of a Style Library's resources to make the template more versatile. The Style Library Generator ColorCategory Manager dialog box allows you to generate color categories, which you can then assign to Resources or specific UI Roles. Once these color categories are created, you can assign colors to them in the New Style Library From Template dialog box. The combinations possible are nearly limitless.

Export Images from a Style Library

Styling UI Roles and Resources is at the heart of application styling. These UI Roles and Resources can have images displayed in their background, making for a highly customizable Button, Tab, or other UI element. These images, however, are embeddable in the Style Library (*.isl) file, and not saved out as an actual image in an images folder. Once the Style Library is saved, it became difficult to modify images in different UI Roles. This constraint was more noticeable if you were going to share your Style Libraries company-wide or throughout the designer community.

For this release Infragistics offers you a way to recover all the images from any Style Library. By clicking the new File | Export Images... menu command, a dialog box opens, allowing you to browse to any folder, or create a new one, into which to place all of the Style Library images. Keep in mind, the image exporter will only export images in Portable Network Graphics (PNG) format. This feature should definitely be a favorite of graphic designers wishing to share their work with other colleagues.

Add Your Personal Information to a Style Library

Since the concept of Application Styling was introduced in NetAdvantage 2006 Volume 1, several developers and graphic designers alike have been creating Style Libraries for use in several different scenarios. Many of these Style Libraries have showcased our customers' great creativity and inventiveness. Their desire to share these feats of creative prowess with the community-at-large was only natural.

Until now, there was no way to mark a Style Library as your own. We now provide the opportunity to fill in Style Library properties with your own personal information. Upon clicking the File | Style Library Properties... menu command, an Application Style Library Properties dialog box will display. The information that you can add through these properties include: File Version, Copyright, Author, Permitted Usage, and a general Description. The Style Library Properties also track the File Name and Last Modified date although these fields are read only.

Multiple Controls Can Now Use Separate Style Libraries

At run-time, Application Styling only supported one Style Library being loaded into memory at once. This severely limited an application's styling capability as specific controls had to use StyleSets residing in the same Style Library.

In this release, we've added the StyleLibraryName property to our stylable controls and components with a matching overload to the StyleManager.Load method. When loading a Style Library via the StyleManager, a new overload is available to help identify it. You then set the StyleLibraryName property on any control or component to match it with the specific Style Library that you loaded. This allows different controls to use their control-specific StyleSets from different Libraries, making for a much more customizable styling experience.

Presentation Layer Framework – Enhanced

In the past, NetAdvantage for Windows Forms has supported all Microsoft® 32-bit operating systems. With the arrival of Windows® Vista™, and the emergence of dual and quad-core processors supporting 64-bit operations, it was imperative that we give you the ability to support an even wider range of processors and operating systems.

We extended the supported range of operating systems to include Windows XP 64-bit, Windows Vista 64-bit, Windows Server 2003 64-bit, and any operating system supporting the 64-bit .NET 2.0 architecture.

WinGauge PUBLIC BETA – ALL NEW!

WinGauge, a new control added in the NetAdvantage 2007 Volume 1 release, is a visual component that visualizes rangebound values as if on a simulated instrument, dial, meter, graduated scale or readout. It indicates values on the range by using needles, markers, and/or text.

The WinGauge control is represented by the following three types of gauges:

Linear Gauge

Represents a range of values arranged rectangularly, 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 similar 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 it can stand alone. Alphanumeric characters are supported in the digital gauge.

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

WinExplorerBar™ – Enhanced

Outlook 2007 Navigation Pane Can Now Be Collapsed

In the 2006 Volume 3 release, we gave you the Office 2007 look and feel for a number of our controls. WinExplorerBar was one of these controls that received the new look and feel. WinExplorerBar can emulate the Outlook 2007 Navigation Pane if its Style property is set to OutlookNavigationPane.

In this release, we've added the capability of collapsing the navigation pane. The main benefit of collapsing the navigation pane is the amount of screen real-estate your end user will be able to recover. Once collapsed, the navigation pane reduces its size significantly by only displaying a small sliver of itself.

The most noticeable difference is the Group Area. The Group Area is where any items or control containers would be displayed. This area is replaced with a "Navigation Pane" button by default (you can change its text to whatever you like). When you click the button, a fly-out appears displaying all of the items that are contained within the Group Area. How, when, and where this fly-out appears is completely customizable through the navigation pane's object model.

WinToolbarsManager™ – Enhanced

ControlContainer Now Works Inside the Ribbon

In the 2006 Volume 3 release, the ControlContainer tool was one of the few tools that the Ribbon did not support. The ControlContainer tool can be an extremely important piece of any toolbar, though. This tool can host any .NET control, giving you ultimate customizability in a toolbar. Now the ControlContainer tool can be used in a RibbonGroup, allowing for the Ribbon to host any of our Windows Forms controls.

With both design-time and run-time support, adding a ControlContainer tool is just as easy as adding any other tool to the Ribbon. Once you've instantiated one of our Windows Forms controls, or any .NET control for that matter, you simply need to set the ControlContainer's Control property to that control and you're done.

New Glyphs for StateButton Tool

The Check box and Radio Button are two tool types that were previously not available to toolbars created with WinToolbarsManager. We've now made these two control types available through the StateButton tool. By setting the ToolbarDisplayStyle property to Glyph, the StateButton tool is transformed into a checkbox. Also, if the OptionSet property (already existing in previous versions) is set, the StateButton will transform into a selection of radio buttons.

New MiniToolbar

Microsoft® Word 2007 introduced a new type of toolbar that floats near the currently selected text, and offers formatting types of tools. In the 2007 Volume 1 release, Infragistics is offering the MiniToolbar as well.

The MiniToolbar is simply another type of toolbar that can appear above the mouse pointer either with or without an accompanying context menu. Adding tools to the MiniToolbar follows the same procedure as you're familiar with for any other toolbar. Create the tools (or use previously existing tools), add them to the MiniToolbar's Tools collection, and you're done. You also have control over how many rows of tools you want the MiniToolbar to display.

On a right-click, the MiniToolbar will show as semi-transparent until the user fully mouses over it, at which point the MiniToolbar becomes fully opaque. As the user's mouse moves away from the MiniToolbar, it fades becoming more transparent. At a certain distance away the MiniToolbar will vanish.

New Tab Item Toolbar for the Ribbon

If you thought the Ribbon had enough locations to place tools last release, think again! We've added yet another toolbar to the Ribbon, giving you the extreme flexibility you've come to expect from Infragistics' tools. This new Tab Item toolbar displays and behaves like a standard toolbar. You'll find it on the Ribbon, above the Ribbon Groups, and to the right of the Ribbon Tabs.

The Tab Item toolbar can serve the same purpose as the Quick Access Toolbar, always giving the end user timely access to needed tools. You can also use the Tab Item toolbar as any other standard toolbar containing tools that will assist the end user with application-related tasks.

Coupled with the completely customizable MiniToolbar, you will never find your application lacking tools ever again.

Prevent Ribbon KeyTips from Overriding Menu Mnemonics

Standard toolbars and main menus from WinToolbarsManager cannot be displayed while the Ribbon is displayed if the Office2007Compatibility property is set to True. However, these toolbars and menus are hidden, not removed. Therefore, the end user can still access those toolbars and menus if they know the correct mnemonic. However, in the 2006 Volume 3 release, the Ribbon would automatically assign KeyTips to the Quick Access Toolbar, Application Menu, Tabs, and Tools without regard to what the hidden main menu mnemonics were.

By setting the ReserveMenuBarKeyTips property to True, the Ribbon will not create a KeyTip that conflicts with the mnemonics on a hidden main menu bar. When the end user types in a reserved mnemonic, a message appears with whatever text you place in the ReservedKeyTipToolTipText property. The end user can then continue navigating through the hidden menu to a tool.

The Ribbon Now Supports Glass in Windows Vista

Staying on the cutting edge of technology is important for application developers. Realizing this importance, we've added the ability for the Ribbon to display glass in the caption area when being viewed on a Windows® Vista™ system. The glass effect allows the Ribbon caption header to display in a translucent fashion. This feature is available by default when Composition is enabled through the operating system settings; there is no need to set additional properties on the Ribbon itself.

You Can Now Merge Ribbons in a Multiple Document Interface

In 2006 Volume 3, we released the Ribbon. One behavior the Ribbon couldn't handle initially was Multiple Document Interface (MDI) merging, while our standard toolbars have supported MDI merging for several releases. Now Ribbon MDI merging occurs similarly to our previous support for MDI merging.

MDI merging allows your standard toolbars -- and now your Ribbon -- to merge with a parent toolbar or Ribbon. In the Ribbon's case, the parent form will add the Ribbon's tabs and groups of the child forms to its own. This maximizes the screen real estate available for users to work with while keeping all tools belonging to child forms together in one logical arrangement.

WinGrid™ – Enhanced

You Can Now Conditionally Format Cells in a WinGrid Column

Changing the appearance of a cell based on its value used to be a tedious task, as you had to test each value during the InitializeRow event. This code had to be highly customized and proved time-consuming to write. Now a more developer-friendly and efficient method of conditionally formatting cells in a column is available.

Using our new conditional formatting feature, you can create conditional statements easily in simple dialog boxes. All you need to do is create a new OperatorCondition and link it to the ValueBasedAppearance property of any column. Once the ValueBasedAppearance property is set, the column will use the OperatorCondition to test all values of cells in the column against whatever condition you supply automatically.

You can even use multiple conditional statements by adding several OperatorConditions together into a ConditionGroup. You can choose to have the appearance applied if all conditions are met, or any condition is met.

WinSpellChecker™ – Enhanced

Canadian and Australian dictionaries have been added. Now with a total of nine languages, WinSpellChecker dictionaries are more adaptable to users' needs based on the specific geographic locales where a language is used.

Below are the languages WinSpellChecker dictionaries now support:

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

WinMonthViewMulti™ – Enhanced

Year Scroll Buttons Now Available

Before this release, WinMonthViewMulti only supported Month scrolling in the month header of the calendar. However, since you're already viewing entire months at a time, it may be convenient to be able to scroll through years as well. Now you can! With the new YearScrollButtonsVisible property, you can display year scroll buttons directly beside the month scroll buttons. You can even change how many years are scrolled with the YearScrollChange property. These year scroll buttons also support all the ViewStyles such as OfficeXP or Office2007. The YearScrollButtonAppearance object also makes it simple to style the appearance of these buttons in NetAdvantage AppStylist for Windows Forms.

WinFlowLayoutManager™ – Enhanced

The WinFlowLayoutManager control can neatly arrange several child controls on a form in a horizontal or vertical pattern. Previously, WinFlowLayoutManager supported the alignment of its child controls with respect to the form, not each other. The Alignment property, now deprecated, was used to align the controls managed by WinFlowLayoutManager with respect to the Orientation property. If Orientation was set to Horizontal, the layout would be aligned horizontally with respect to the form (or parent container).

We've now added two additional properties: HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment. These properties are much easier to work with as they will always align in the direction that their name states. Depending on the Orientation, HorizontalAlignment may align all the controls horizontally with respect to the ContainerControl, or it may align all the controls with respect to each other. For example, setting the Orientation to Horizontal will lay out the child controls from left to right. Setting the HorizontalAlignment to Center will center all the controls in the ControlContainer. Setting the VerticalAlignment to Near (Top) will align the tops of the child controls.

These two new properties were necessary as child controls would always be centered with respect to each other. This could have led to a sloppy implementation in some cases that wouldn't "flow" as the name of the control implies.

Accessibility Support – Enhanced

According to Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, all government applications must conform to a set of simple standards to accommodate individuals with disabilities. Most of our Windows Forms controls have been accessible for several releases now.

WinListView and WinWeekView are now joining the rest of our controls as completely accessible. These controls now have an AccessibilityObject which will allow you to give your end users any accessibility support they need.