Windows Forms New Features - 2007 Volume 2

Infragistics Document Export Engine - ALL NEW!

Make your Windows® Forms applications ready for collaboration across the office or the enterprise with the brand new Infragistics Document Export Engine™, a complete code library for writing Portable Document Format (PDF) and XML Paper Specification (XPS) documents from scratch. The library includes an intuitive interface-driven, composable document object model (DOM) that guides you along as you layout reports of any complexity and structure. Get on the glidepath to satisfying the most critical-eyed of managers with its many graphical elements that can be used to fashion a polished report that impresses and informs.

Export to Portable Document Format

Create PDF documents easily using the Infragistics Document Export Engine and share these documents worldwide with millions of users who can read the ubiquitous Adobe® PDF format. There is no need to deal with the complex file format issues necessary to write PDF files as the Infragistics Document Export Engine abstracts that all away beneath its object-oriented and interface-driven API. Your code concentrates simply on the structure and graphical formatting that you want for the documents you are going to publish.

Some of the highly demanded features your users can take advantage of in their exported PDF documents are:

• Tables - Layout tables for a grid-like presentation of information.
• Graphics - Add shapes, borders and embed images into documents.
• Formatting - Full control over sectioning, margins, gaps and padding.
• Digital Signatures - Enable document consumers to verify the authenticity of its author and the integrity of its contents.
• Properties - Set metadata for the author, title, subject, copyright and other information useful for the search and classification of documents.

Export to XML Paper Specification

The new XML Paper Specification (XPS) introduced by Microsoft® has grown in acceptance with its inclusion as one of the open file formats in Microsoft's Office 2007 business productivity suite. Whether you need to interoperate with Office documents or those produced by other applications that implement this open file format, the Infragistics Document Export Engine DOM provides easy generation of high-quality XPS documents on-the-fly.

WinGridDocumentExporter™ - NEW!

WinGrid™ never looked this good now that the new release of the WinGridDocumentExporter™ component makes it easy to employ the Infragistics Document Export Engine to export WinGrid into your reports and documents. You choose how much of the WinGrid should be exported, so you can publish as much or as little of its content as necessary. Infragistics NetAdvantage for Windows Forms 2007 Volume 2 now has your needs covered whether your WinGrid content is destined for a PDF, XPS, or an XLS workbook (using our established WinGridExcelExporter™ component).

Following the simplified object model of the WinGridExcelExporter component to leverage your learning, you will find the Export method sufficient for many common WinGrid export scenarios. Higher levels of direction over the export process can be achieved through the handling of events fired as grid elements (rows, headers, cells) are about to be and/or after they are exported. Events like InitializeRow enable you to layout rows in your document totally different from how they are drawn in the WinGrid, if that is what you desire.

Infragistics Excel Library - Enhanced!

With so much information outside of your Windows Forms applications you will find the new enhancements to the Infragistics.Excel code library in NetAdvantage for Windows Forms 2007 Volume 2 opens new doors to collaboration and information-sharing.

Import Excel Workbooks

Now you can import information stored in Microsoft Excel™ spreadsheet files (.XLS) into your Windows Forms applications. This release of the Infragistics.Excel code library comes with a substantially improved Excel parser and a greatly supplemented object model that exposes information to you about the Workbook, its Worksheets, and Worksheet contents.

Using the new object model, you can programmatically import information from one or several Infragistics Worksheets into your WinGrid™ application. Then use the WinGridExcelExporter™ component to export back into an Excel Workbook your users can take with them or share with others.

You'll find new support in the Infragistics.Excel code library for:

• Formulas
• Images
• Formatted Strings
• Frozen Panes
• Document Properties

Export More Than Ever Before

The enhanced Infragistics.Excel code library allows you to export more of the WinGrid™ then was ever before possible. Now you can add images to the exported Worksheet containing your WinGrid's data, freeze or unfreeze panes, associate Excel Formulas with cells, columns and rows in the Worksheet (note: UltraCalc formulas are not converted into Excel formulas), and customize settings for how the Workbook appears to users when it is opened in Excel using Window, Display and Print Options that mirror those settings users can set inside the Excel application themselves. For example, you could use the Print Options to preinitialize an exported Excel spreadsheet file (.XLS) so that when it is printed by a user from within Excel, it automatically defaults to having Landscape orientation and is scaled to fit.

WinDesktopAlert™ – NEW!

Delivering notifications that rise like toasted bread from the corner of the desktop has started to change the way applications communicate with users. At first popularized by mainstream applications such as mail and instant messaging (IM) applications, desktop alerts are popping up more and more. The WinDesktopAlert™ component enables your application to easily display these messages in a fully-stylable desktop alert window with one call of its Show method. Display an alert from any screen location with your choice of caption, text content and image.

WinDesktopAlert can emulate the appearance of two popular styles of desktop alert by setting its Style property. Alerts may appear in pop-ups similar to those displayed by Windows Live Messenger when it receives an Instant Message (IM) as shown on the left, or in a manner similar to the New Mail notifications that Microsoft Outlook 2007 displays.

Text appearing in the WinDesktopAlert leverages the existing FormattedTextUIElement class that allows you to control its formatting and adds optional link behavior and a large variety of events that can be handled. A footer text link can also be defined to take some action or display more information about the alert when the user clicks on it.

The desktop alert window can be dismissed with the click of the close button, or pinned into place using its pushpin. You can also optionally associate with the desktop alert window a dropdown list that users can access through a down arrow button that appears in the caption header. This allows an application to add context-sensitive, domain-specific commands to the desktop alert window that pops-up. Another option for associating actions with the desktop alert window is through alert buttons that appear on the face of the window. Alert buttons give you meaningful images that you can associate with a particular action or command, while also being more apparent to the user because it doesn't require expanding a dropdown list. Dropdown and alert buttons are both handled through their own respective Click event handlers.

WinDesktopAlert can scroll in and out of view (from any of eight directions) and fade in and out gradually from transparency at one of three predefined speeds. You can adjust the maximum opacity the desktop alert window reaches if you want to attenuate the alert's impact. For example, you can use this capability to minimize interference with what the user is working on.

If you really need to grab the user's attention, WinDesktopAlert allows you to associate a .WAV file that will play when the alert appears so that your users can hear the "pop," "slide," "alarm," or voice recording of the message text.

WinGauge™ – NEW and IMPROVED!

WinGauge™ has been formally released in NetAdvantage for Windows Forms 2007 Volume 2 now enabling developers to design Dashboard-driven applications and display data in new, intuitive ways. It will put your users into the fast lane with its instrumentation panel-like display of data. The three primary kinds of gauge are:

Radial gauges are instrument dials where the angle of their needle depicts a value, often labeled around the edge of the dial. They may be rounded, rectangular, elliptical or clamshell in shape. WinGauge's elaborate styling capabilities let you custom-tailor their needle, numbering, tick marks, background, border and even glossy finish to paint a photorealistic image unmistakably similar to real dials found in aircraft cockpits or concept car dashboards.
Linear gauges may be oriented horizontally or vertically, in whichever direction your UI layout can afford to give them the most space. The length of their bar or column corresponds to their value, and it can run along a graduated series of tick marks that you can label. The intuitiveness of such a scale will be familiar to many users from metaphors in the real world such as thermometers, progress bars, and fundraising meters.
Digital gauges display their alphanumeric values (dates, times, decimal numbers, messages, etc.) in either a 7-segment or 14-segment LED-like font, as might appear flashing on a microwave oven, alarm clock or digital wristwatch. They have applications where you would ordinarily display a value as a label, and frequently to show exact value in concert with a radial or linear gauge that illustrates the value in relation to a range.
The three kinds of gauges can be composed with each other to create hybrid gauges such as the radial/digital gauge shown to the right. Other possible combinations include the radial/linear gauge and the linear/digital gauge.

Creative report headings like the one below can summarize rows of key performance indicator (KPI) data when illustrated with an appropriate WinGauge control. You can also combine WinGauge controls into dashboards that present your solution's most important metrics in a way that enhances end user understanding, because the information appears in a visually intuitive and easy-to-understand way.

WinGauge Designer with Real-Time WYSIWYG Preview

The WinGauge Designer lets you interactively style the many properties that control the appearance of a gauge at design-time, while seeing an interactive preview of their effects. It is divided into three main regions which have been optimized for usability by developers and designers alike. On the interactive preview canvas you see a live representation of your WinGauge. On the properties panel you can set and experiment with WinGauge settings. Finally, everything is tied together through the Gauge Explorer panel which makes it easy to find what you want to do to a WinGauge.

A large and stunning collection of professionally pre-designed WinGauge presets can be applied from the "Open Presets" button on the WinGauge Designer Toolbar (or programmatically through code at run-time) to instantly imbue your gauge with a polished appearance. You can see a handful of these presets for yourself in the online Gallery. It's so easy to get the right gauge appearance by choosing a preset WinGauge appearance as your starting point, and then fine-tuning the gauge to meet your needs.

RangeEnter and RangeLeave Events

Events are fired when a radial or linear WinGauge enters a specific range of interest enabling applications to take any actions necessary such as alerting a supervisor, starting an automated process to clean-up system resources, or reducing reactor core temperature. A RangeEventArgs object is supplied to your event handler with details on the Marker and Range responsible for triggering the event, so that you can track transgressions in and out of several ranges on the same WinGauge instance.

WinGridBagLayoutPanel™ – NEW!

The new WinGridBagLayoutPanel™ control is a container that adds value to any controls you place inside it. Leveraging our already powerful GridBag Layout Engine that you may have used programmatically through the WinGridBagLayoutManager™ in the past, the WinGridBagLayoutPanel greatly streamlines your design time layout and arrangement of controls in Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET with its intuitive drag-and-drop user interface. Great for regimented rectangular layouts, it also excels as a flexible and versatile container that accommodates advanced layouts including row and column spanning, X- and Y- weightings, minimum/preferred size negotiation, and variable insets.