ASP.NET September 2010 CTP is Out!

Recently Infragistics shipped the preview of it's ASP.NET controls. This CTP contains enhancements to the current controls, a new PDF exporter component along with jQuery Templates integration and the first jQuery based control from Infragistics.

Summary Row on Grids

Both the WebDataGrid and WebHierarchicalDataGrid are now enhanced with the Summary Row feature. When the behavior is enabled, the column headers will show summary icons and at run-time a drop down for end-user to select summaries on those columns. In addition to this, if you are using export to Excel capability of the grid, the default summaries are moved as Excel formulas to the exported work sheet. The summaries are also updated instantly when the user updates a cell on the client. You can use the summary row to display one or more summary values and also provide custom summaries as well. 

jQuery Templates

Microsoft has embraced jQuery as the standard client framework for ASP.NET development. Earlier this year a templating proposal was submitted to the jQuery project that has been quite popular within the community. Even though it remains a proposal, you can now get a head start on using these templates, it helps tremendously narrow down the response size during page loads as well as Ajax call-backs. Using the templating engine you can also hook to your custom web services that return JSON data and bind the grid on the client. Being able to bind the grid on the client has has been a very popular feature request that is now possible with the CTP bits. WebDataGrid and WebDataTree are both enhanced to be able to use jQuery templates.  

To read more on the jQuery templating proposal, click here. 

Exporting Grid Data To PDF/XPS

Infragistics shipped with WebExcelExporter in 10.2, and this CTP includes the WebDocumentExporter. The WebDocumentExporter helps export the WebDataGrid or WebHierarchicalDataGrid to PDF or XPS format. Simply put the component on the form and with the single line of code, you can now export contents of the grid to PDF. 

WebDataMenu Scrolling

WebDataMenu is now extended and has the scrolling feature. The scrolls buttons are enabled automatically when the menu height is smaller than what is needed to fit all items. Hovering on the button gives a smooth slow scrolling, whereas clicking on the button speeds up the scrolling providing more natural end-user experience.

 ASP.NET MVC WebRating

Last but not the least, the first purely jQuery based WebRating control is part of the CTP as well. It is completely built from ground up using jQuery, no ties to the ASP.NET AJAX extensions. It is a pure browser based control that can be used in any browser that supports HTML & JavaScript. But, we haven’t left it at that, it also comes with an MVC helper that allows you to easily use the rating control in a MVC application via the MVC HTML helper. Stay tuned for more helpers in the upcoming months!