What's New in Dxperience 8.1.0

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	What's New in DXperience v2008 vol 1

Page 1 of 6

All Developer Express .NET technologies can be purchased separately or as part of our DXperience Subscription program. For more information on available subscriptions and a complete list of products included within them, please visit this page.

All New Component Libraries

Rich Text Editor for ASP.NET 2.0

This new control allows you to incorporate rich text editing capabilities into your web sites. This initial release implements all the basic text formatting features, fully supports embedded images and provides two text editing modes - WYSIWYG and HTML code editing.

The user interface in this editor is built entirely with controls from the ASPxperience Suite, including a brand new ASPxUpload control used to embed images.

TreeView-Grid Hybrid for ASP.NET 2.0

This new control combines the capabilities of tree and grid components. allowing you to build trees with arbitrary data layout within its nodes. From building a simple tree view for web site navigation to visualizing conversations on forums, the ASPxTreeList frees you to deliver the very best possible end-user experience.

Performance and lightweight rendering are the main features of all our web controls. As such, the ASPxTreeList Suite implements numerous performance optimization features - from callback-based data paging to loading child nodes on demand and even partial control update via AJAX callbacks.

This initial release doesn't support data editing and can be used for data display and/or web site navigation, which will be enough for the majority of usage scenarios.

Spelling Checker for ASP.NET

The ASPxSpellChecker provides you a straightforward way in which to add Microsoft® Office® style spell checking capabilities into your next ASP.NET application. With this control, you need a single line of code to check text within an individual text editor or within all controls in a specified container. When an error is encountered, you can review it and take necessary actions using a Microsoft Outlook style dialog that is built with controls from the ASPxperience Suite and thus will seamlessly integrate into your application's UI.

Availability of Unit Tests

We will publish unit tests for our internal data controller library, ASPxperience Suite, ASPxScheduler Suite, XtraScheduler Suite and ASPxGridView & Editors Suite.

Windows Forms Skinning Library

New Skin Options for Windows Forms Controls

We've added three new skins to our Windows Forms product line - they include the Holiday, McSkin, and Valentine's Day skins.

Holiday 2008 Blue

McSkin

Valentine

Common Changes in ASP.NET Controls

Consistent Theme Library

In previous releases, each control had a few built-in Themes, but there was no common set of visual styles supported thoughout our entire library. To address this problem, we selected the 10 most popular styles and made certain they are now supported throughout our entire ASP.NET product line. These styles are:

Default	Glass	Black Glass
Office Blue	Office Olive	Office Silver
Plastic Blue	Red Wine	Soft Orange
Youthful

We've updated all our online demos, so you can easily switch Themes in any module. So if you want to see a control with a particular style applied, run the desired demo and use the combo box at the top.

XtraCharts Suite

New Spline Views - Eight in Total

Although charts are usually based on a discrete set of arguments, most real-life processes are continuous. That is why in many situations it's better to approximate a discrete chart with a smooth curve fitting each data point in a series. To achieve this, the XtraCharts Suite uses Bezier Curves - one of the most popular algorithms used for interpolation.

Below are the spline series views that have been added in XtraCharts v2008 vol 1:

2D Spline View	3D Spline View

2D Spline Area View	3D Spline Area View

2D Stacked Spline Area View	3D Stacked Spline Area View

2D Full-Stacked Spline Area View	3D Full-Stacked Spline Area View

New XML Serialization

Since XtraCharts is a multi-platform product , we take every step possible to minimize differences between our Windows Forms ChartControl, ASP.NET WebChartControl and XtraReports-based XRChart control.

This new version introduces a new feature that eliminates one difference between these controls - the ability to save layouts to an XML file, using the same XML-serialization procedure. This means that you can design a chart in one application (such as a Windows Forms app), and then, at design time, transfer it to a Web Application or to an existing report.

In addition to platform portability, the XML format is more readable and understandable than our previous serialization format. This means, for example, that now you can easily change any of its parameters using any text or XML editor.

Medium Trust Support in ASP.NET Charting

Since many web hosts do not grant Full Trust permission to their clients, v2008 vol 1 allows you to create web charts that can work at the Medium Trust permission level.

Note however that 3D charts still require Full Trust permission level, because 3D charts are based upon the OpenGL rendering library.

Advanced Customization

Separate Titles for Pie and Doughnut Views
It's now possible to display titles for individual series (if represented using a Pie or Doughnut view). This feature is extremely useful when multiple pies are shown on the same diagram. (Screenshot)
Display Text Patterns for Labels
You now have total control over text displayed in series point labels, or in a legend. In addition to the CustomDrawSeriesPoint event, which allowed you to customize this text at runtime, you can now specify a display pattern at design time. For example, "{A} - {V}" will be represented as an argument and a value for each data point, separated by a hyphen. (Screenshot)
Labels for Zero-Height Bars
In previous versions, if a bar's height was zero, it was not visible. This made it hard to understand whether there was a bar or not. Now you can indicate such bars using labels. (Screenshot)

ASPxGridView and Editors Suite

LINQ Server Mode

The ASPxGridView bound to a LinqDataSource web server control can now function in server mode. In this mode the grid fetches only those records that need to be displayed on-screen - giving you significant performance benefits against very large datasets. In previous versions, this could be done only with an XPO data source.

Sorting Against Group Summary Values

The ASPxGridView provides an API to sort group rows by their summary values. For instance, if a view is grouped by country, you can sort grouped rows so that countries having maximum sales appear at the top of the view.

Popup Edit Form

In v2008 vol 1, you can display Popup Edit Form as a modal dialog. In this mode, end-users must close the edit form before they can continue working with your application.

Data Shaping and Manipulation Enhancements

Customizable Location for the New Item Row

The New Item row can now be displayed below data rows. This results in a more intuitive interface when end-users need to add records to relatively small datasets.
Edit Value Conversion
A newly implemented event allows you to analyze and modify an entered value before it is actually accepted by the grid. This allows you to implement value shortcuts specific to your application. For instance, you can allow end-users to type "now" and automatically replace this string with the current date.
Custom Command Buttons

Previously, there was a pre-defined set of buttons you could use in command columns. With this release, you can create your own buttons, and define custom actions for them.
Filter Buttons

In previous versions, end-users could filter data only via the Filter row. Now, column headers can display Excel-style filter buttons. Clicking a filter button invokes a dropdown list with unique column values so you can easily filter data against this column.

Export Improvements

In v2008 vol 1 we've added the ability to export only selected records.

Template Enhancements

Two new templates are now available. With their help, you can customize the grid's footer, as well as individual footer cells.

XtraGrid Suite and XtraEditors Library

LINQ Server Mode

When the grid control works in server mode, it delegates all data processing to the server and downloads only records to be dislayed on screen. This allows you to dramatically increase performance against large datasets. Previously, this data operation mode could be enabled only with XPO data sources. Now, any LINQ query provider is also supported.

Layout View's Enhancements

In version v2008 vol 1, the Layout View's functionality has been significantly extended by introducing new customization and layout features:

Runtime Field Layout Customization in Layout View
This feature allows end-users to easily customize card field layout at runtime via drag and drop operations, just like you would at design time. Clicking the Customize button at the top of the View invokes the Customization form that provides customization capabilities.

Basic mode:

Advanced mode:

With a few lines of code you can save the customized layout to a data store (e.g. an XML file) when the form is closed and then restore the layout on a form load event.
New Layout Elements
The Layout View now fully supports a tabbed interface, thus giving you a way to present information in a more compact manner.

You can add static labels and separators to cards:

Groups and fields can display small icons next to the labels, making your applications look more attractive.
Stretching Cards to View
Cards can be horizontally or vertically stretched to fully fill the View's width or height. This allows you to emulate detail entry forms.

You can optionally display multiple cards simultaneously so that they are stretched to fit the control's dimensions.

Filter Dropdown Lists with Check Boxes

The grid control can now display check boxes within filter dropdown lists. This allows end-users to filter columns against multiple values on the fly. They simply need to select required values and click OK. The grid will filter out rows that don't contain checked values.

New Component - CheckedComboBoxEdit

This new control allows you to display a set of Boolean options or bit fields in a dropdown window.

It can be used both standalone and for in-place editing within container controls (XtraGrid, XtraTreeList, etc).

XtraReports Suite

New Cross-Tab Control

Our new XRPivotGrid control is powered by the XtraPivotGrid Suite and allows you to design hassle-free cross-tab reports. This control is a better alternative to the previously available ways in which to build cross-tab reports:

You could print out an XtraPivotGrid using the XtraPrinting Library. This approach didn't allow you to develop complex reports (e.g. containing several pivot tables side by side), which can be implemented only with XtraReports.
You could drop an XtraPivotGrid onto an XtraReport. This approach also had its limitations. For example, the XtraPivotGrid designer can't be called at design time, and this control wasn't available in the End-User Designer.

Because the XRPivotGrid wraps the XtraPrivotGrid Suite as a native report control, it's now infinitely easier to create and customize cross-tab reports...both in Visual Studio and within the End-User Report Designer.

Improved ASP.NET Reporting

XtraReports v2008 vol 1 continues to offer major improvements in ASP.NET reporting by implementing the following new features.

Client-Side Printing via Adobe® Plug-In
Printing a web report on the client side has always been a problem because a web browser used its own printing settings (e.g. paper kind, margins, etc.) to print a report which may have differed from the report's individual settings. So, end-users had to adjust page settings before every printing operation.

For those using Internet Explorer with the Adobe Reader plug-in installed, this is no longer a problem. When a report is printed, XtraReports searches for the plug-in, and if found, first exports a report to PDF, and then prints the PDF file. In this instance all print settings are correctly passed from a report to the Print Dialog.

Note: this behavior is optional. You need to toggle a single property to use browser-based printing instead.
Web Farms and Web Gardens Support
Full support for web farms and web gardens technologies was first introduced in Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0. These technologies allow you to run a web application on several web servers (web farm), or on the same server but in different processes, each process executed using its own processor (web garden).

By using web farms and web gardens, you can significantly improve the performance of large web applications. This, however, requires that XtraReports to share its data between multiple processes/servers when a report is generated, printed or exported.

To properly operate in web farms and web gardens, XtraReports v2008 vol 1 now stores its data in a Session, which can be adjusted to allow access by multiple processes simultaneously. As for web farms, it's now possible to specify a shared folder in the web application's Web.config file. If all servers of a web farm have read/write access to this folder, XtraReports may use it to store all necessary data.

New Styles and Style Overriding

We felt that our initial styling implementation didn't allow you to perform certain tasks as easily as we'd have liked. So, we've added a StylePriority property to every report control, and now control properties may override the corresponding properties of a style assigned to a control.

We've also decided to hide the ParentStyleUsing property in all report controls, because this property turned out to be a little confusing. Instead, we now support style inheritance similar to Windows Forms - if a control's property value is default (or empty), the parent control's corresponding property value is used and displayed in the Property Grid. If a property value is changed, this value overrides the parent control's property value.

Note: Although all these changes may seem to affect existing reports dramatically, we did our best to make sure that migration to v2008 vol 1 doesn't break any existing reports. To apply a new concept, you need to open a report at design time, change something and save. However, if you don't re-serialize a report, it should work as it did in previous versions.

Better Control Over Report Layout

In this version of the XtraReports Suite, we've extended ease-of-use to many new areas. Though most of them can be addressed using scripts, you can now toggle a single property value instead.

Suppress empty or duplicate values.
Remove page headers and page footers from pages with report header or footer.
Keep master and detail reports together.

XtraPrinting Library

Export to XLS - Support for Native Data Formatting

Previously, the XtraPrinting Library exported its data to XLS either as strings, or numbers. Now, if numeric or date-time data is exported, information about the corresponding format strings is embedded into the resulting XLS file.

Note: As you know, not all .NET format strings have their equivalents in XLS format. If exact conversion is impossible, the XtraPrinting Library tries to find a string that best resembles the original.

XtraPivotGrid Suite

Custom Group Intervals

XtraPivotGrid now supports a grouping feature wherein all records with unique values are grouped into a single row or column. In addition to joining identical values into groups, you can also use predefined grouping intervals - e.g. months, years, etc. In version v2008 vol 1, the control provides you with even more flexibility. By handling a specially designed event, you can easily define custom group intervals.

Custom Totals in OLAP Mode

For column and row fields, the XtraPivotGrid control allows you to calculate custom totals. You can now define custom totals and the control will calculate them on the client side.

Drill-Down Functionality in OLAP Mode

XtraPivotGrid now publishes methods allowing you to access data that was used to calculate summaries within a particular cell.

Printing in Both Portrait and Landscape Mode

It's now easier to customize printed page settings, as the XtraPivotGrid control introduces properties to change paper size, orientation and margin.

XtraVerticalGrid Suite

Property Description Control

A new PropertyDescriptionControl complements the PropertyGridControl to allow you to display the selected property's description in an elegant manner without having to write any code.

Unbound Rows

Like unbound columns in the XtraGrid, the VerticalGridControl now supports unbound rows (fields). Thus, together with rows bound to data fields, you can display any number of rows that obtain their values via specially designed events. When edited by end-users, these rows invoke events that enable you to save cell value changes.

XtraBars Suite

Close Buttons in Tabs when using XtraTabbedMdiManager

With this new feature, you can easily emulate popular internet browser interfaces.

XtraLayoutControl

Custom Customization Forms

It is now easier to create custom Customization Forms for the LayoutControl. To accomplish this, you only need to derive a form from a specific class, add required controls to it and register the form with a single line of code.

ASPxPivotGrid Suite

Data Shaping Improvements

Group Values Manually

With this release, we've introduced a new Custom Group Intervals feature. With it, you can easily group axis values using your own criteria. Simply handle a specially designed event to compare values and determine whether they need to be within the same group.
Keep Fields Together

Fields can now be grouped so that they are always kept together. This allows you, for instance, to move several fields simultaneously by dragging a single field from a group. Another advantage is the ability to easily show or hide fields using expand buttons in column headers.

OLAP Enhancements

You can now obtain the records that were used to calculate a particular summary. Only a single line of code is required to achieve this objective.

Data Exchange Enhancements

Printing
The ASPxPivotGrid can be printed in both portrait and landscape mode.
Export

In v2008 vol 1 we've implemented new methods that allow you to provide custom names for exported worksheets.

Header Area Visibility

In v2008 vol 1 the ASPxPivotGrid provides new options that control header area visibility. For instance, this allows you to hide column field headers, as shown below. As a result, end-users won't be able to change column header data.

XtraScheduler & ASPxScheduler Suites

XtraScheduler

Mapping Wizards
Newly introduced wizards, available in both the XtraScheduler and ASPxScheduler Suites, are designed to solve field mapping issues. When a new data source is assigned to the scheduler at design time, the Wizard is invoked and helps establish associations between data fields and properties of scheduler's persistent objects - appointments and resources. Suitable mappings are suggested automatically, and the user can amend them at design time as needed. Further, the Wizard validates the mappings when they are set, to ensure that all required mappings are present, and that the mappings contain no duplicates or missing entries.
Filter Control Integration
A tightly packed schedule is difficult to view and hard to understand. Users will now benefit from the integration with our FilterControl, which enables them to easily filter out certain appointments. Frequently used filter settings can be saved and restored when needed.
Better Time Zone Support
You can now specify which time zone to use for appointments. If you do so, you can also enable appointment storage in UTC format, so that your schedule can be easily presented according to the client time zone. So if you schedule a tennis match in Australia's local time, you can run the scheduling app from California and see when the match begins in your local time zone right away - without having to customize anything.

ASPxScheduler

Medium Trust Support
The ASPxScheduler supports the Medium Trust security level, making it easier to deploy to different web hosting environments.
Mapping Wizards
Identical to the corresponding XtraScheduler feature, see above.
Enhanced Client-side API
By using new client-side events, you can respond to switching the active view or selecting an appointment. There's also a new client-side method allowing you to obtain an appointment's data from the server. Data transfer is done via a callback that is really fast due to little information transmitted and is not visually indicated. Thus, end-users won't even notice there was a request to the server.
Popup Menu Customization
A newly introduced event enables you to remove unnecessary menu items or add your own custom actions to popup menus.
Appointment Customization via Templates

ASPxperience Suite

Control Visibility Can Now Be Changed on the Client Side

Previously, there was only one programmatic way to switch a web control's visibility - by requesting it from the server and changing the server-side Visilble property value. This required an additional round trip to the server, which in turn, reduced the application's response time.

You can now specify the initial visibility state of a control and then easily change it via client-side code without initiating any round trips to the server.

Styles Rendering Optimization

In previous versions, we composed the same CSS styles repeatedly on each creation of identical control elements (such as menu items). With this release, these styles are cached and are calculated only once. This significantly improves rendering performance of our web controls.

Callback Processing Improvements

While a callback is being processed on the server, developers can now redirect the application to another web resource. Previously this was possible only with postbacks.

In addition, you can now handle errors that occur during callbacks (this doesn't only relate to errors raised by Developer Express controls). For instance, session timeout expiration might previously hang the application if it occured during a callback. You can now easily catch and handle these errors on the server side and thus provide a proper response. This is possible because we've implemented a special HTTP module that intercepts any errors and gives you control over further application flow.

eXpressApp Framework

Conditional Formatting in List Views

In previous versions, we did not have a unified means for data highlighting in List Views. Different techniques were demonstrated in the Main and Extended Demos, and they all required you to write a lot of control-specific code. Now, we've implemented a ConditionalFormatting module that allows you to do the same using a simple high-level abstraction interface.

To use conditional formatting, simply specify criteria for a particular List View using the Model Editor. Available for both WinForms and ASP.NET applications.

By default, the ConditionalFormatting module is used by GridListEditor and ASPxGridListEditor. If needed, you can support these services in custom List Editors as well.

Use SingleChoiceAction Items to Display Option Trees

Prior to this release, SingleChoiceAction items could only construct plain option lists. Because we've implemented new Action Container Items for WinForms and ASP.NET, you can use the same action type to display option trees as well. The following display modes are available:

A single root element
Multiple root elements

You can optionally enable a "check group" mode for included options. In this mode, most recently selected options are highlighted.

Error Message Customization in ASP.NET Applications

The ErrorHandling static class now exposes a comprehensive set of events for error notification management. When handling these events, you can manually modify error messages and send them via HTTP, SMTP, FTP and other protocols. Using a set of useful parameters - ErrorId, ErrorText, ErrorDetails, MessageSubject, and MessageBody – you can easily determine the cause and manually construct a proper message.

Predefined Values for String Property Editor

In this version, we allow you to supply predefined values for a String Property Editor. These values will be available via the dropdown list, while the text editor will still allow end-users to type in any text they need.

To enable this feature, simply use the PredefinedValues attribute of Application Model nodes that represent string type properties.

"Save and New" Action

We've added a "Save and New" Action to the System Module. By default, this Action is available in root-level Detail Views provided that the "New" Action is also available.

Server Mode for Selected List Views

In addition to the global UseServerMode option in the Application Model, you can now use a similar option for individual List Views. If this option is set to true, the entire recordset is never loaded into memory. Instead, the grid fetches only data to be displayed on screen. All data management operations are performed by the data server.

Non-Administrator User Access to User List and Details

We've added a "My Details" navigation bar item that is available to all users. This item can be used to view and change the current user's details.

Together with this change, we've also changed security system behavior for non-admininstrator users in both Simple and Complex authentication modes.

SecuritySimple strategy

Non-administrator users still cannot access user lists and, consequently, cannot modify user details. On the other hand, they can now modify their own password and details that are not protected by the security system (first name, last name, address and so on).

SecurityComplex strategy

Users who don't have permission to modify User objects can now change their password and modify their details that are not protected by the security module (first name, last name, address and so on).

New Features Related to Root Module Navigation

In previous versions, you could only navigate between root-level views by clicking navigation bar items. You can now use keyboard shortcuts, if you set them via the Application Model's NavigationItems | Item node.

One more new feature is customizable navigation bar visibility. End-users can temporarily hide the navigation bar using the newly implemented Navigation Bar Action.