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Archive for May, 2010

Introducing Silverlight Elements 1.1

We are proud to announce the release of Silverlight Elements 1.1. In this version we have added a whole bunch of interesting new controls to add an even richer user experience to your applications. All five of our current Silverlight themes have been updated to include all these new controls. We have also added new features to a few of the existing controls. The TimePicker and TimeSpanPicker controls now have up/down functionality and have the option to hide the drop down button. The Scheduler now supports custom schedule items which can be easily templated and added to the control.

Slider and Dual Slider

The Mindscape Slider control includes tick mark support as well as the usual Slider functionality. Tick marks can be displayed above or/and below the slider track, and the spacing between the tick marks can be changed. You can also specify whether or not the slider thumb should snap to the tick marks. The Slider can also be oriented vertically as well as horizontally.

The Mindscape DualSlider control includes all the features that we have put into the Slider, and also contains an additional slider thumb. This control is useful for selecting the start and end values or some kind of range. The thumbs can be moved either individually or at the same time by dragging the area between them. Various properties allow you to specify a minimum and maximum range, and also whether or not the thumbs are able to pass through each other.

You can read more information about the Slider and Dual Slider here, or play with them in our online demo.

Dock Panel

The DockPanel provides a layout strategy that arranges its children around the inside of its edges, like the WPF DockPanel. Individual items can be told which edge to be aligned against, and you can specify whether or not the last item should fill the remaining space or not. Have a look at the online demo where you can experiment with changing the width, height and dock properties of each of the items in the DockPanel.

Progress Bar

The Mindscape DualProgressBar can display the progress of individual sub-operations at the same time as the overall progress. If you don’t need to show the progress of an individual sub-operation, then you can still use this control as an enhanced version of a normal ProgressBar. Custom content can be displayed at the start, center and end of this control which can be text, images, bindings to the current progress or anything you fancy.

Read more information about the progress bar here, and have a look at it in the online demo.

Menu

The Menu control organises application commands into one easy to access location. This control is based on the familiar Windows menu component and makes is simple for users to discover what your application can do. Menus can include icons, checkable items and separators, and can be nested to provide a cascading menu effect. You can also set up particular menu items to remain open after the user has clicked on them.

You can read more information about the Menu control here, and see it in action with our online demo.

Split Button

This control is both a button and a menu combined. This control is useful when you have multiple related commands where one of the commands can be used as a default. The SplitButton acts like a button by raising an event when the user clicks on it. Further commands can be accessed from the drop down menu part of this control. Menu items can be added to the SplitButton in the same way they are added to a menu, and just like a menu the SplitButton supports cascading menus, icons and separators.

You can read more information about the SplitButton here, and see it in action with our online demo.

Expander

The Expander can tuck away its content and then display it only when the user wants to see it. This control is similar to the Expander seen in WPF and can accept any kind of visual content. You can also set it up to expand its content in an upward direction.

Outlook Bar

This control is a replica of the tab system seen in the Microsoft Outlook application. It displays a stack of tabs which can be used to select what content it should display. The thumb in this control can be dragged up and down to change the number of tabs that are visible. Tabs that have been collapsed can be seen in a smaller form in the tray at the bottom of the control. While collapsed, a tab can still be clicked to display its content. All the content and header content of each tab can be whatever you want it to be.

You can read more information about the OutlookBar here, and see it in action with our online demo.

Numeric Up Down

This is an ideal control for selecting a decimal value. The NumericUpDown displays a value which can be edited in a few different ways. The control is styled with a pair of buttons that can be used to increase or decrease the value by a specified magnitude. Clicking on the control and then using the up or down arrow keys will also increase or decrease the value. The user can even type directly into the control to input what ever number they need. This control can limit the users input by setting the minimum and maximum values, and the number of decimal places to display can also be set.

What do you think?

Looks useful? Try out the online demo and download the free trial version to give it a spin. And if there’s a new feature or control that would be useful for you, why not let us know in the forums? And you can get more information about Silverlight Elements here.

LightSpeed Visual Basic code generation changes

We’ve been making some changes to code generation as part of a forthcoming LightSpeed designer feature, and unfortunately it’s not been possible to complete the feature without a small change to Visual Basic code generation.

The change will affect you if:

• You are using the generated WCF DTO classes; and
• You are using the non-extension method syntax for calling DTO-to-entity conversion methods.

If you are using DTOs with the extension method syntax, e.g. myEntity.AsDto(), then you will not be affected by this change. We expect that most users will be using the extension method syntax and therefore won’t be inconvenienced.

If you are using the static method syntax, e.g. MyModelDtoExtensions.AsDto(myEntity), then you will be affected by the change. The extension module name will now include the type being extended. For example, you will now need to write MyModelMyEntityDtoExtensions.AsDto(myEntity), or change to using the extension method syntax. If you’re planning to upgrade to 3.1, we’d suggest changing your code to use the extension method syntax so that it will continue to work with 3.1. We apologise for any inconvenience.

Nightly news, 13 May 2010

A fairly brief update this week, as we’ll be making announcements about official releases in the next few days.

LightSpeed

• The designer now supports copying and pasting multiple properties in one operation.
• If you’re using associations to entities with composite keys and need to set up per-field column mappings, you can now do so in the designer. Instead of a single “Column Name” property on the association, you’ll see a “Column Name for X” property for each field of the composite key, e.g. “Column Name for EmployeeId” and “ColumnName for LocationId”.
• The designer no longer displays the discriminator settings when you’re using concrete table inheritance.
• We’ve fixed a couple of bugs: an issue with using constant boolean subexpressions in nested expressions in LINQ queries, a problem with multiple different joins over the same relationship and an issue with cascade delete on relationships that cross a class table inheritance hierarchy.

Silverlight Elements

• We’ve added a sample showing how to use the Scheduler control with a Web-based storage service.

As always, you can get the latest nightly builds from your account page in the store, or free versions from the Downloads page.

LightSpeed: VS 2010 support and the 3.1 release

It’s been almost exactly six months since we shipped LightSpeed 3.0, and in the next couple of weeks we’ll be releasing the latest and greatest version: LightSpeed 3.1. There’s a lot coming with the new release — much more than we initially planned to include — and we’ll be posting more information about the contents in the near future. However I thought it would be a good idea to post a couple of notes about 3.1 and the current state of its headline feature, Visual Studio 2010 support.

Visual Studio 2010 support

New Visual Studio releases always have a lot of momentum behind them and eager customers have been asking for us to get the LightSpeed design surface into VS2010 ever since beta 2 came out. We’ve had previews out throughout the beta cycle but we’re now pleased to announce that (after much last-minute gnashing of teeth and tearing of hair) it’s fully released and integrated into the LightSpeed nightly build.

Although this is currently only in the nightly builds, 3.1 will mean the non-nightly download (including Express) will include the VS2010 and VS2008 designers.

3.1 release

As mentioned, 3.1 will ship in the next couple of weeks. We’ve completed the key features that we were aiming for and are now in the process of polishing the release, fixing a few outstanding bugs, updating documentation and otherwise preparing for launch. If there’s anything in particular you would like to have documented better then post a comment – now’s the time to let us know (we do have a bunch of things we’ll improve but it always helps to be reminded!).

Pricing changes

With the release of LightSpeed 3.1 we will be increasing the price per developer. If you have been evaluating LightSpeed but haven’t quite got around to purchasing your licenses yet then you should do so before the 3.1 release! All customers get 12 months worth of updates so you’ll get 3.1 as soon as it ships as well :-)

Nightly news, 5 May 2010

We’ve frequently been asked to publish change logs for our nightly builds, and although it’s not very convenient for us to make that information available on a nightly basis, we thought it would be a good idea to publish the occasional round-up of recent changes. We are planning to make this a weekly thing… for some value of “weekly” that will depend on how much JD gets distracted into making Photoshops of Batman.

Here, then, is a round-up of the last week or so’s fixes and enhancements across the Mindscape product range.

LightSpeed

• Visual Studio 2010 designer support! We’ll be officially launching this soon, but it’s already in the nightlies.
• Support for using SQL Server spatial data type methods in a query. Instructions here.
• Consistent read support for Amazon SimpleDB. Instructions here and here.
• Support for localising field names in validation messages. Instructions here.
• You can now add (but not remove) unique constraints via the designer and via migrations.
• The designer now remembers the zoom level when you save the model. Handy for big models where you usually want to work zoomed out.
• Fixes for a spurious error in the designer, for Oracle SYS_GUID support in the designer and for entity range variables in LINQ joins.
• Fixed a British spelling in the help file. Hey, you may think this isn’t worth mentioning, but JD brooded about it for six straight days…

Silverlight Elements

• New OutlookBar control.
• New Expander control.
• New menuing and command controls: Menu, ContextMenu and SplitButton.
• New numeric controls: Slider, DualSlider, DualProgressBar and NumericUpDown.
• New layout controls: DockPanel and a pair of truncating StackPanels.
• TimePicker and TimeSpanPicker now have up-down functionality.
• Several fixes to design-time functionality and to the UniformGrid.

WPF Property Grid

• Fix for TypeEditors mapped to built-in editors not respecting BuiltInEditorStyles.

SimpleDB Management Tools

• Visual Studio 2010 support.
• Now uses consistent reads for all queries.
• Old-style query syntax (Amazon’s Crazy-Ass Query Language (TM)) is no longer supported.

You can download the latest nightly builds from the store, or from the Downloads page for free and trial editions.