Ribbon control

The main new control in this version is the Ribbon control. A lot of users will be familiar with this control as the command hub that sits at the top of Microsoft Office applications. This control is a replacement for the Menu control and is used to categorize application commands and display them nicely to the user. Out of the box, this control supports a lot of WPF Controls including buttons, check boxes, comboboxes, numeric controls, split buttons and more. Based on the available screen real-estate, the Ribbon control will select a small, medium or large state for each control and arrange them in an optimal way. If there isn’t enough space, groups of controls will bubble down into expandable segments so the user still has access to everything.

Included with the Ribbon control is the Gallery control which is like a Ribbon-friendly list box. Items are displayed in horizontal rows and can be navigated through with smooth animations. The user can expand the whole list of items in a popup where items can be optionally categorized. Gallery controls can either be placed directly within the Ribbon control, or within the dropdown part of a split button.

A demo called “Text Formatter” is included with WPF Elements 6.0 which demonstrates all the features of the Ribbon control.

Improved DateTime axis support

Since version 1 of the Chart control, there has always been support for displaying DateTime values along the axes. The axes automatically space out the tick marks and labels which works well for numbers, but could be better for DateTime values. In WPF Elements 6.0 the axes logic for DateTime values is much improved. Labels will now be separated by proper time units rather than seemingly random intervals. For example, based on the current time range on the axis, the labels could be separated by 5 minutes, or 12 hours, or 2 days or 3 months etc. The interesting one here is monthly intervals because each month has a different number of days. The labels and tick mark spacings will be physically different to support this making the axis labels very easy to read.

Accurate data rendering.

The Chart control can handle millions of data points at once while maintaining good responsiveness. One of the ways it does this is by skipping over some of the data points so that only a few hundred points need to be rendered at once. As you zoom in, less points are skipped over so all the data can still be viewed. By default, the Chart control skips over of a constant number of data points per render. For example, the Chart may render every 10th point. This works well, but it can potentially skip extreme outlying data points and not capture an accurate shape of the data. In version 6.0 we include the IsMinMaxSamplingEnabled property on data series which when set to true will sacrifice a small amount of performance to render more accurate data. This is ideal for data that has sudden changes in the trend or outlying values. Here is a before and after shot of a trigonometry equation containing an extreme amount of spikes. For this kind of data there is a huge improvement with using this feature.

There are heaps of other additions that I’d love to tell you about but can’t fit into this blog post. For the full list, check out the Getting Started/What’s New page in the documentation that is shipped with the product. You can also see a simplified list of what’s new right here.

If you’re already a WPF Elements customer, you can upgrade to version 6.0 for free by going to your account page. If not, download the free 30 day trial to see what you’re missing out on. If you have any questions about WPF Elements, let us know in the forum. We’d also love to hear any feature requests you have.

LightSpeed

• Suppress code gen of LINQ IQueryable for transient entities
• Fix issue for C# templates with association fields being marked private when derived types are present, should be protected in these cases
• Fix for issue with delete cascading of an entity where it was associated with the base entity in a CTI relationship

Web Workbench

• Fix for an issue with invalid warnings being emitted regarding missing folders on save
• Updated CoffeeScript to 1.5
• Added support for Literate CoffeeScript
• Added an option to suppress warnings about missing folders to Web Workbench options
• Updated the Visual Studio Gallery

WPF Diagrams

• Resolved a connection point placement issue caused by deserializing a rotated node.
  (details)

WPF Elements

• Resolved a DataGrid auto column size bug.
  (details)
• Resolved a bug caused by using Snoop to debug the DataGrid.
  (details)
• Resolved a bug calculating the extent of the DataGrid.
  (details)
• Resolved an edge case issue in a DataGrid with 1 column and FrozenColumnCount = 1.
  (details)
• Resolved an exception when dragging the DataGrid padding column header.
  (details)
• Added Minor and MajorRangeButtonsVisibility properties to the TimeExplorer.
  (details)
• Resolved a DataGridPager bug.
  (details)
• Resolved a bug in LineAreaSeriesBase.GetY when the data includes null points.
  (details)

As usual the free editions of the nightly builds are available right now from the downloads page, and the full editions from the store.

WPF Elements

• Added Chart.ForceRender method for special scenarios.
  (details)
• Added DataSeriesSelected event to Chart, raised when a new series has been clicked on
• Resolved the scenario when a DateTimePicker contains a lone “ddd” or “dddd” component
• Added basic min/max feature to the DateTimePicker.
  (details)
• Added TimeExplorer.CanEditRangeMagnitude property.
  (details)
• Adjustments to the new DataGrid MouseOverCell feature.
  (details)
• Resolved an exception in the PropertyGrid collection editor.
  (details)
• Added ChartMouseRightButtonDown and ChartMouseRightButtonUp events.
  (details)
• Selected data series logic.
  (details)
• The ChartGrid now aquires the new axes of its parent chart if they change.
  (details)

WPF Diagrams

• Added TreeLayoutAlgorithm.StationaryNode property.
  (details)
• The AStarPathfinder now respects the IsUserModified connection property
  (details)

Silverlight Elements

• Resolved a minor bug with displaying data labels.
  (details)

As usual the free editions of the nightly builds are available right now from the downloads page, and the full editions from the store.

Web Workbench

• Patch to JS2Coffee to avoid stdin check
• Misc bug fixes
• Visual Studio Gallery updated!

LightSpeed

• Fix for rogue SqlServer UDT types causing an exception when surfaced in via the stored proc route, set these as object data types if encountered instead.
• Fix for http://www.mindscapehq.com/forums/thread/539142

WPF Elements

• Fixed DataGrid column horizontal scrolling bug when there is a frozen column count and a hidden column to the left of it.
  (details)

Metro Elements

• Fix: CoverFlows with non-linear paths now have drag manipulation enabled
• Misc bug fixes

As usual the free editions of the nightly builds are available right now from the downloads page, and the full editions from the store.

Web Workbench

• Visual Studio Gallery updated!

WPF Elements

• Resolved some bugs in the DataGrid bring-into-view logic.
  (details)
• Resolved a minor bug in the DataGrid when using DisplayMemberBinding in conjunction with custom property descriptors.
  (details)
• Added DataGrid.IsSynchronizedWithCurrentItem property.
  (details)

WPF Diagrams

• Resolved a designer exception.
  (details)
• Fixed the SelectedItemsChanged event logic.
  (details)
• Resolved a size-to-fit issue on initial load in some scenarios.
  (details)

Metro Elements

• Updates to sample explorer and misc bug fixes

As usual the free editions of the nightly builds are available right now from the downloads page, and the full editions from the store.

LightSpeed

• Fix for an aliasing issue with CTI
  (details)
• 5.0 beta now available!

Web Workbench

• Added an option to trigger a compile of all files on build

WPF Elements

• Resolved a bug in the DoubleTextBox control.
  (details)
• Invisible columns are skipped when navigating in a DataGrid.
  (details)
• Resolved a minor bug with rendering data labels on a horizontal bar chart to the left of the baseline.
  (details)

WPF Diagrams

• Smart scrolling for connection creation.
  (details)
• WPF Diagrams 3.0 released!

Metro Elements

• Fixed chart legend positioning when centered

As usual the free editions of the nightly builds are available right now from the downloads page, and the full editions from the store.

LightSpeed

• Fix for exception when performing a projection query with paging over a CTI model on SQL Server
• Added Put/Delete attributes for WebContract routing

Web Workbench

• Parser fix for issue with incorrect highlighting for inline data values
• Parser update to correctly handle interpolated variable references being used in value lists
• Parser update to correctly parse redundant nested bracketing on function calls
• Parser update to support bang directives on @extend
• Parser update to improve parsing support for @warn
• Updated less to latest version from Github
• Added a global option to turn off automatic adding of compiled output into the project
• Compile/Minify options are now hidden if the files are being managed by Compass

WPF Elements

• Added BarSeries.BarRenderingMode property to create Tornado charts.
  (details)
• Resolved a DataGrid selection bug.
  (details)
• Added ConnectionRelocationInfo.DropTarget property for more fine-tuned control of overriding the relocation behavior.
  (details)
• The PropertyGrid.Refresh method now respects the IsExpandedStatePersistent property.

Metro Elements

• Misc updates to Sample Explorer

As usual the free editions of the nightly builds are available right now from the downloads page, and the full editions from the store.

LightSpeed

• Fix for referencing issue on 2010/2012 which would lead to a crash on model generation if certain UDT’s or custom CLR types were involved in the model

Web Workbench

• Handle a crash occurring within Copy Web Site dialog that is triggered by WW.
• Fix an issue where Add New Item context commands would not triggered when in sub directories of a Windows Store JavaScript project.

WPF Elements

• Fix for grouping null enum columns.
  (details)
• DataGrid now supports bringing a DataRow of a DataTable into view.
  (details)
• Resolved a minor issue caused by extending the items-changed behavior of a DataGrid.
  (details)
• Resolved an unusual DataGrid bug caused by a very specific usage scenario.
  (details)

As usual the free editions of the nightly builds are available right now from the downloads page, and the full editions from the store.

WPF Diagrams

• Support for binding in DiagramNodeTool visuals.
  (details)

WPF Elements

• Resolved a bug where sorting a hierarchical data grid was not sorting children in some scenarios.
  (details)
• Added better enum support when a DataTable or DataView is used as the ItemsSource of a DataGrid.
  (details)
• Resolved a positioning bug when calling the DataGrid.BringRowIntoView method just after adding a new item.
  (details)

Metro Elements

• Added CalendarControl.WeekNumberVisibility property
  (details)

As usual the free editions of the nightly builds are available right now from the downloads page, and the full editions from the store.

LightSpeed

• Fix for issue with differencing SQL generated for MySql5 – don’t emit DEFAULT ” for TEXT based columns.
• Fix for issue with TEXT field length not being assumed as unlimited with MySql5 extractor.
• Fix for issue with UDT’s being used in migrations not working correctly.
• Dont allow through field names which are the same as the entity name, append a custom suffix of Field in these cases.
  (details)
• Fix for issue with one to one associations having lazily loaded collections (leading to deferred actions on re-assignment) if accessed via the non FK end.
  (details)

Web Workbench

• Check and ignore error if expected string does not occur in Compass output because the Compass project is already set up in the target directory.
• Support a user defined path to a custom maintained Ruby installation to be supplied to allow for custom gem installations.

NHibernate Designer

• Correctly generate entity properties which are also FK’s as read-only.

WPF Elements

• Added ConnectionPointThumb.IsConnectionDragOver property to aid in highlighting connection points.
  (details)
• Added MouseWheelZoom.MaximumZoom property for capping the diagram zoom level via mouse wheel.
  (details)

As usual the free editions of the nightly builds are available right now from the downloads page, and the full editions from the store.