Note: This sale has now ended.

For our friends in the northern hemisphere it’s that time of the year – it’s warming up and there’s a holiday approaching. We thought it would be a great time to offer a special for the summer so that you have a great toolbox at your disposal for when you’re coding away on the beach.

Here’s the deal:

For the price of our WPF or Silverlight suites you can get a full Mindscape Mega Pack upgrade at no extra charge! And to save you money in the long run we’ll also add an additional six months of updates! Now that will afford you a few extra Mojitos!

So that’s every Mindscape product — WPF, Silverlight, Windows Phone, LightSpeed, SimpleDB, you name it — and 18 whole months of nightly builds, upgrades and entirely new products! All at a fraction of the price of other competing suites.

Throw on your skate shoes and roll over to the Summer Sale Page!

Well, a friend of ours has a feature request in to Microsoft for dynamic enums, where you can choose the enum values at run time, but just between you and me, I wouldn’t hold my breath for that one. In the meantime, fortunately, you can solve the problem old skool. Here’s how.

I’ve written elsewhere about the queer old dynamic pseudo-type system that lives in the System.ComponentModel cave of wonders. One of the many things you can do with this subsystem is to describe a standard set of values, even for properties or types that aren’t enums. An example of this is how in XAML you can write, say, Background=”HotPink” instead of <Button.Background><SolidColorBrush><Color R=”255″ …etc…. WPF defines a standard set of values for the Brush type so that you can specify common brushes by name, even though Brush isn’t an enum.

The secret lies in the TypeConverter class. TypeConverter, despite its name, isn’t just about converting between types. It also has a GetStandardValues() method which you can override to — you guessed it — provide a standard set of values. That standard set of values can come from anywhere, so you can make it up at runtime.

Let’s see this in action. Suppose we have a Penguin object, and we want users to be able to enter the penguin’s species, but we want to assist users by giving them a list of known species to choose from. Since new species of penguin are discovered all the time in the depths of the Amazon rainforest, we don’t want to code this up as an enum — it needs to be a string but it needs to have standard values.

Enter the TypeConverter. We have to create a class that derives from TypeConverter and overrides two methods: GetStandardValuesSupported and GetStandardValues. The first one tells the UI that there are standard values — without it, the grid will assume that there are no standard values and will just display a text box. The second tells the UI what the standard values are. Here’s the implementation:

internal class PenguinSpeciesConverter : TypeConverter
{
  public override bool GetStandardValuesSupported(ITypeDescriptorContext context)
  {
    return true;  // required if you want standard values
  }
 
  public override StandardValuesCollection GetStandardValues(ITypeDescriptorContext context)
  {
    // Ignoring caching and other performance issues
    string[] species = GetSpeciesFromDatabase();
    return new StandardValuesCollection(species);
  }
}

So far so good. Now we need to specify that this type converter applies to our Penguin.Species property. If we had a separate PenguinSpecies type, we could do this at the type level, but since we’re making Species a string, that won’t work. (Technically, it is possible to associate the PenguinSpeciesConverter with the string type, but it would be a really, really bad idea, because it would affect every string in your application.) Instead, we need to specify the type converter at the property level by applying TypeConverterAttribute to the property:

public class Penguin : INotifyPropertyChanged
{
  [TypeConverter(typeof(PenguinSpeciesConverter))]  // hooks up the type converter
  public string Species { /* implementation omitted */ }
}

And this is all you need to do! You don’t need to specify a PropertyEditor in the PropertyGrid control declaration: the grid detects that there is a standard set of values for the Species property and automatically uses a drop-down instead of a text box.

What if your property was of a different type, such as Brush? That is where the convert-y bits of TypeConverter comes in. You can implement GetStandardValues() to return strings, then implement CanConvertFrom and ConvertFrom to convert those strings to the “real” type. Leave a comment if you need more info on this and I’ll try to post some more details.

Want to give it a go? The PropertyGrid control is just one of 35+ stunning controls in our WPF Elements suite. Download the trial here or get free controls here!

The key focus for WPF Elements 4.0 was to include a high performance suite of charting controls to add to the existing 30+ controls. We delivered a fantastic range of charting controls for Silverlight in 2010 and had great feedback that developers wanted to see the same offered in WPF Elements.

Chart types included in WPF Elements 4.0

• Bar
• Line
• Area
• Pie
• Doughnut
• Bubble
• Scatter
• Spline
• Spline area
• Stacked bar
• Stacked line
• Stacked area
• Stacked spline area

Of course new releases aren’t just about new controls – it’s also about improving the existing controls. We’ve added several new features to the scheduler, property grid, outlook bar and drop down edit box. New disabled visual states were added to the Office style themes as well. Bug fixes have been rolled up from the WPF Elements 3.0 nightly builds also.

This is on top of all the existing controls in the suite such as the WPF Property Grid, WPF Scheduler, Coverflow, Multicolumn TreeView and many many more.

Of course with the power of WPF you’re able to customise the look and feel of these charting controls (and in fact any control in WPF Elements) to suit your application’s design aesthetic. WPF Elements includes 5 themes to help you start out with a great look and feel.

Give it a test drive!

Currently all existing WPF Elements customers have access to the beta install bits from their account (You should see “WPF Elements 4.0 – Beta”). Betas are currently only available to customers however we expect to be shipping the final version very soon. If you’re not yet a customer but are working with WPF you should have a look at WPF Elements 3.

Screenshots

Here’s a taste of the charts that are included. They’re from the development team and include examples of custom styles. The screen shots are just a sample of what is possible and obviously don’t show off how fast and interactive the charts can be.

A custom chart style for the stacked bar chart

Bar chart with custom axis labels

WPF cylinder chart in action

WPF bar chart with data dependant styles – notice how the bars change colour depending on their value

WPF spline chart – smooth curves

WPF stacked area charts

Of course you can stack spline charts as well.

Axis scaling is possible, here we have a logarithmic Y axis scale

Doughnut charts – both delicious and useful for showing your data

The classic Pie Chart for WPF. Notice that partial pie rendering is possible, in this case one segment is not displayed.

Data does not need to be displayed vertically. Many different options exist in all charts for controlling the display of the chart data.

We’d love your feedback

As with everything we do, we love to hear our users feedback. Either post a comment below or fire something into our WPF Elements forum.

LightSpeed

• We’ve made the “can’t synchronise external class references” designer warning a bit more restrained if you have a lot of classes derived from an external base.
• Fix for a designer bug where if you selected an entity in the tree view, then hit Del in the filter box, it deleted the entity
• Fix for an issue with soft delete and joins
• Fix for an issue with discriminated inheritance and joins

WPF Elements

• Added support for custom object creation in the property grid “new collection item” button
• Added work hours customisation to the Scheduler control

These are all available now and you can get them from the usual places.

Silverlight Elements

• Added a DataLabel property for all data series (except BubbleSeries — get a real chart, bubble fans!)
• We’ve changed DataSeries to use a consistent SeriesBrush property, replacing the old BarBrush, BubbleBrush and BogBrush properties

LightSpeed

• Fixed an error in the LINQ provider if a query traversed a one-to-one association from the end without the foreign key
• Fixed an aliasing error with value objects in a derived table
• Fixed an aliasing error in Exists queries with certain database providers
• Migrations extensibility for full ninja support — we’ll write about this when we’ve had a bit more feedback from users

NHibernate Designer

• Fixed an issue if a property coincided with the discriminator

WPF Elements

• Fixed an error in the property grid if the selected object raised PropertyChanged with a null or empty property name
• Some updates to the MultiCalendar generic style

Where can you get them? From the usual places. When can you get them? Right now!

LightSpeed

• Added support for using the “is” operator on associated entities in LINQ queries
• Added support for using non-database-backed properties in LINQ expressions
• Added support for string concatenation in LINQ expressions on non-SQL Server databases
• Added wildcard column exclusion to lsgen command-line tool
• Provided a more meaningful error if the LockVersion field was declared incorrectly
• Added an option to have sequence allocation run up to the returned sequence value instead of behind it
• Fixed a bug with function arguments which themselves had functions applied to them
• Fix for nested Any calls in a Where clause where the nested Any doesn’t have a predicate
• Fixes for designer NoReverseAssociationAttribute support
• Added fixes for hyphenated domain names in SimpleDB
• Provided a workaround for Visual Studio 2010 Server Explorer not allowing connections to SQL Server 2000 except through OLE DB

WPF Elements

• Fix for drop-down not appearing for enum values in the property grid when displaying a weak-typed ObservableDictionary
• Added RichTextBox support to the PromptDecorator

WPF Diagramming

• Tweak to make it easier for applications to detect when diagram elements have moved

Free editions from the downloads page, retail editions from the store.

The bad news is that we’ve made some minor changes as part of the move, which may require some updates to your code. These changes are as follows:

• The PropertyGrid control is now part of the Mindscape.WpfElements namespace. If you have code-behind which refers to the PropertyGrid type, you’ll need to update your using/Imports statements. Also, if you’ve used a clr-namespace XAML namespace instead of the http namespace, you’ll need to update your XAML.
• PropertyGrid support classes such as Node and Editor are now part of the Mindscape.WpfElements.WpfPropertyGrid namespace. Again, if you’ve got code which refers to these types, you’ll need to update your using/Imports statements.
• The implementation of the NumericUpDown and Date editors has changed to use the WPF Elements numeric and date controls. If you’ve custom styled these editor, you’ll need to update your style. See the example styles included with WPF Elements for examples.
• There’s no longer a built-in masked text editor. You can however create your own using the WPF Elements MaskedTextBox control.

If you don’t want to make these changes, of course you can carry on using the Property Grid 2.x DLL — just save it and your licence file to a private project location (such as an Assemblies or ThirdParty directory) and reference it at that location. Or if you need help making the changes, jump in on the forum and let us know what the problem is.

What about the good news? Well, the good news is that all current WPF Property Grid customers receive a free upgrade to WPF Elements 3.0, which means you now get a whole truckload of cool controls thrown in alongside the grid, from basic business controls like the CurrencyTextBox to advanced business controls like the Scheduler and controls like CoverFlow that just add a touch of glamour to your user interface! Get the full details here and download your copy from the store!

LightSpeed

• Now you don’t even need to leave the designer to get your database created. If the designer can’t find the database when you try to do an Update Database, it will now offer to create it for you — if you’re on SQL Server, MySQL or PostgreSQL, anyway. Let us know if you want this feature for other databases too. (Except Oracle. If you want it for Oracle… please don’t let us know.) Rumours that the next version of the designer will download and install the database software for you are greatly exaggerated.
• Fixed an error with client-side boolean literals.
• Fix for an error when projecting a property declared in a derived class when using class table inheritance.
• Fixed an issue where discriminators were not respected when joining to a derived class.
• Beta support for the SQL Server Compact 4 CTP. This requires an additional assembly reference: see here for instructions. At the moment, this is only runtime support: there’s no designer integration. Of course you can still use designer-built models with the LightSpeed runtime, you just won’t be able to do database sync or migrations.
• Ninja association support, or ‘cross-cutting composite keys’ as they are more prosaically known. We’ll post more about this later, but if you can’t wait, see here for the details.

WPF Property Grid

• Fix for an exception when editing a subnode in a collection when the collection contains expandable structs.

Don’t forget the WPF Elements 3.0 beta is now available to existing property grid customers. This contains some changes to the property grid so check it out sooner rather than later!

WPF Flow Diagrams

• We’ve added some hooks to make it easier to serialise custom connections. Here’s a sample.

All these features and fixes are available in current nightly builds — get free and trial editions from the downloads page, or retail versions from the store.

WPF Elements is our suite of controls for Windows Presentation Foundation and in 3.0 we’re not only bundling in the popular Property Grid control and our stylish WPF themes, we’re also adding a whole load of new controls:

• Scheduler – Outlook-style calendar display
• DualProgressBar – display operation and sub-operation progress
• DualSlider – a handy and visual way for users to select a range
• OutlookBar – an attractive and compact tab control
• PaletteColorPicker – help your users select colors that work well together
• SplitButton – it’s a button! It’s a menu! No, it’s a benu! Or possibly a menton
• TimePicker – for selecting a time of day
• TimeSpanPicker – for selecting a duration
• RichTextToolBar – a convenient and familiar UI for formatting the WPF RichTextBox

The PropertyGrid control has also been enhanced with new themes, and WPF Themes extends these to the built-in WPF controls.

The WPF Elements 3.0 beta is in the store now and is free to current WPF Elements, WPF Property Grid and WPF Themes customers. Take it for a spin and if you run into any issues, let us know!

Some important notes about the new release that all WPF customers should be aware of:

WPF Property Grid

We will be merging our WPF Property Grid control into the WPF Elements family. It will no longer be a stand alone product to purchase from our store. It’s interesting and a little sad to see it go as its own standalone product as it was Mindscape’s second product that was released to market but it’s also an important step in continuing maturity of our WPF offering.

What does this mean for existing customers? If you own the WPF Property Grid product you will automatically be migrated to owning WPF Elements 3.0 as part of your active subscription for free.

WPF Themes

We released a WPF Themes product that included 5 themes for all the built in WPF controls. We’ve decided that this would be better bundled up with WPF Elements 3.0 as well and will also be discontinuing the WPF Themes individual product when WPF Elements 3.0 is released.

What does this mean for existing customers? If you own the WPF Themes product you will automatically be migrated to owning WPF Elements 3.0 as part of your active subscription for free.

WPF Elements 3.0

Beyond doing the product line up tango, WPF Elements will also get a big upgrade by way of new features in existing controls and new control additions. We’ve received wonderful feedback from customers about what they would like to see added (for example, a WPF Scheduler control like the Outlook calendar) and I’m looking forward to seeing how customers make use of them.

Price changes – the call-to-action part of this post!

With WPF Elements 3.0 we will be increasing the price of the product which is why we’re making this announcement now. If you are currently evaluating any of our WPF products then it would be a very good idea to purchase a 12 month subscription today and lock in the current pricing for the next 12 months. If you already have a subscription, you may wish to extend it for another 12 months now. This will represent a substantial saving over buying the products or renewing them once WPF Elements 3.0 is released. Also, note that if you have an inactive subscription, you can still re-activate it and renew for 12 months at a reduced amount from your account page.

Existing customers can extend their subscriptions here
Cannot-wait-to-be-customers can purchase from the store here

We hope that you’ll love the new WPF Elements when we launch it later in July.

Happy coding!