Empowering many data entry scenarios that will leave users appreciating the usability of your data-intensive applications, NetAdvantage for Windows Forms 2008 Vol. 2 has rewritten the book of what is possible with several new data grid features in the WinGrid™ control like row edit templates, column header rotation, CardView printing and custom checkbox glyphs. Combined with new controls like the WinValidator™ to ensure data input by users is correct, and the new intuitive suggest mode in WinCombo™, we think you'll agree this release delivers tremendous value.

 

WinGrid - Enhanced

The data grid control has been enhanced significantly in this release, with perhaps no feature standing out more than the new row edit template support many of our developers have been asking for.

Row Edit Templates

When working with particularly complex data, your end users may not do exactly what you expect. Now WinGrid enables you to guide them through the data entry process as much as possible with the new WinGridRowEditTemplate™ control. With the WinGridRowEditTemplate you can display a dialog form in the foreground (it appears in front of the grid) which presents users only with the data they need to modify. Like any dialog, you have considerable flexibility in designing the dialog to offer additional help clarifying for the user what you expect them to do as they input the data. The view brings the important data in one row to the user's attention in a format making it easy for them to modify.

Rotating Column Headers

Have you ever had a grid with so many columns, scrolling horizontally became an arduous chore? Not with the WinGrid, because now you can rotate the columns (individually or at the band-level) so they can take up less horizontal space. Column headings can even be made completely vertical, allowing for very dense, matrix-like data displays if that is what your application needs. It all works by setting the TextOrientationInfo you want, see the Rotating Text in WinGrid Column Headers walkthrough for more information.

CardView Display Printing

Many users have enjoyed the Office® business card metaphor presented by the CardView display mode of the WinGrid. This release adds the capability for you to print the WinGrid when you have data displayed in CardView by setting the AllowCardPrinting property to RootBandOnly. Now your users can take a hardcopy with them, with all of the CardView style options (like MaxCardAreaCols and MaxCardAreaRows) you would expect being honored.

IME Mode at the Column-Level

If you are building a global application, you may be able to appreciate having some columns that need to be editable in a certain character set (like Japanese Kanji characters) while other columns remain in your conventional alphabet. In this release, you can enable Input Method Editor (IME) use on specific columns instead of the entire grid by setting each column's ImeMode property to On.

 

WinValidator™ - NEW!

Validating Windows Forms controls has always taken at least some coding, and has never been as easy as validating an ASP.NET control where built-in validation has been a feature of the platform for some time. In Windows Forms, you had to add code to the OnValidating event of your control, and this would make for a lot of entangled code if you're validating several controls at once. WinValidator is a new extra in the Win.Misc assembly that helps you define crisp, clear validation constraints and then handles all the necessary processing.

WinValidator supports the following kinds of validation conditions:

  • Operator - Performs arbitrary comparisons (equals, less than, etc.) between the value entered and a value you specify
  • Range - Verifies the value entered is within the range of a minimum and maximum value you define
  • List - Ensures a value input by the user exists within some list of items you supply

As an extender control, WinValidator works with any Windows Forms control by attaching itself through the control's Validating event. But a benefit of using WinValidator with other Infragistics embeddable editors is that you have the option to cause your ValidationTrigger to happen during the PropertyValueChanged event, instead.

WinValidator is also flexible in how it notifies users of invalid data entry through its NotificationSettings, so you can display anything from an error icon to a balloon tip to a dialog box replete with helpful explanatory text.  Read Using WinValidator for further information on this exciting new extender control.

 

WinCheckEditor™ and WinOptionSet™ - NEW Custom Glyph Designer

Not all checkboxes are created equal, so when you want checkboxes and radio buttons that can display with a Microsoft® Office 2007-style or some custom style you define on your own then you need to turn to the checkboxes and radio buttons in our WinEditors™.  This release includes a new designer wizard that guides you, step-by-step, through setting up the glyphs used by these two frequently-used editor controls. With custom glyph styles, you can show the types of checkmarks that you want to see in WinGrid as shown here.

 

WinCombo™ - NEW Suggest Mode

One of the new and innovative ideas on the Web is the ability to suggest values in a drop-down list to autocomplete text typed into a combo box much like that popularized by Google® in their Web search box. We believe its applicability shouldn't be confined to the Web, so NetAdvantage for Windows Forms 2008 Vol. 2 brings it to the WinComboEditor™ allowing you to use this new suggest feature in your desktop applications. Like all of our embeddable editors, you can embed this into WinGrid to provide this sophisticated drop-down suggest behavior that your users will surely appreciate when facing a long list of possible choices.

It's easy to enable this new suggest functionality, all you have to do is set the AutoCompleteMode to your desired suggest mode. See the Suggest Possible Values walkthrough for complete details.

 

WinDockManager™ - Adds Visual Studio® 2008 Docking Style

Visual Studio 2008 introduced developers to a new docking pane style that has now been added to the WinDockManager in NetAdvantage for Windows Forms 2008 Vol. 2 to allowing you to give your users this same look and feel. This new style is accessible through setting the CaptionStyle and WindowStyle properties to the new enumeration constant, VisualStudio2008.

You can even empower users with the live preview functionality in the new Visual Studio 2008 look and feel by showing or hiding the preview in the control's navigator to appear in any of the following NavigatorStyles:

  • Default - based on the WindowStyle
  • VisualStudio2005 - Visual Studio 2005 style navigator dialog
  • VisualStudio2008XP - Visual Studio 2008 style navigator dialog, as seen on the Windows® XP operating system.
  • VisualStudio2008Vista - Visual Studio 2008 style navigator dialog, as seen on the Windows Vista™ operating system.

(Hint: We even allow you to show the navigator in Visual Studio 2005 style by setting the IsPreviewVisible property to True.)

 

WinChart™ - Adds Tree Map Chart Type

NetAdvantage for Windows Forms 2008 Vol. 2 has added the tree map chart type to WinChart. Tree maps are used to display large hierarchical data sets as nested rectangles, where the size of these rectangular regions correlate proportionately to the importance of the data point the rectangle represents. They are also sometimes referred to as heat map charts, although WinChart already has a separate chart type for measuring heat and other intensities over a continuous area or 3-D surface which is different from the tree map. Real world examples of tree map charts include maps of the stock market or hard disk defragmenting utilities.

Tree map visualizations are useful anytime your data series has a hierarchical aspect.  It is also used in situations where you might elect to use a pie or doughnut chart, because the size of its rectangular regions map to data values in much the same way that pie slice size depicts a data value. In a tree map, several levels-of-detail can be visible at the same time.  However, in other chart types the user would need to drill down to get more detailed data so the immediacy of a tree map visualization is a significant advantage in this regard.

 

See What's New in Prior Releases

Every release of the NetAdvantage for .NET controls add value and features onto the release that came before. You can read more about what was new in previous volume releases here or at anytime consult the "What's New" pages in the accompanying documentation.

  • NetAdvantage for .NET 2008 Volume 1 added the WinTrackBar™ editor control, easy Vista styling and behavior for WinTree™ and new features like browser-style close buttons on tabs and auto-fit list view columns.
  • NetAdvantage for .NET 2007 Volume 3 introduced Vista-style breadcrumb navigation with the WinNavigationBar™, WindowsVista styles, a new Histogram chart type, chart export to PDF/XPS and much more.
  • NetAdvantage for .NET 2007 Volume 2 provided the Infragistics Document Export Engine for XPS/PDF export and an enhanced Infragistics.Excel class library, new WinGauge™ and WinDesktopAlert™ controls and much more.
  • NetAdvantage for .NET 2007 Volume 1 added Express Styling, a new MiniToolbar control, Ribbon enhancements, WinGrid™ conditional formatting and much more.