DevExpress 15.1: what's new and interesting?
The beginning of summer is the time for a new version of DevExpress products, in which we have prepared many improvements to our components. We also worked very hard to improve the performance and usability of all the tools. It is very difficult to choose the “best-most” parts from all the work we have done, so the full list can be found here In the same article we tried to describe the most important, useful and interesting changes - these are both new components and functions, as well as improvements to existing ones. And of course, we have prepared a short video about the new version of DevExpress 15.1:
What is new and interesting in DevExpress 15.1?
One of the main innovations for WinForms in this release is support for the MVVM pattern .
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There is a new component - Accordion , which allows you to easily create a hierarchical navigation menu that has an unlimited number of nested levels, built-in search, the ability to show text and pictures in the elements, animation to open and hide groups and much more.
Another new component is the Navigation Pane and Navigation Frame . The first is a navigation bar with one page column aligned, with which you can display the active page. The second one also contains a collection of pages and is used to display various user-generated content, as well as to switch pages with smooth animation.
In this release, we expanded the capabilities of components such as Grid and TreeList to customize the search form so that users can quickly find the information they need.
Spreadsheet now provides end-user data verification through a powerful data validation mechanism. You can now create a drop-down list of valid values, set the required number of digits or characters in a cell, and check the data using various table formulas.
Using the new print settings page, the user can add headers and footers to the document, in which the page number, the current date and time, the file name, the sheet name, and so on can be displayed.
The new tabular style for Layout effectively arranges the elements in the table, besides, it is flexibly adjusted using various tabular settings.
From this release in WPF for the Grid component, pixel-by-pixel scrolling is available in Card View mode, which differs from the current one in greater smoothness and increased performance. It will be especially useful when scrolling a large number of elements, as well as sets of cards with a complex structure.
The processing performance through the GridColumn.Binding option also increased and the possibilities for the table in the Master-detail View mode were expanded, for example, it became possible to select several rows at a time.
Now the colors in the Chart component can be set in the data for the DataSource graph. And with the help of predefined Colorizers , specifying the color and range of values, you can assign colors to points by their values ​​that came from the data.
A new print settings dialog box appears for the Spreadsheet component, such as page orientation, paper size, indents, and others.
In the Rich Editor component, the end user can now edit comments, create new ones, edit, hide or delete them if they are no longer required. The API for the document layout has changed - objects, properties and methods have appeared that allow access to the layout element tree and the elements themselves.
The Map component has been expanded with the ability to display a new type of map - Cartesian Maps , which can be very useful for displaying various building plans and terrain schemes.
Last year, a preview version of DevExpress ASP.NET Rich Text Editor was introduced, which is available for WebForms and MVC . In this release, the official release of this new powerful text editor, which includes the functions of creating various lists, hyperlinks, support for touch-devices, read-only mode and much more, took place.
But in the preview version, the Card View component became available, having similar functionality with the ASPxGridView for working with data: sorting, filtering, working with large amounts of data in ServerMode mode.
End users can now flexibly customize graphs online in the browser using the new client Chart Designer , which allows you to add and remove items, control the appearance, location of the chart and its data.
The Ribbon component has been replenished with new types of items - Gallery Bar and Gallery Drop-Down Items , with the help of which the end user will be able to quickly and easily select something from a certain list.
For the HTML Editor component, many new enhancements have appeared, such as the Tag Inspector , which allows end users to see and manage the tag hierarchy, as well as filtering that can be set for tags, attributes, and element properties.
There are a lot of changes for the ASP.NET File Manager component, for example, the ability to select files and directories using check boxes, as well as display navigation, with which the end user can track his directory inside folders.
Among the new features of Dashboard in this release are conditional cell formatting in the Grid and Pivot components.
It can be used to select special cells and rows of the table according to the specified formatting rules.
This is possible because of the flexible system of criteria for the allocation of certain table elements that can be divided into several groups - Value, Top / Bottom, Average, Range .
With the help of group Value rules, it is possible to compare static values, for example, “less than”, “greater than”. The Top / Bottom group will allow you to select several upper or lower cells from a cell, with a specific value. Average group will help to select cells with values ​​that are larger or smaller than the average value. And the Range group - specify the ranges in the formatting rules, optionally adding them to using different colors and icons.
Also became available are functions for calculating totals, such as Sum, Avg, Count , and the like, which can be used to create calculated fields.
DevExpress Dashboard has updated the data access engine , which, in addition to the DBMS, now allows using the Entity Framework , as well as arbitrary custom data sources ( Object Data Source ). Also, the Query Builder has been updated, it has added support for embedded procedures with the ability to set their parameters through expressions.
In release 15.1, the new export engine, XL Export , became available, allowing you to export data to XLCS, XLS, and CSV formats. It does not create an internal model, but writes data directly to the stream. This achieves maximum performance with minimal memory overhead. The following features were supported:
In this release, the eXpressApp Framework presents a preview of the new web theme , which is designed to make XAF websites more convenient to use on both desktops and touch devices.
A notification module has become available, which in the last release was presented in the preview version. Compared to the previous version, the module's ability has expanded, for example, the opportunity to open editable settings of a business object that is associated with a notification, as well as create unobtrusive notifications without pop-up windows.
From this release it is possible to use the Workflow module with the Microsoft ADO.NET Entity Framework .
The administration of deployed applications has been greatly simplified due to the implementation of many new features, for example, importing settings from the Model.xafml file by application administrators and separate storage of settings for desktop, browser and mobile applications.
The main innovation for CodeRush in this release was support for the Roslyn platform (a set of C # and VisualBasic compilers and an API for analyzing code). This platform is included with Visual Studio 2015.
For Visual Studio 2015, we will have two products: the familiar classic CodeRush and the new CodeRush for Roslyn. The advantages of the version for Roslyn are the speed of work and a significant reduction in memory consumption.
In addition to a large number of features transferred from the classic version, the new CodeRush for Roslyn includes new ones - Code Coverage , which allows analyzing code coverage with unit tests. Roslyn's free CodeRush preview version can be installed right now through the Visual Studio extension gallery.
One of the new widgets in DevExtreme is the Pivot Grid , which has powerful data processing capabilities and flexible appearance settings.
Another new widget is Scheduler , which allows you to create events of various kinds that can be displayed a day ahead, a week and a month.
There are two new themes for decoration - compact and contrast. The first will allow you to more effectively place the components on the page, and the second is designed for people with visual impairments. The library of fonts for components has been significantly expanded, and if you wish, you can now connect your own, for example, Font Awesome.
The Grid component now has the ability to export to excel- format , precisely in the state in which the table is now located - with selected rows, applied filtering, sorting and grouping data, using excel- formats for numbers and dates.
In the data visualization components, the tooltip tooltip now supports html markup. Also, its location has ceased to depend on the boundaries and size of the component container, and it looks the same for both internal and boundary points.
ThemeBuilder was added with the ability to customize css- properties for the location of elements in applications built using the DevExtreme SPA Framework .
Grid is the first component for Xamarin Forms from DevExpress , which can be used for free by downloading here .
It has both standard table functions, such as filtering, sorting, grouping data, and advanced features.
In this release, TestCafe has the opportunity to take screenshots of the tested page, which will be especially useful for screenshot testing.
Improved presentation of test results - now a convenient table with sorting, grouping and searching of records is used to display reports. The reports themselves have become more detailed by comparing the result with the expected result and the ability to view the screenshots taken.
In the new version, you can track the appearance of JavaScript errors on the page being tested by setting a specific option in the test settings.
In this release DevExpress 15.1 in our components and products there is a lot of new and interesting, and with each release we try to make the work with our tools better and more convenient. Try the new version, and share your questions, comments and suggestions on our products in the comments to this article.
What is new and interesting in DevExpress 15.1?
- Winforms
- WPF
- ASP.NET WebForms + MVC
- Dashboard
- Document Server
- eXpressApp Framework
- CodeRush
- DevExtreme & HTML5
- Xamarin
- Testcafe
Winforms
One of the main innovations for WinForms in this release is support for the MVVM pattern .
')
There is a new component - Accordion , which allows you to easily create a hierarchical navigation menu that has an unlimited number of nested levels, built-in search, the ability to show text and pictures in the elements, animation to open and hide groups and much more.
Another new component is the Navigation Pane and Navigation Frame . The first is a navigation bar with one page column aligned, with which you can display the active page. The second one also contains a collection of pages and is used to display various user-generated content, as well as to switch pages with smooth animation.
In this release, we expanded the capabilities of components such as Grid and TreeList to customize the search form so that users can quickly find the information they need.
Spreadsheet now provides end-user data verification through a powerful data validation mechanism. You can now create a drop-down list of valid values, set the required number of digits or characters in a cell, and check the data using various table formulas.
Using the new print settings page, the user can add headers and footers to the document, in which the page number, the current date and time, the file name, the sheet name, and so on can be displayed.
The new tabular style for Layout effectively arranges the elements in the table, besides, it is flexibly adjusted using various tabular settings.
WPF
From this release in WPF for the Grid component, pixel-by-pixel scrolling is available in Card View mode, which differs from the current one in greater smoothness and increased performance. It will be especially useful when scrolling a large number of elements, as well as sets of cards with a complex structure.
The processing performance through the GridColumn.Binding option also increased and the possibilities for the table in the Master-detail View mode were expanded, for example, it became possible to select several rows at a time.
Now the colors in the Chart component can be set in the data for the DataSource graph. And with the help of predefined Colorizers , specifying the color and range of values, you can assign colors to points by their values ​​that came from the data.
A new print settings dialog box appears for the Spreadsheet component, such as page orientation, paper size, indents, and others.
In the Rich Editor component, the end user can now edit comments, create new ones, edit, hide or delete them if they are no longer required. The API for the document layout has changed - objects, properties and methods have appeared that allow access to the layout element tree and the elements themselves.
The Map component has been expanded with the ability to display a new type of map - Cartesian Maps , which can be very useful for displaying various building plans and terrain schemes.
ASP.NET WebForms + MVC
Last year, a preview version of DevExpress ASP.NET Rich Text Editor was introduced, which is available for WebForms and MVC . In this release, the official release of this new powerful text editor, which includes the functions of creating various lists, hyperlinks, support for touch-devices, read-only mode and much more, took place.
But in the preview version, the Card View component became available, having similar functionality with the ASPxGridView for working with data: sorting, filtering, working with large amounts of data in ServerMode mode.
End users can now flexibly customize graphs online in the browser using the new client Chart Designer , which allows you to add and remove items, control the appearance, location of the chart and its data.
The Ribbon component has been replenished with new types of items - Gallery Bar and Gallery Drop-Down Items , with the help of which the end user will be able to quickly and easily select something from a certain list.
For the HTML Editor component, many new enhancements have appeared, such as the Tag Inspector , which allows end users to see and manage the tag hierarchy, as well as filtering that can be set for tags, attributes, and element properties.
There are a lot of changes for the ASP.NET File Manager component, for example, the ability to select files and directories using check boxes, as well as display navigation, with which the end user can track his directory inside folders.
Dashboard
Among the new features of Dashboard in this release are conditional cell formatting in the Grid and Pivot components.
It can be used to select special cells and rows of the table according to the specified formatting rules.
This is possible because of the flexible system of criteria for the allocation of certain table elements that can be divided into several groups - Value, Top / Bottom, Average, Range .
With the help of group Value rules, it is possible to compare static values, for example, “less than”, “greater than”. The Top / Bottom group will allow you to select several upper or lower cells from a cell, with a specific value. Average group will help to select cells with values ​​that are larger or smaller than the average value. And the Range group - specify the ranges in the formatting rules, optionally adding them to using different colors and icons.
Also became available are functions for calculating totals, such as Sum, Avg, Count , and the like, which can be used to create calculated fields.
DevExpress Dashboard has updated the data access engine , which, in addition to the DBMS, now allows using the Entity Framework , as well as arbitrary custom data sources ( Object Data Source ). Also, the Query Builder has been updated, it has added support for embedded procedures with the ability to set their parameters through expressions.
Document Server
In release 15.1, the new export engine, XL Export , became available, allowing you to export data to XLCS, XLS, and CSV formats. It does not create an internal model, but writes data directly to the stream. This achieves maximum performance with minimal memory overhead. The following features were supported:
- creating the main elements of the table
- cell formatting
- formulas and hyperlinks
- merged cells
- conditional formatting
- image insertion
- auto-filter and grouping data
- and much more
eXpressApp Framework
In this release, the eXpressApp Framework presents a preview of the new web theme , which is designed to make XAF websites more convenient to use on both desktops and touch devices.
A notification module has become available, which in the last release was presented in the preview version. Compared to the previous version, the module's ability has expanded, for example, the opportunity to open editable settings of a business object that is associated with a notification, as well as create unobtrusive notifications without pop-up windows.
From this release it is possible to use the Workflow module with the Microsoft ADO.NET Entity Framework .
The administration of deployed applications has been greatly simplified due to the implementation of many new features, for example, importing settings from the Model.xafml file by application administrators and separate storage of settings for desktop, browser and mobile applications.
CodeRush
The main innovation for CodeRush in this release was support for the Roslyn platform (a set of C # and VisualBasic compilers and an API for analyzing code). This platform is included with Visual Studio 2015.
For Visual Studio 2015, we will have two products: the familiar classic CodeRush and the new CodeRush for Roslyn. The advantages of the version for Roslyn are the speed of work and a significant reduction in memory consumption.
In addition to a large number of features transferred from the classic version, the new CodeRush for Roslyn includes new ones - Code Coverage , which allows analyzing code coverage with unit tests. Roslyn's free CodeRush preview version can be installed right now through the Visual Studio extension gallery.
DevExtreme & HTML5
One of the new widgets in DevExtreme is the Pivot Grid , which has powerful data processing capabilities and flexible appearance settings.
Another new widget is Scheduler , which allows you to create events of various kinds that can be displayed a day ahead, a week and a month.
There are two new themes for decoration - compact and contrast. The first will allow you to more effectively place the components on the page, and the second is designed for people with visual impairments. The library of fonts for components has been significantly expanded, and if you wish, you can now connect your own, for example, Font Awesome.
The Grid component now has the ability to export to excel- format , precisely in the state in which the table is now located - with selected rows, applied filtering, sorting and grouping data, using excel- formats for numbers and dates.
In the data visualization components, the tooltip tooltip now supports html markup. Also, its location has ceased to depend on the boundaries and size of the component container, and it looks the same for both internal and boundary points.
ThemeBuilder was added with the ability to customize css- properties for the location of elements in applications built using the DevExtreme SPA Framework .
Xamarin
Grid is the first component for Xamarin Forms from DevExpress , which can be used for free by downloading here .
It has both standard table functions, such as filtering, sorting, grouping data, and advanced features.
Testcafe
In this release, TestCafe has the opportunity to take screenshots of the tested page, which will be especially useful for screenshot testing.
Improved presentation of test results - now a convenient table with sorting, grouping and searching of records is used to display reports. The reports themselves have become more detailed by comparing the result with the expected result and the ability to view the screenshots taken.
In the new version, you can track the appearance of JavaScript errors on the page being tested by setting a specific option in the test settings.
Conclusion
In this release DevExpress 15.1 in our components and products there is a lot of new and interesting, and with each release we try to make the work with our tools better and more convenient. Try the new version, and share your questions, comments and suggestions on our products in the comments to this article.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/259441/
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