AdvGrid includes following major features:

• Built-in editors with complete editing framework so you can create custom editors
• Built-in data virtualization
• Row pinning to either top or bottom of viewport
• Column pinning to left or right of viewport
• Sorting by multiple columns
• Office 2010 like styling
• Column definition properties can be data bound to elements in the visual tree and to the data context of the grid
• Extended selection functionality and ability to select an entire column or range of columns

Built-in editors allow easy data editing and you can also create your own editors:

There is much more to our new AdvGrid control. Make sure to check the sample project that you can find at: My Documents\DotNetBar for WPF Samples\AdvGridSample

Getting started with AdvGrid Knowledge Base article is great resource to help you start using new controls. Please use it.

Here are detailed Release Notes. If you have current DotNetBar license download latest release on Customer Only web site. Fully functional trial version is also available. We are working on even more major new exciting features, but please do not hesitate to send me your feedback and wishes. Thank you for using our controls and please let me know how you like them.

Related posts:

1. DotNetBar for WPF 6.1 release with new Property Grid control
2. DotNetBar for Windows Forms 8.0 Released with Advanced Property Grid
3. Next major DotNetBar WinForms release with Tree Control

Other changes in this release:

• MetroForm support for SETTINGS and HELP buttons in form caption added
• MessageBoxEx.TextMarkupEnabled property added to control whether text-markup is rendered
• TouchKeyboard.CurrentKeyboardTarget property added to retrieve current target control for keyboard input
• Many improvements to SuperGrid control
• And much, much more…

All in all, there are almost 60 new features and enhancements in this release.

Here are detailed Release Notes.

If you have current DotNetBar license download latest release on Customer Only web site. Fully functional trial version is also available. Thank you for using our controls and please let me know how you like them.

Related posts:

1. DotNetBar for WinForms 10.2 Released with NEW SuperGrid Control
2. DotNetBar for WPF 6.1 release with new Property Grid control
3. DotNetBar for Windows Forms 9.4 released with 3 new controls

SuperGrid

SuperGrid is complete grid/editors control for your applications. It includes built-in data-binding, numerous editors, master-detail support, nested tables, built-in virtualization and much more. Here is screen-shot to give you just small taste of what this control can do:

Some features of SuperGrid control:

• Master-Detail Views
• Nested Tables
• Virtual Data Support
• Numerous Cell Editors + Custom Editor Support
• Data-Binding to DataSets, IList, IListSource, IBindingList etc.
• Office 2010/2007 and Metro Styling
• Complete Custom Grid Styling
• Built-In Formula Engine
• Sorting
• Much, much more…

To get you started please check out SuperGrid Quick Start Guide in our Knowledge Base.

We’ve been working on this control for good part of last year and this is just beginning. There is much more planned in coming months… Please see SuperGrid sample project you can find at My Documents\DotNetBar WinForms Samples\SuperGrid.

MetroTilePanel

Metro Tile Panel is dedicated control to host Metro Tiles. It has built-in support for drag & drop arranging of tiles and it includes very nice tile move animation after drag & drop is performed. Of course touch support is included. Check it out in MetroTilePanel sample. Here is screen-shot of MetroTilePanel control in action:

All in all, there are over 60 new features and enhancements in this release.

Here are detailed Release Notes.

If you have current DotNetBar license download latest release on Customer Only web site. Fully functional trial version is also available. We are working on even more major new exciting features, but please do not hesitate to send me your feedback and wishes. Thank you for using our controls and please let me know how you like them.

Related posts:

1. DotNetBar for WPF 7.1 Release with NEW Data-Grid Control
2. Gauges, Gauges, Gauges, DotNetBar for Windows Forms 9.2 Released
3. DotNetBar for WPF 7.0 with METRO Controls Released

Now we have added new Time Selector style so it visually fits the Month Calendar. You can select this new style by using SelectorType property.

Here is screen-shot of new style:

New time selector style also supports 24-hour format automatically based on current system settings so time selector in that case looks like this:

You can select time format explicitly using the TimeFormat property.

Now notice how new style fits with the Month Calendar once it is automatically used when time input is required in our DateTimeInput control:

DotNetBar available right now includes this new Time Selector style.

Thank you for using our controls!

Related posts:

1. New Year Schedule View in DotNetBar for WinForms
2. DotNetBar 6.9 with Office 2007 style for Side-Bar Control Released
3. DotNetBar for WinForms 10.1 Released with 3 NEW controls

Time Selector

Time selector enables easy time input without typing. It works great with mouse but also on touch enabled screens. DateTimeInput will also use it automatically if it requires time input. Control supports 12-hour and 24-hour formats completely automatically. Here is image of Time selector with 12 and 24-hour views:

Touch Keyboard

Touch Keyboard is an multi-touch enabled virtual keyboard control that you can attach to controls, customize its layout, change colors and render completely on your own. What is special about our keyboard is that it has built-in multi-touch support which makes it possible to type fast on multi touch screens:

Control supports multiple layouts out of box:

And you can render all parts of control yourself if you choose:

Page Slider

PageSlider control is an multi-touch page slider control which can be used to present any content on pages. Pages can be changed using the optional scroll-bar or by dragging the page with mouse into the view. However, preferred method of operation is using touch gestures to flick pages in and out of the view. Page slider also support inertial scrolling so if you quickly flick with the finger on the screen it will continue page scrolling and slow down gradually.

All in all, there are over 55 new features and enhancements in this release. And here are detailed Release Notes.

If you have current DotNetBar license download latest release on Customer Only web site. Fully functional trial version is also available. We are working on even more major new exciting features, but please do not hesitate to send me your feedback and wishes. Thank you for using our controls and please let me know how you like them.

Related posts:

1. New Time Selector Style for DotNetBar for WinForms
2. DotNetBar for Windows Forms 9.4 released with 3 new controls
3. DotNetBar for WinForms 10.4 Release with 2 NEW Controls

Metro is design language that is cornerstone of Windows 8, Windows Phone 7 and very likely at least parts of future Office 15 will have Metro based design, so I am very happy that you can start building Metro style applications with our controls today.

Here is screen-shot of start-page of our new MetroBill sample which is included with DotNetBar 7.0:

Screen-shot above shows our new component, Metro Tile, which provides access to most commonly used functions in this sample app.

Here is screen-shot of actual app:

As you might have noticed, two screen-shots above uses completely different color schemes. Specifically for Metro we’ve designed proprietary color scheme generation algorithms that use as input two colors you specify and then generate complete color scheme for all our controls. Here is screen-shot with just couple of different pre-defined color themes we include:

Following Metro specific controls are included:

• Metro Application Window (MetroAppWindow) – an chrome-less Metro form with support for modal panels.
• Metro Shell (MetroShell) – top-level Metro control which provides app menu, Quick Access Toolbar, app tabs and minimum window chrome.
• Metro Toolbar (MetroToolbar) – a expandable toolbar in Metro style.
• Metro Status Bar (MetroStatusBar) – Metro style status bar control.
• Metro Form (MetroDialog) – Metro style dialog form.
• Metro Tile (MetroTile) – a Metro-Tile for use on our ItemPanel control.

Please review MetroBillSample and MetroSample projects for demo of new controls. You can find samples at My Documents\DotNetBar for WPF Samples folder. Both C# and VB samples are included to illustrate styling and customization options.

Getting started with Metro UI Knowledge Base article is great resource to help you start using new controls. Please use it.

Here are detailed Release Notes. If you have current DotNetBar license download latest release on Customer Only web site. Fully functional trial version is also available. We are working on even more major new exciting features, but please do not hesitate to send me your feedback and wishes. Thank you for using our controls and please let me know how you like them.

Related posts:

1. DotNetBar for WPF 5.4 with Office 2010 style released
2. Biggest DotNetBar Release In Last 5 Years
3. DotNetBar 6.3 Released With New Group, Text-box and Combo Box Controls

Metro is design language, a style used to define an application appearance. You can have Metro design made in WinForms, WPF, Silverlight, HTML or WinRT. In fact you can make Metro design using any language or platform that lets you create visuals on screen. And indeed there are Metro designs used for Android apps.

WinRT is platform. In same way we have today WinForms platform which is GDI based, WPF platform and Silverlight platform, in Windows 8 we get new WinRT platform. WinRT provides third XAML based User Interface model for developers.

WinRT default design is Metro. This is akin to WinForms using default “battleship gray” design or WPF using, um, whatever that design is called, I guess battleship gray as well…

WinRT is available on Windows 8 only and it is used to build  so called Windows 8 Immersive Apps. These apps run in Windows 8 tablet mode. Apps that we build using all platforms we have today run in Windows 8 desktop mode. The only way to build apps for tablet mode in Windows 8 is to use WinRT.

Let me know if you have any questions or if this is not clear enough. I will update the post with your feedback.

Related posts:

1. Windows 8 and what it means for developers
2. Aero is the past and Metro is the future
3. Metro Style Page Slider on Windows 8 Video

Sitting for more than 1 hour has been shown to induce biochemical changes in lipase activity (an enzyme involved in fat metabolism) and in glucose metabolism that leads to the deposit of fats in adipose tissue rather than these being metabolized by muscle, and extensive sitting also relates to heart disease risks, so people are advocating standing to work because this use more muscle activity (burns about 20% more calories). These changes happen in both fit people who regularly aerobically work out and also unfit and obese people, so regular exercise doesn’t address this.

Related posts:

1. Working Positions and Choosing a Good Chair
2. Is there a success gene?

As you can see what’s new in Windows 8 is WinRT platform that covers native Windows 8 Metro style Apps. Desktop Apps on the right are essentially what we have today: WinForms, WPF and Silverlight. These continue to work.

New WinRT architecture seems to me is heavily based on Windows Phone 7 run-time. My reasoning for thinking this is that during keynote they said that Windows Phone 7 apps will run under WinRT unchanged. I suspected something like this since to run on low powered processors heavy optimization was needed and that optimization work was already done for Windows Phone 7 platform so leveraging that code in big Windows 8 that now must run on low powered processors makes sense.

They also showed that some simple Silverlight apps can be recompiled with minor changes to run under WinRT. Of course, we are yet to see how complex Silverlight code will be ported to WinRT, but as with everything new and different I expect there will be some gotchas.

I installed Windows 8 on one of our netbooks with touch screen and Windows 8 at this point is working great. I think once this is released it will be great operating system that spans tables and desktops. The power is in ability to use touch-based interface on tablets but when mouse and keyboard are needed you just plug that tablet into dock and big screen and you have your full blown Windows experience.

How this compares to iPad? I think very favorably if tablets that are of iPad quality, speed and price running Windows 8 show up. Lot of it is in the hardware corner.

For us developers, well we just got another new platform. We have WinForms, WPF, Silverlight and now WinRT. While WinRT is “Silverlight based” I think it must be treated as completely new platform which is all about touch and you have to write code that fits that environment.

I still see WinForms as best lowest common denominator, meaning if you want app that run on everything from Windows XP  to Windows 8 you are best served using WinForms. If you are developing to target Windows 8 then you must simply use WinRT unless you want to target desktop explicitly in which case I still might recommend WinForms.

We will indeed provide components for new WinRT platform in addition to what we already have and are eager to start digging deeper into the platform.

Let me know what you think.

Related posts:

1. Windows 8 and untimely death of Silverlight and WPF… Again!
2. Purpose driven design, on iPad and Windows Phone 7
3. Metro Style Page Slider on Windows 8 Video

As you can see our WinForms stuff works great on Windows 8. All the touch related code we wrote for Windows 7 works flawlessly on Windows 8. We are super excited about Windows 8.

Related posts:

1. Metro Style Page Slider Control Short Video
2. Windows 8 and what it means for developers
3. What’s Metro, What’s WinRT and What’s Difference Between Them