Today we released another great new version of DotNetBar for Windows Forms loaded with some very cool features. More than 30 of them… DotNetBar now has 39 controls for creating professional applications.

To start we added MaskedTextBoxAdv control, an advanced masked text box in Office 2007 style. It supports custom buttons, drop-downs, watermarking and focus highlighting. Here is small screenshot that shows this new control:

To ButtonX control we added new color scheme Blue Orb and ability to customize shape of the button. Built-in shapes include: Elliptical, Round Rectangle, and Square. You can write your own shapes easily as well. Here is the screenshot that shows new functionality in ButtonX:

We also improved Balloon control with the Office 2007 style. Now you can easily create great looking Office 2007 style alerts like one we show in Balloon sample:

Following feature has been brewing for quite some time and is finally ready for you to use. We have added the Commanding support to DotNetBar 7.2.

Commands allow you to separate the source of an action like click of a button, from the code that actually executes the action. With commands you basically decouple the UI from application logic. Commanding in DotNetBar handles communication both ways. From UI to the application logic and back from application logic to UI.

What that means is that through command you can not only execute the action that is invoked through the UI, but you can control the UI elements that use the command as well. For example you handle the Executed event on Command to execute an action that is triggered through UI and Command also has for example Enabled, and other properties, that you can use to disable all controls that use the command, change the Text or Checked state etc.

Commands are very versatile. For example, you can connect command to a LabelItem. Label is not an action element since it is purely informational so it will not cause the Executed event, but if you set the Text property on command that text will be displayed on label… So it is nice and easy way to communicate status as well.

All our items (based on BaseItem) and many controls now get new Command and CommandParameter properties.

For an in-depth overview of commanding please see this Knowledge Base Article. Also take a look at RibbonPad sample which has been updated to show Commanding in action.

There is much more good stuff in this release but this covers major items.

Fully function trial version is, as usual, available on DotNetBar for Windows Forms site.

We have some very nice additions coming in future, so stay tuned