In the latest release of VIBlend Controls for WinForms, we introduced several new features in our DataGridView control. These are the Rows Grouping panel and the Column Chooser. The main purpose of the Rows Grouping panel is to allow you to easily group/ungroup columns via a built-in drag and drop and to visually represent the grouped columns.

The Column Chooser is an additional small feature which allows you to manage the visibility of your columns.  In order to activate the column chooser, set the EnableColumnChooser property to true. To show the column chooser, use the ShowColumnChooser method. If you want to hide it, use the HideColumnChooser method.

Another improvement in the DataGridView is the extended functionality of the ComboBox and DateTimePicker editors. Their pop up controls are now automatically opened when the editor is activated.  If you want to disable this feature, you can set the AutoOpenEditorOnActivation property of the editor to false.

We are happy to announce the release of the latest version of VIBlend Controls for WinForms.

VIBlend Windows Forms Controls 4.6.0 - Release Notes

1. Added support for Visual Studio 2010
2. Moved all design time classes of our controls to separate assembly
3. DataGridView changes

In this version we extended the HierarhcyItem mouse click events. Previously, the grid was raising only the ItemClick and ItemDoubleClick events.

These two events are replaced by the following set of events:

 - HierarchyItemMouseUp
 - HierarchyItemMouseDown
 - HierarchyItemMouseClick
 - HierarchyItemMouseDoubleClick

We also added several improvements in the in-place cell editors' infrastructure. Specifically we added the following activation and deactivation events:

 - Click on selected cell (MOUSE_CLICK_SELECTED_CELL)
 - Enter key activation (KEY_PRESS_ENTER
 - Esc key deactivation (KEY_PRESS_ESC)

The default activation and deactivation flags for the built-in cell editors where modified to use the new activation events.

Please, note that these are breaking changes. If you are using an earlier version of VIBlend Controls for Windows Forms you will have to make minor changes to your code.

New in version 4.6 are the HierarchyItems and Cells selection changed events:
 - DataGridView.HierarchyItemSelectionChanged
 - DataGridView.CellSelectionChanged

VIBlend DataGridView for WinForms offers multiple unique features that cannot be found in other Windows Forms data grid controls. These include multi-level hierarchies on rows and columns, rows grouping, pivot tables, and built-in OLAP capabilities. One of the main drawbacks of the traditional OLAP style rows layout is that it takes a lot of screen space. 

This could be improved by using the compact style layout. In this mode the rows of the pivot table are rendered in a tree-like structure.

Switching from default to compact style rendering is very easy. It requires setting the value of RowsHierarchy.CompactStyleRendering property to true:

C#
grid.RowsHierarchy.CompactStyleRenderingEnabled = true;
grid.RowsHierarchy.AutoResize();
grid.Invalidate();

VB .Net
grid.RowsHierarchy.CompactStyleRenderingEnabled = True
grid.RowsHierarchy.AutoResize()
grid.Invalidate()

You can switch between traditional and compact style rendering at runtime. The feature is also availalbe in VIBlend DataGrid for Silverlight.

VIBlend will fully support the .NET4 Client Profile in the next version of VIBlend Controls for WinForms which is expected in the middle of May. We will create a new VIBlend.WinForms.Controls.Design assembly and will move all the design time classes of our controls into it. The change is needed because the client profile does not include the standard design time classes and we need to remove the reference to the System.Design namespace in our present assemblies.

The upcoming release of the VIBlend Controls for Silverlight, which is due in May, will incorporate a full support for Visual Studio 2010. We will also have a new build for Silverlight 4 and our product will benefit from the new features in the latest platform’s edition. In addition, the new release will be shipped with three new themes for all of our controls and performance optimizations in the VIBlend OLAP Grid for Silverlight.

In this blog post we will show you how to use the VIBlend DataGridView for WinForms in a WPF application.

The following code example creates a WinForms DataGrid control with Office2010Black theme in a WPF application. This example uses a WindowsFormsHost element to place the DataGrid control within the main window’s root  element. The WindowsFormsHost element could be found in the WindowsFormsIntegration.dll.

[xaml]

  <Window x:Class="HostWinFormsControlInWPF.Window1"
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
        xmlns:viblend="clr-namespace:VIBlend.WinForms.DataGridView;assembly=VIBlendGrid"
        Title="Window1" Height="300" Width="300">
    <Grid>
        <WindowsFormsHost>
            <viblend:vDataGridView x:Name="VIBlendDataGrid" VIBlendTheme="OFFICE2010BLACK"/>               
        </WindowsFormsHost>
    </Grid>
</Window>

In order to bind the data grid, you need to do the following:  Click on the Data menu item in your Visual Studio, then select the “Add new DataSource” item.  Browse to the Nwind.mdb which ships with the WinForms controls installation, choose the Employees table and click finish. In the code behind, after the InitializeComponent call or in the Load event handler , bind the data grid to the Employees table.

            NwindDataSet dataSet = new NwindDataSet();
            EmployeesTableAdapter adapter = new EmployeesTableAdapter();
            adapter.Fill(dataSet.Employees);
            this.VIBlendDataGrid.DataSource = dataSet.Employees.DefaultView;
            this.VIBlendDataGrid.DataBind();

Here is the result:

We are proud to announce the second major release of VIBlend Controls for Silverlight.

With the new release, VIBlend has officially included in the suite four new controls – OutlookPane, NavigationPane, DateTimePicker and ScrollablePanel. Not only we introduced new controls, but we also improved the quality and functionality of the existing ones and added over 10 new examples to show how our controls work.

The Menu and Context Menu controls from the toolset are now provided free of charge to all registered users.

See our Silverlight Controls Live Demo and Download a free trial today.

This example demonstates how to create a nicely formatted, editable DataGrid in Silverlight entirely in XAML.

The grid will bind to a list of books. The schema of data source contains the following DataFields / Properties: BookTitle (string), ISBN (string), Author (string), IsInStock(bool).

We'll make the Title editable using a TextBox in-place editor. We'll use a CheckBox DataTemplate for the IsInStock flag and respectively use a CheckBox CellEditTemplate for in-place edit.

XAML:

<UserControl x:Class="SilverlightApplication1.MainPage"
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
    xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008"
    xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"
    mc:Ignorable="d"
    d:DesignHeight="292" d:DesignWidth="820"
    xmlns:viblend="clr-namespace:VIBlend.Silverlight.Controls;assembly=DataGrid">
   
    <UserControl.Resources>
        <!-- DataTemplate for TextBox in-place editor -->
        <DataTemplate x:Name="cellEditTextBoxTemplate">
            <TextBox Text="{Binding BookTitle, Mode=TwoWay}"/>
        </DataTemplate>
       
        <!-- DataTemplate for CheckBox in-place editor -->
        <DataTemplate x:Name="cellEditCheckBoxTemplate">
            <Grid>
                <CheckBox IsChecked="{Binding IsInStock, Mode=TwoWay}" HorizontalAlignment="Center" VerticalAlignment="Center"/>
            </Grid>
        </DataTemplate>
       
        <!-- DataTemplate for CheckBox column -->
        <DataTemplate x:Name="cellCheckBoxTemplate">
            <Grid>
                <CheckBox IsChecked="{Binding IsInStock}" HorizontalAlignment="Center" VerticalAlignment="Center"/>
            </Grid>
        </DataTemplate>
    </UserControl.Resources>
   
    <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White">
        <viblend:DataGrid Name="dataGrid1" Height="250" Width="400">
            <viblend:DataGrid.BoundFields>
                <viblend:BoundField Text="Book Title" DataField="BookTitle" Width="100" CellEditTemplate="{StaticResource cellEditTextBoxTemplate}" CellEditorActivationFlags="MOUSE_CLICK_SELECTED_CELL" CellEditorDeActivationFlags="MOUSE_CLICK" />
                <viblend:BoundField Text="ISBN" DataField="ISBN" Width="80"/>
                <viblend:BoundField Text="Author" DataField="Author" Width="80" SortMode="Automatic" />
                <viblend:BoundField Text="In Stock" DataField="IsInStock" Width="40" SortMode="Automatic" CellDataTemplate="{StaticResource cellCheckBoxTemplate}" CellEditTemplate="{StaticResource cellEditCheckBoxTemplate}" CellEditorActivationFlags="MOUSE_MOVE" CellEditorDeActivationFlags="MOUSE_MOVE"/>
            </viblend:DataGrid.BoundFields>
        </viblend:DataGrid>
    </Grid>
</UserControl>

 C#:

 You can use the following code to quickly generate sample data and test the example:

namespace SilverlightApplication1
{
    public partial class MainPage : UserControl
    {
        public MainPage()
        {
            InitializeComponent();

            PrepareGridData();

            dataGrid1.ItemsSource = listBooks;
        }

        public class Book
        {
            public Book(string title, string isbn, string author, bool inStock)
            {
                this.BookTitle = title;
                this.ISBN = isbn;
                this.Author = author;
                this.IsInStock = inStock;
            }

            public string BookTitle {get;set;}
            public string ISBN {get;set;}
            public string Author { get; set; }
            public bool IsInStock { get; set; }
        }

        public List<Book> listBooks = new List<Book>();

        private void PrepareGridData()
        {
            Random rand = new Random();
            for (int i = 0; i < 1000; i++)
            {
                int val = rand.Next();
                listBooks.Add(new Book("Title " + i, "ISBN " + i, "Author " + i, val % 2 == 0));
            }
        }
    }
}

 And here is the result:

We are happy to announce the immediate availability of VIBlend Silverlight Controls ver. 1.5

The majority of the changes in this release are concentrated on making the Silverlight Grid more robust and easy to use.

Here is the list of changes:

• Bug Fixes
  
  
  • Fixed CellMouseUp event raising issue
  • Fixed RowsHierarchy SummaryItems visualization issue in compact style rendering
  • Fixed intermittent headers blink issue on cells mouse click
  
  
• New features, improvements and new APIs  
  
  
  • Added new in-place cell editor activation flag: Click on Selected Cell
  • Added Hierarchy.GetChildItemsRecursive method
  • Added HierarchyItem.GetChildItemsRecursive method
  • Added HierarchyItem.Cells property
  • Added HierarchyItem.NonEmptyCells property
  • Added CellsArea.Clear method
  • Added CellsArea.NonEmptyCells property
  • Added CellsArea.Cells property
  • Added ability to format and style HierarchyItems and grid cells entirely in XAML in data bound mode