As we celebrate 15 years in the software development tools business this month, I wanted to personally thank each and every one of you for your loyal patronage over the years. It goes without saying: we'd be nowhere without our loyal users.

Today, DevPro Magazine announced winners of its annual readers choice awards and we are proud to announce that you voted us best in class in an unprecedented 12 categories. Thank you! As you may already know, this adds to our recent awards tally as last month Visual Studio Magazine readers voted us #1 in 8 categories.

Some of the comments you submitted to DevPro during the voting were:

• "DevExpress Universal is a universe unto itself. It has everything you need."
• "CodeRush is the only add-in you need to ensure good, solid, standardized code."
• "I absolutely, positively cannot do without DevExpress ASPxGridView."
• "Microsoft gave the ribbon to the world, but DevExpress XtraBars Suite gives it to developers."

We are truly humbled by your feedback and I promise all of you that we're working harder than ever to meet your expectations.

DevPro Gold Awards

We recently issued an update to TestCafe (v13.1.3) - our functional web application testing tool. This update includes a number of enhancements including:

Simplified Install

If you've not yet had the opportunity to try TestCafe, you'll find that's easier than ever to install and get to testing your desktop or mobile web application.

• Step 1 is to visit the TestCafe download page: http://testcafe.devexpress.com/Download
• Step 2 is to select the appropriate distribution - remember, TestCafe support Windows, MacOs and Linux (32 or 64 bit versions).
• Step 3 is to start testing. Once you execute the appropriate file, TestCafe will automatically configure everything for you and display its Control Panel (no more console windows).

ChangeTest Directories on the Fly

With this release, you no longer need to specify a test directory before running TestCafe. When you run TestCafe for the first time, it will use the "my_tests" folder in your TestCafe installation directory.

You can switch the default test directory at any time by hovering over the "tests/" breadcrumb. Once you click it, TestCafe will activate a directory selection dialog. You can then switch your working directory as needed (the same "directory as a project" approach is used by many IDEs including Eclipse, WebStorm and tools like Sublime Text).

JQuerySelectors

TestCafe's Recorder generates jQuery selectors for elements to which actions should be applied. In previous versions, we used heuristics and tried to choose the most appropriate selector possible. But as you can imagine, a heuristics-based algorithm is not 100% accurate. With this update, we now give you the ability to choose from numerous generated selectors with descriptions that will be understandable to users - even those unfamiliar with jQuery or JavaScript syntax.

QuarantineMode

Functional tests can be unstable by nature. There are a lot of factors that can cause issues in test runs (network lags; unexpected async behavior, animations; etc.). We are working hard to address many of these (by waiting for XHR request completion, page transitions, iframe loading)...but we're also focused on solutions that follow QA best practices...

If you've written tests in the past, you know that there are many cases where a developer or QA engineer can write an unstable test (for instance, a test might become unstable due to changes to the tested site). Let's say you wrote a test that performs clicks on a dropdown menu's item. Someone then changes dropdown's behavior and it now loads with an animation (loads with a slight delay). While we can recognize such behavior changes, testing software cannot and in this case the test may become unstable.

To help deal with these scenarios, we created Quarantine Mode...

Quarantine Mode helps us find all unstable tests and fix them. It works like this: Quarantine Mode can be enabled in our continuous integration API. If a test fails, it is marked as such and moved to quarantine. In quarantine, a test run will be repeated 3 times. If results of the test differ during these 3 test runs, this test will be marked as unstable and will be added to the list of unstable tests in the test task report.

Martin Fowler introduced the idea of test Quarantines - http://martinfowler.com/articles/nonDeterminism.html if you'd like to read his thoughts on the subject...

NumerousNetworking and Performance Enhancements

We've refactored a significant portion of the internal networking mechanisms of the framework, which has addressed a number of known performance issues. If you compare page load times for a test run or test recording, you'll find that this release is appreciably faster than previous releases.

With that, let me encourage you to try TestCafe if you are building web applications - a 30 day trial is available on http://testcafe.devexpress.com/Download - Please remember, if you own a copy of the Universal Subscription, TestCafe is included free of charge. If you do not and want to get started with functional testing, you can purchase TestCafe for only $499.

I don’t blog much, but today I did want to say something to those of you who follow our blogs.

You may have already read Ray’s blog post about our recent DevPro reader’s choice awards. I want to second Ray and offer my thanks to you guys for voting us first in 12 categories.

Since I’m the manager of our support team, I want to especially thank you for voting our support services the best. We did it again, and I’m really proud of my team.

Over the years, we’ve worked closely with many of you and done our best to respond to you in a timely and accurate manner. I realize that we are not perfect and like so many other things, we have room to improve but I want you to know that our guiding principle is to go above and beyond the call of duty whenever you submit a support ticket to us.

Your feedback is valuable to me so please email management@devexpress.com with any issues you may have with the DevExpress Support Team. I want to know the good and the bad so we can make 2014 an amazing year for all of us.

OK, call this both good news and bad news: this post is not only a “What’s New” but also partially describes some breaking changes.

What is Data Aggregation?

Starting from 13.2, XtraCharts (both ASP.NET and WinForms) will support automatic data aggregation. This is extremely useful in the situation where your charts are trying to display a very large amount of data (e.g., thousands or even millions of data points), and it is necessary to have a quick aggregated overview of this data. Our data aggregation feature works for an X-axis (the argument axis) that is showing either numeric or date-time data.

To quickly demonstrate this feature, below is a chart with non-aggregated data:

And below is a chart with the same data, but automatically aggregated by years.

In addition, the WinForms Chart control supports automatic data aggregation when your end-users scroll, zoom, or resize a chart.

How Does It Work for a Numeric X-Axis?

Though data aggregation is by default disabled for numeric scales, you can easily enable it by setting the AxisX.NumericScaleOptions.ScaleMode property either to Manual or Automatic. In this case, the chart will split the entire X-axis into intervals (according to the AxisX.NumericScaleOptions.MeasureUnit property value) and automatically aggregate data for each interval. Predefined intervals for a numeric scale are Tens, Hundreds, Thousands, Millions, Billions, or you can define any custom value.

The only difference between Manual and Automatic modes is that in Manual mode you need to specify the desired MeasureUnit, while in Automatic mode this measure unit will be chosen automatically by a chart according to its current size and zoom level. So, in most cases, Automatic is the recommended choice.

(Also, there is Continuous scale mode, in which an axis scale is not divided into intervals and therefore aggregation cannot be applied to chart data.)

After you enable data aggregation, data for each interval on X-axis are aggregated using the function specified by the NumericScaleOptions.AggregateFunction property. By default it is Average, though you may change it to Minimum, Maximum, Sum and others.

To disable aggregation, simply set AggregateFunction to None.

How Does It Work for a Date-time X-Axis?

For date-time data on the X-axis everything is even easier, because data aggregation is enabled by default. Just check out the AxisX.DateTimeScaleOptions.ScaleMode property value and either leave it Manual, or choose Automatic.

Predefined measure units for date-time scales are Millisecond, Second, Minute, Hour, Day, Week, Month, Quarter and Year. By default, Day is chosen to provide backward compatibility.

Video

For those who prefer watching to reading, here is a short video describing this feature in detail.

Breaking Changes

To implement all these features, we had to do some significant work and had to rewrite some big chunks of the XtraCharts product. We didn’t stop there: since we were rewriting parts of the product, we took some time to optimize the code both for performance and for usability. As a result there have been some breaking changes. Whereas we’re certain these changes were necessary in order to move the product forward, we recognize that they might have an impact on your migration process to 13.2; nevertheless we’ve tried to minimize the effects to the public API.

Here is a list of breaking changes in XtraCharts 13.2:

• The drawingof all Area, Stacked Line, and Full-Stacked Line views has changed when series contain missing or empty points.
• The series points are always aggregated for date-time arguments by default.
• Setting the DateTimeScaleOptions.GridAlignment property to a value less than the current measure unit no longer affects data representation and calculation.
• In previous versions, you could not set grid alignment to a value less than the measure unit specified in the DateTimeScaleOptions.MeasureUnit  (e.g., MeasureUnit– Month, GridAlignment– Day). Also, for example, the width of bars no longer depends on the GridAlignment property.
• The AxisBase.GridSpacing property now specifies the number of grid alignment units.
• The ColorEach algorithm has been changed for unsorted data with numeric or date-time arguments.
• The current chart interlacing can become inverted in some scenarios.
• The MeasureUnit property for date-time Y-axes is no longer supported.
• The number and/or position of Tickmarks and Gridlines in X-Axes might be changed.
• The order of qualitative arguments in X-Axis might have changed in some cases. (For example: suppose the first series has arguments A, B, D, and the second series has arguments A, C, B, D. Prior to version 13.2, the arguments on the X-axis would appear as A, C, B, D; with 3.2, the arguments will be in the order A, B, D, C.)
• The SeriesPoint.Tag property now returns the list of tags for all aggregated points.
• The ChartControl.DateTimeMeasurementUnitsCalculated event no longer exists. Instead, handle the ChartControl.AxisScaleChanged event, which is raised when the scale mode, measure unit, grid alignment or grid spacing of the axis scale has been changed.

Wait, what? An ASP.NET Spreadsheet control? Yes, it's true, DevExpress are introducing a new web-based spreadsheet control that provides all the features you'd expect: fast, powerful, with a beautiful functional user experience. Your users will believe they're actually editing their Excel files in their browser.

Introducing Spreadsheet (Preview)

We're introducing the new DevExpress ASP.NET Spreadsheet control as a preview in 13.2. And because a picture is worth a thousand words, here's an image of it in action:

We're releasing it as a special preview edition. Why? Because it's a big ambitious control that we're still perfecting. However, the new ASP.NET Spreadsheet control has enough of a feature set that we'd love for you to test drive and give us your feedback.

The DevExpress ASP.NET Spreadsheet control is also known as the ASPxSpreadsheet control within Visual Studio and our documentation.

Features

The new ASP.NET Spreadsheet control ships with the following features:

Automatically Generated UI

This is, in my opinion, it's best feature. Easy as 1,2,3 (pun intended).
1: Drag and drop the control on to your form.
2. Add a line in the pageload to specifiy which excel file to edit.
3. Run and get an instantly beautiful and functional excel user interface.

Automated Formula Calculation Engine

Formulas are one of the most commonly used features of spreadsheets. With ASPxSpreadsheet, you can easily insert and calculate formulas just like Microsoft Excel.

A formula is a string expression that begins with an equal (=) sign and can contain constants, operators, cell references, functions, and names.

Load, Save, & Open in Microsoft Excel

The new DevExpress ASP.NET Spreadsheet control is powerful. Just consider this workflow that the ASPxSpreadsheet control provides for an end-user:

1. Load a Microsoft Excel file from your website.
2. Modify it on your website.
3. Save the changes and download it locally.
4. Open and keep working in Microsoft Excel.

Built-in Spreadsheet Functions

The ASPxSpreadsheet's built-in functions cover a wide range of categories - from basic mathematical operations, such as simple addition and subtraction, to complex engineering and statistical calculations. This can meet even the most demanding requirements. The provided function categories include:

• Financial
• Statistical
• Engineering
• Logical
• Text
• Date & Time
• Lookup & Reference
• Math & Trig
• Informational

The built-in functions are listed within the Formulas tab of the ASPxSpreadsheet's automatically generated Ribbon. In this tab, functions are divided into groups for easy access.

Cell References and Formatting

A formula can contain references to other cells or cell ranges within the same or different worksheets. The following references are supported:

• Relative, Absolute and Mixed References
• Cross-Worksheet References
• 3D References
• Structured References
• External References

Data Merging

The DevExpress ASP.NET Spreadsheet control allows you merge data by using a spreadsheet template that is loaded into the ASPxSpreadsheet and programmatically populated with data taken from an xml file. The template presents the predefined report layout and contains specific aggregation formulas. The data is retrieved from an xml file and merged with the corresponding worksheet cells into an integrated report. As a result, a worksheet represents a complete report calculated automatically.

Charting

Charts are used in spreadsheets to make it easier to understand large quantities of data by visualizing the relationship between different data series.

The ASP.NET Spreadsheet allows you to easily insert a professional-looking chart that displays the details you want. A comprehensive set of 2D and 3D charts is provided to address a broad range of business needs with ease.

To create a chart, select a series of data within a worksheet and click on the required chart type within the user interface Ribbon's Insert tab. The data can be arranged in rows or columns - the ASP.NET Spreadsheet automatically determines the best way to plot the data on the chart. For plotting charts, the ASP.NET Spreadsheet uses the powerful charting functionality of the DevExpress ASP.NET Chart Control.

You can move a chart to any location on a worksheet by dragging the chart. You can also change the size of the chart for a better fit.

Pictures

The ASP.NET Spreadsheet allows you to insert pictures into a worksheet. Pictures might help you illustrate your data or decorate a data report with graphics.

Worksheet Management

The ASP.NET Spreadsheet allows you to populate a worksheet programmatically. The API of the IWorkbook object (accessed via the ASPxSpreadsheet.Document) is used to create data within cells and to perform the required calculations.

Large Excel Files Support

The ASP.NET Spreadsheet control provide Virtual Scrolling of the rows that let's you load a large excel file and easily navigate through it without making your user interface feel sluggish. And it provides this using the callbacks so your end-users won't experience full page refreshes. This feature is similar to the DevExpress ASPxGridView's Virtual Scrolling.

Responsive UI

The new ASP.NET Spreadsheet control is also responsive! This means that once you set the Width to 100%, then the Spreadsheet control will resize with your browser. And the Ribbon control inside of the Spreadsheet control will expand and collapse as necessary. Take a look at the new Ribbon control here.

ASP.NET MVC - Planned

ASP.NET MVC support is planned and will appear in a later major release.

A Great Ribbon UI Toolbar

Microsoft Excel makes great use of the Ribbon control. And because we've introduced the DevExpress ASP.NET Ribbon control, we've also incorporated this into the ASP.NET Spreadsheet control. This gives you the native look and feel of Microsoft Excel but with wide reach of the web because it can run on multiple browsers and it supports touch for mobile tablets too!

There are a metric ton of fantastic features that we are adding to our spreadsheet control for windows (both WinForms and now WPF).

Charts

I am happy to announce that starting in 13.2 we have integrated charting directly into our spreadsheet control:

All you have to do is highlight some data, insert a chart, and that’s it!

Once inserted you can change the chart type, modify the layout, and even change the chart theme via the design ribbon tab. In addition to the design tab, we also have a layout tab which allows even more fine grained control over the chart:

Often when analyzing data it is sometimes easier to give the data to our end users and allow them the opportunity to shape and visualize data however they choose. This type of control will undoubtedly help provide insight to your customer’s data in a familiar way.

More

There are tons of other usability features which we have snuck in to 13.2 release that provide the traditional experience one has come to expect from spreadsheet software. I will only mention four (there really isn’t enough space).

Number Formatting

We have created a really intuitive way of formatting numbers:

Formula Bar and Name Box

These additional controls help identify the current cell address, table name, or defined name under consideration (Name Box). The Formula Bar allows your end users to edit formulas (like they otherwise would in other spreadsheet tools).

Formatting

Conditional Formatting

Finally

There are a bunch of other things I am leaving out (for now). Overall this is going to be a pretty exciting release: especially for those providing spreadsheet solutions directly in their applications.

As always, if there are any comments and/or questions, feel free to get a hold of me!

Seth Juarez
Email: sethj@devexpress.com
Twitter: @SethJuarez

Our next major release (13.2), updates our Validation Module with more features that come with different behavior rules, such as Warnings and Information. These can be applied to your existing validation rules using code or the Model Editor.

The XAF validation module is a mature and flexible validation system, which allows you to create rules that can validate any business problem, For more information, check out the module documentation.

Suppose we have a Business Object that disallows saving a Customer if the Name property is blank. If this attempted the UI should respond with a “Everybody has a name!” message.

When an end user tries to save the Customer without a name, XAF will show the Validation Error listview and consequently abort.

Creating a warning rule

A common requirement for our Customer class is to warn the end user that, if possible, he/she should provide the Customer’s city. To do this, we need to mark the City property with a  RuleRequiredField. However, this time we have to set the ResultType to Warning as illustrated below.

When the end user saves the Customer (in runtime) providing a Name and not a City, XAF will again show the Validation Error listview however, this time there will be an extra Ignore action.

If the end user executes the Close action, the object will not be saved however if he executes the Ignore action it will be saved. In both cases in the detailview there will be a warning action by the City textbox to draw the end user’s attention.

Creating an Information rule

XAF allows you to create validation rules even at runtime using the Model Editor. So let’s say we want to just inform the end user, if he enters a Customer Age not between 10 and 60. This means that we need to use a RuleRangeField rule as illustrated in the next two images.

When the end user saves a Customer (in runtime) with an invalid Age range, XAF will not display the Validation Error listview at all. However, it will display an Information icon to draw his/her attention to the Age property.

Where to see more examples?

You may explore our FeatureCenter application located in your C:\Users\Public\Documents\DXperience 13.2 Demos\eXpressApp Framework\FeatureCenter\CS folder to see a few rules in action.

What about the web?

The validation module as a platform agnostic module works similarly for the web.

The soft validation is in its first release (CTP), thus we look forward to your feedback as we get it ready for it’s official release. Let me know what you think.

We have done a great deal of work on our dashboard tool for both Windows and the Web. While I can’t detail every new feature, I thought I would mention 3 new developer friendly things available starting in our 13.2 release.

Visual Studio Integration

In this release you’ll now be able to build dashboards directly in Visual Studio. The process is pretty straight forward.

Add a Dashboard via the Template Gallery

Literally right click and select Add New DevExpress Item and the wizard appears.

Add Data Source

Once the designer loads up you can use the new Dashboard Visual Studio menu item to add/edit the available Data Sources.

Data Source Types

As you know, our dashboards bind directly to your database or to an internal project data source.

As you can see we have added UI in an effort to simplify both of these cases.

Build Your Dashboard

Once bound you can create your dashboard layout just as you did before. In Visual Studio, however, you have more fine-grained control through the use of the standard property editor available in the IDE.

Creating a Dashboard Preview

Just like a DevExpress Report, a dashboard is just a set of files that can be edited directly in Visual Studio:

Just like reports, you can also set the dashboard source at design time (once you compile).

Overall the Visual Studio experience is intended to be both simple and familiar so you can be effective the moment you install the product.

Server Side Filtering with Parameters

This was a highly requested feature! Even though previous versions could handle server side filtering, it was cumbersome and required a bit of code. Starting in 13.2 you can customize a Dashboard Data Source to do server side filtering  using the new parameters feature.

When using the Dashboard Data Source Wizard, there are now two additional buttons: one for parameters and one for filtering. The notion of parameters in dashboards is virtually identical to parameters in reports. In this case they can be used to directly filter data on the server side with the aid of the Filter Editor:

In essence you create the parameters you want and then add the filters using the filter editor. Then at design time (and runtime) you can populate the parameters to push the filtering to the server.

This can be achieved by clicking in the dashboard title area (the question mark to the right of “Dashboard”) and typing in the desired parameter value.

Better API

Here’s another thing a lot of developers were itching to get their hands on!

We have added a number of events to the dashboard viewers that should allow programmatic control over the most important aspects of your visualization. Here are a couple:

1. DashboardViewer.MasterFilterSet – control what happens when a master filter is set
2. DashboardViewer.MasterFilterCleared – control what happens when a master filter is cleared
3. DashboardViewer.DrillDownPerformed – control what happens when a drill down is performed
4. DashboardViewer.DrillUpPerformed – control what happens when a drill up is performed

For each event, there event parameter (e.DashboardItemName) that will identify exactly which dashboard item raised the event as well as other important ancillary information such as selected values, ranges, drill-X path’s, level’s, etc. In short, complete control.

Conclusion

This is not everything of course. We have also added new map dashboard items (I will go in depth on these later), multi-selection in master filters, and much more. This is shaping up to be an exciting release!

As always, if there are any comments and/or questions, feel free to get a hold of me!

Seth Juarez
Email: sethj@devexpress.com
Twitter: @SethJuarez

Our VCL team have been working diligently towards the 13.2 release of DevExpress VCL for mid-December, and as part of that work have just published the beta for active customers of the full VCL subscription. If you are such a subscriber, just login using your DevExpress credentials, go to the Download Center, and download the beta. Do note however that this is a beta: we’re pretty happy with it, but we’re still in polishing mode and there will be some issues that still need fixing.

You can discover the new features by visiting the What’s New page, but just to whet your appetite, here are some of the improvements to the suite. You’ll notice in particular that we are continuing to concentrate on bringing your VCL applications into the modern era of easily available touch-capable devices like laptops and tablets.

Touch

Enhanced touch for the following controls: Filter Control, Page Control, Tab Control, Date Editor, Blob Editor. It can’t have come as any surprise, but the number of touch-enabled laptops and tablets running full Windows 8.1 is growing rapidly. Your users now expect touch capabilities in a modern app: with DevExpress VCL you can deliver.

Pixel Scrolling

Added pixel scrolling – which is de rigueur for touch-enabled applications – to the tree list (ExpressQuantumTreeList), the property inspector (ExpressVerticalGrid), and the layout view for the grid (ExpressQuantumGrid). For the latter control that means we have flawless pixel scrolling for Table Views, Banded Table Views, and Layout Views.

Themes

Four new application themes: Metropolis, Metropolis Dark, Office 2013 Light Gray, and Office 2013 Dark Gray. Nowhere else in the VCL community will you find such a breadth of choice for modern themes (in fact, we now have 45 skins to choose from).

Icon Library

New DevExpress Icon Library and Manager. Our design team had a few days off at a retreat and produced this rich set of icons. They’re designed expressly for our customers to cover the majority of application actions. We’ve packaged that library of icons up with a design-time image picker so that it’s much easier to style your controls.

Tiles

Windows 8.1 added more features to the Start Screen, including small square tiles, so we’ve responded by updating our tile control to cover these changes. Expect group captions and multi-tile rearrangement using drag and drop.

Layout

The Layout Control now has enhanced targeting: we’ve added intuitive indicators that show all place where a drop operation can take place. Layout items can now enforce size limitations when their size is dynamically calculated.

I’m sure that you’ll be pleased with our continuing innovation in the VCL space. Our team is awaiting your feedback, so please try out the beta and let the support team know what you think.

(For completeness’ sake: the DevExpress VCL Subscription supports Delphi 7, 2007, 2010, XE, XE2, XE3, XE4, XE5, and C++Builder 2007, 2010, XE, XE2, XE3, XE4, XE5, in both 32-bit and 64-bit flavors. I reiterate my usual warning that support for the older compilers – especially the “non-Unicode” versions – may be marked obsolete with the next major version. I’d strongly recommend you consider upgrading.)

The new Widget View is part of the DevExpress Document Manager and was designed to give you a rich set of UI options so you can deliver experiences that are easy-to-use, easy-to-understand and ready for next generation touch enabled Windows Pro devices. Each card is a document and contains its own unique content. You can resize these widgets, re-arrange them on screen or maximize them via a double-click or double-tap.

The following is a screenshot from one our new demos - a collection of "cards" that display stock price information.

When a card is maximized, it displays detailed information on the selected stock. As you'd expect, you are in total control as to what's displayed in a card.

The following example is a dashboard-style layout of individual widgets. Again, you have total control over the number of widgets used, their positioning and the controls used within each widget.

And of course, the Widget View fully supports the DevExpress App Theme Engine...Here is how it looks with the Metropolis Dark Theme applied.

Animations, animations and more animations...

If you are a Universal or DXperience Subscriber you already have access to beta 2 of this release and you can explore our shipping demos to see how we've integrated animations into this product. For those who own a WinForms Subscription, we are real close to the release and we can't wait to share it with you...the Widget View includes built-in animations when repositioning individual widgets, when minimizing/maximizing a widget and when changing form size.

I look forward to your feedback - thanks for reading. 

Another new addition to our WinForms product line is the Taskbar Assistant. It was built to simplify the customization of the Windows taskbar button, its live preview (displayed when you hover your mouse over the taskbar button) and to help you create jump lists (when you right click the taskbar button).

So here is the all too familiar taskbar button before we've applied our customizations to it...

Here it is with a 16x16 overlay image courtesy of the Taskbar Assistant.

Here is the same taskbar button with a progress bar.

Note that you can control the manner in which the progress bar is displayed (normal, indeterminate, paused or error).

As mentioned earlier, the Taskbar Assistant allows you to customize the taskbar button's live preview and insert thumbnail buttons within it. 

And finally, when you need to add jump lists to your taskbar button's menu, the Taskbar Assistant allows you to create both task and custom categories with individual items.

Recently Julian and I demonstrated the use of PhoneJS and a text editor to create a WebApp that was capable of capturing a photo, grabbing your current location and posting the photo and a message on Facebook.  You can watch the webinar on our Youtube channel here.

A lot of people have asked for the code, so I am including it here for you to download and play with. Note: You need to download PhoneJS also from http://PhoneJS.DevExpress.com

For more information on the OAuth2 Library see http://code.google.com/p/gwt-oauth2

Don’t forget if you want to experience PhoneJS inside Visual Studio, be sure to check out DevExtreme, the cross-platform, multi-device development framework, optimised for Visual Studio.

With only days to wait before you get your hands on it, I wanted to share some of the cool functionality that will be available in the WPF Spreadsheet control. Ever since we announced the first release of the WinForms version in 13.1, you guys have been asking, "what about WPF, what about WPF"... well friends, it's here.

So what's involved in creating a powerful easy to use Spreadsheet application that has more than 300 inbuilt formula, chart support, printing with full preview AND the ability to read/write .XLS files ???  Less than a dozen mouse clicks!

Seriously! From starting a new Visual Studio 2013 application I was able to generate a complete ready to ship Spreadsheet application with no more than my mouse.

Step 1. Create the project, drag on the Spreadsheet Control and reset layout.

Step 2. Auto generate the Ribbon and all toolbars.

Step 3. Run!

It really as simple as 1,2,3. But of course, there is so much more power available to you;

• - 140 events you can interact with;
• - 300+ inbuilt formula;
• - Create your own custom functions;
• - Interact with the document model directly;
• - Load/Save .XLS, .XLSX, .CSV, .TXT files;
• - Cell Formatting and Conditional Formatting.

There are so many uses for the Spreadsheet control, it’s fast, it’s versatile and best of all it’s now available for WPF.

Great news for ASP.NET MVC developers: DevExpress MVC Extensions support ASP.NET MVC 5!

The Microsoft ASP.NET team recently released the ASP.NET MVC 5 version of the framework. And the over 50 DevExpress MVC extensions are fully supported in ASP.NET MVC 5!

Versions: 12.2.14, 13.1.9, and 13.2

ASP.NET MVC 5 support is included with DevExpress versions 12.2.14, 13.1.9, and 13.2. However, the DevExpress MVC Wizard supports MVC 5 only in 13.1.9 and 13.2 versions of our library.

New MVC 5 Assembly

There's a new DevExpress.Web.Mvc5.v13.2 assembly. When using DevExpress MVC extensions with ASP.NET MVC 5, this new assembly is required. If you use the DevExpress wizard to generate a new MVC 5 project, it will automatically include this new reference.

Why the new MVC 5 assembly?

This is different than previous versions because ASP.NET MVC 5 introduced a breaking change: Currently, MVC 5 requires full trust. The official MVC 5 site specifies the required rule: “Remove any trust levels other than Full”.

DevExpress MVC Advantages

The DevExpress ASP.NET MVC Extensions offer you many advantages when working with ASP.NET MVC, including:

Over 50 extensions - Native MVC extensions that provide you functionality, beauty, and performance.

File New Wizard - The DevExpress file project templates save you a lot of time when creating a new MVC project that will use DevExpress MVC extensions. Learn more here:

Insert Extension Wizard - We've integrated a very useful wizard inside of Visual Studio that helps you to create new DevExpress MVC extensions, model bind them, and thus save you time. Check out this video to see it in action:

And there's a ton of other great advantages like cross-browser support, beautiful themes, localization, and more. Learn more here.

What's new in ASP.NET MVC 5?

MVC 5 brings some interesting new features:

• One ASP.NET
• ASP.NET Identity
• Bootstrap
• Authentication filters
• Filter overrides
• Attribute routing

Learn more about these features here: ASP.NET and Web Tools for Visual Studio 2013 Preview Release Notes

Helpful links

Watch the DevExpress ASP.NET MVC Getting Started videos to see how easy and powerful they are:

To learn more about Microsoft ASP.NET MVC 5:

• Getting Started with ASP.NET MVC 5
• http://www.asp.net/vnext/overview/aspnet-mvc
• http://www.asp.net/mvc/tutorials/mvc-5

Thanks.

Take a look at the new DevExpress SharePoint 2013 Demo site:

http://sharepoint.devexpress.com/

The new demo is great too. It's cleaner and we've improved the navigation. On the left side, you'll find the DevExpress ASP.NET NavBar (ASPxNavBar) control integrated there. Give it a try now.

SharePoint 2013 supported

Beginning with the DevExpress 13.1 release, SharePoint 2013 is supported by all the DevExpress ASP.NET controls. Including the two SharePoint specific WebParts (List GridView and HtmlEditor):

New SharePoint 2013 features in 13.2

We added support for SharePoint 2013 in the first release of 2013 (13.1). But we wanted to wait to announce it because we've added a lot more features in the 13.2 release:

1. The new SharePoint 2013 Demo portal! - We completely redesigned this demo and the new site gives you a great example of DevExpress ASP.NET integrated into SharePoint 2013.
2. Design time support - DevExpress ASP.NET controls fully support design time in SharePoint projects. See also: Visual Web Part Creation
3. ASPxHtmlEditor and SPxHtmlEditorWebPart:
   
   1. Improved visual interface in the list pages
   2. Controls are hidden on SharePoint wiki pages
4. SPxListViewWebPart - DevExpress ASP.NET GridView SharePoint WebPart:
   
   1. Document Library support - (Document libraries are collections of files that you can share with team members on a Web based on Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services. For example, you can create a library of common documents for a project, and team members can use their Web browsers to find the files, read them, and make comments. Users with Microsoft Office can check out and edit the files as if they resided on a local or network drive)
   2. Support SPFieldLookup - (A lookup field takes its value from a field in another list. The list that provides data for the lookup field is called the lookup list. To get a reference to the lookup list, access the SPFieldLookup object's LookupList property. To determine which field in the lookup list is providing information, access the LookupField property)
   3. Support SPChoiceField and SPFieldMultiChoice - (SPFieldChoice - allows you to select one or more values)
   4. Support SPFieldUser (Similar to SPFieldLookup)
   5. External Field Support (This column lets you combine a column of data from an external data source with other columns in a native list or library. Because an external data column is added to a native list or library, all related list or library features work, including versioning, approvals, check-in and check-out, and file attachments )
   6. New context menu with different access rights
   7. New web part settings panel
   8. Localization

More Samples

We've added even more great samples of DevExpress and SharePoint integration to show you what's possible:

• Date and Time Editors
• Form Layout
• Tree List
• Custom SharePoint Edit Form
• Custom SharePoint Display Form

There's even more samples of DevExpress and SharePoint integration:

Download Samples - Get any of the samples from the site directly and try it with your SharePoint portal (of course you'll need DevExpress ASP.NET products). And if you have any issues, please let our excellent support team know and they can help you.

SharePoint 2010, MOSS 2007

Starting with version 13.1 (v2013 vol 1), DevExpress ASP.NET controls only support SharePoint 2013.

Why?

DevExpress base/ASP.NET products migrated to .NET Framework v4+ with version 13.1 (v2013 vol 1). SharePoint versions prior to SharePoint 2013 are no longer supported (as of 13.1), because they require/operate under ASP.NET v2 (.NET v2) runtime.

If you're using any of the following versions then you'll need to use DevExpress ASP.NET controls that prior versions of 13.1 (v2013 vol 1):

• WSS 3.0
• MOSS 2007
• SharePoint 2010

What's new in Microsoft SharePoint 2013?

To learn what's new in Microsoft SharePoint 2013, I recommend the following resources:

• What’s new in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013
• Capabilities and features in SharePoint 2013
  
• What's new with SharePoint 2013 site development
• 5 Reasons Programmers Are Excited About SharePoint 2013
• SharePoint 2013 Excitement - YouTube

The new SharePoint.devexpress.com site is a fantastic example of how you can integrate any of the 90+ powerful DevExpress ASP.NET controls and SharePoint 2013 to provide a great experience for your end-users.

Check out the new DevExpress ASP.NET Token Box control that's part of the DevExpress 13.2 release:

The DevExpress ASP.NET Token Box (ASPxTokenBox) editor provides your end-users the ability to auto-complete values from a predefined list. An end-user can select a value from the dropdown window list or type it manually:

What's a Token?

If you look up the definition of Token on google then you'll see many definitions:

However, in context to the TokenBox control, I prefer to think of a token as a symbol. Therefore, we display the selected item from dropdown with a colored box around it. This box now indicates to the user the choice they've selected from the dropdown. It's become the symbol of the words and numbers that represents the selected item. And the token box also contains an X mark at the right to allow the end-user to easily remove it the selected item. This visual cue is a different way to display selected items but I believe it gives the users a nice user interface when they can easily see their selected items.

You can see examples of the token box style input on popular websites like Gmail's To field:

And Facebook's messages:

And now, you can get this slick functionality and look in your ASP.NET web projects with the DevExpress ASP.NET TokenBox.

ASP.NET MVC & WebForms

This new data editor is available for both the ASP.NET WebForms and MVC platforms. These are both part of the DevExpress 13.2 release.

Features

The new Token Box control gives you many great features and themes, including:

• DataBinding - You can databind the Token Box editor easily using a datasource on WebForms or Model Binding on ASP.NET MVC.

• Themes - All the DevExpress themes are fully supported by this control.

• AllowCustomTokens - allows you to control whether the end-user can create custom tokens or they must choose tokens from the dropdown list.

• ShowDropDownOnFocus - controls the dropdown window visibility when the editor gets focus.

• IncrementalFilteringMode - allows your filter the dropdown as items are typed into the window.

Getting Started Video

Watch the short ASP.NET Token Box Getting Started video below to see how easy and powerful this new control is.

ASP.NET WebForms:

ASP.NET MVC: