ComponentArt Web.UI 2008.2 Details Announced

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ComponentArt Web.UI 2008.2 Details Announced

The Web.UI product team has been hard at work on the next major release of ComponentArt's flagship product line. I am pleased to announce that the release of Web.UI 2008.2 is on the horizon and that it will include three new controls, a major Grid overhaul and several important new suite-wide features.

Three New Controls

The Web.UI suite is being expanded yet again. The following controls are being added with v2008.2:

Input for ASP.NET
Slider for ASP.NET
ColorPicker for ASP.NET

Major Grid Overhaul

Since its initial release, ComponentArt Grid has been perceived as one of the most valuable controls within the Web.UI suite. Our Grid-related R&D work has introduced many important innovations into the ASP.NET control space: client running mode, client-side structure creation, client templates and direct binding with web services, just to name a few. We are excited to push the capabilities of this control even further by adding the following features in v2008.2:

Multi-level grouping (web service running mode only)
Header context menus
Improved editing capabilities
Revamped keyboard support
Client-side sub-level sorting
Templated footer rows

New Suite-Wide Features

The following suite-wide features are being added with v2008.2:

Extended support for direct binding with ASP.NET AJAX web services
Accessible output and Section 508 compliance
ASP.NET MVC support
Extended keyboard support
Revamped product documentation

Release Dates - Updated!

The anticipated release dates for Web.UI 2008.2 are as follows:

Beta Release: Week of August 18, 2008
Full Release: Week of September 15, 2008

Please note that these release dates are based on our best estimate and are subject to change.

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Posted by: Miljan
Posted: Thursday, July 10, 2008 11:34 AM

Comments

PAML IT said:

Exciting, yet dissapointing on so many levels. I love your grid... for some things... but you're not changing any of the things I don't like about it. There's so many more places we could use it if it were just a little more friendly. Such as: Resizable. Like just about every other grid out there. Without needing a re-render. Width/Height=100% is one of the most usefull things a grid can do when writing a Web Application that emulates a windows application (Microsoft CRM for just one example). The Vertical scrollbars that you guys have are nice, but fairly clunky since it HAS to be a graphic and can't just utilize a regular scrollbar. i.e. it is slooow and choppy to use in many situations. Also, how hard could it be to add a cookie option to the grid so it could remember sort direction/current page on it's own? Users just love the back button... Anyways. Just think about them. We've submitted quite a few tickets over the years about these items that it would really be nice to have these grid changes taken into consideration. As for the new controls. About time... it's about time! :) Looking forward to the Input control.

# July 10, 2008 12:48 PM

Scott K said:

Quick Question regarding the MVC support: Is this a pure javascript option, or will it still require form runat="server" tags embedded in the views? Thanks.

# July 12, 2008 2:42 PM

paml it said:

Why do you hide the comments posted to your blog?

# July 14, 2008 5:37 PM

Miljan said:

Hello PAML IT, I definitely don't hide comments posted to my blog, however sometimes it takes me a few days to approve them. I realize this is not the fastest turnaround, but the amount of spam we get doesn't help :). Thank you for your v2008.2 feedback. We acknowledge the value of the features you are looking for, but some of them require static HTML rendering and are in conflict with our client-centric way of doing things. In any case, now is a good time to bring them up, as we have the opportunity to re-evaluate the way things are implemented. I will definitely discuss these items with the team. Scott K, our MVC approach is not entirely JavaScript based, it involves server controls (with runat="server"), but it doesn't rely on ASP.NET postbacks.

# July 15, 2008 5:35 AM

Elija said:

Is the Editor inside AJAX UpdatePanel fixed?

# July 16, 2008 1:29 AM

ASI said:

I would have to agree with paml on the grid resizing stuff. I find it very difficult to do any sort of 100% width. Esp. when the grid is nested in other controls. Also mouse wheel support is a must for us when scrolling a grid. Also looking foward to the new controls but would really like to see some of these grid items addressed.

# July 17, 2008 12:31 PM

PAML IT said:

Miljan, Could you elaborate on the "Improved editing capabilities" of the 2008.2 grid?

# July 21, 2008 8:39 AM

Miljan said:

Elija, the core Editor control works inside the UpdatePanel. We were, however, able to reproduce a problem where more complex Editor implementations (with toolbars, dialogs, etc.) fail when nested within the UpdatePanel. The team is working on resolving those issues. ASI, we going through the entire feature set of the Grid control and evaluating things that can be improved. The 100% width is a tough one (perhaps counter intuitively), since we allow interactive column resizing and need to set the with of each column. However, we are not giving up on this topic. PAML IT, we are planning to incorporate the new Input control into the client-side editing templates as well as wire web service calls for editing commands. We are also going to ship a more elaborate editing example to show how it all fits together.

# July 22, 2008 12:30 PM

ASI said:

Thanks for keeping these requests in mind. Any chance getting a mode that would turn off column resizing and allow for 100% width? Colunn resizing is a nice feature but I find that most of the time it is not needed it my apps. Esp. when I am rendering very small grids nested inside other controls.

# July 28, 2008 7:18 AM

milos said:

ASI: That's an interesting suggestion. If we forgo column resizing, we should be able to let the browser determine column widths. The only caveat is that columns which contain data that might cause the Grid to stretch (long text, for example) will need to have a constant pixel width set on them. The rest should be able to take up whatever space is available. We will try to do something in this department for this next release.

# July 28, 2008 8:52 AM

ASI said:

I would also love to see an example or feature support to create an "Outlook style" day/week schedule view. I have seen a couple other vendors out there offer this. It would be a Great addition to the suite.

# August 1, 2008 10:45 AM

PAML IT said:

Will your new input control have built in functionality for things like Auto-Complete and Auto-Suggest?

# August 4, 2008 11:57 AM

tombmedia said:

It would be nice if ComponentArt would focus on finishing the existing control suite before introducing any new ones. The editor is still in horrible shape, the upload doesn't work on IIS7, spend 5 minutes on the forum and you will see. When are we going to see these items working at a production level? Maybe examples with javascript that isn't so bad that you lose customers (ie, are you serious, thats how they want me to find the control?) I have been using your controls since aspnetmenu but have found I sell the Ext suite more than ComponentArt's. Which is sad, you had a 4 year head start. Now I find myself doubting the javascript prowess of your team with the examples, documentation and controls to date. Please cut down on the developing and put a little more time into documentation and examples. Save your support team some work.

# August 11, 2008 1:27 PM

paml it said:

I'm in the middle of a project where I am using the 2008.1 Grid and noticed that you make no mention or reference to ColumnType or CheckBox columns in any of the grid demos. It would be nice, along wtih this new version of the grid, to have this capability in the demo section. I'm sure I'll be able to get the column working like most Check Box columns work by sifting through the forum, but it would sure be nice to have an example online in the demo section.

# August 12, 2008 4:12 PM

milos said:

ASI: I can confirm that Grid 2008.2 will include, among other new features, a way to turn off column resizing, and get normal table behaviour in return. It will simply mean setting AllowColumnResizing (new property) to false. It does really make a lot of scenarios a lot more manageable, and the cost (doing away with resizing) seems reasonable.

# August 13, 2008 1:04 PM

todd said:

I was hoping the next release would contain a designer for the grid. Is this in the works?

# August 14, 2008 11:47 AM

TicketNetwork said:

Good to hear your revisiting the grid control. Seems like this is a chance to get my 2¢ in so from my two years of extensive development with your grids I have to agree with all the above posters about the current main deficiencies in the grids are the 100% width issues and the scroll bars performance, I won't write out the details, we all know it has problems. Also no inherent middle wheel scroll support. I was going to add the inability to add "static" summary rows to the grid that don't scroll with the rest, but it looks like that might be the new templated footer rows?

# August 15, 2008 7:58 AM

Maciej Nejmanhtowicz said:

A feature that I would love to see is the implementation of the SiteMapXmlFile property for every xxxWebServiceResponse object. Its a real pain implementing a hierarchical parsing routine for every sitemap xml file. Please, please add this to the 2008.2 release. Thank You, Maciej Nejmantowicz

# August 15, 2008 2:43 PM

Jason Etheridge said:

I second the comment that I'd like to see more bug fixes in each release, and I understand that may come with less new features. For example...just last week we encountered a known (on the forum) issue with snap controls "occasionally" hiding dropdowns on a page. Not sure why it sometimes happens and not others...but for a production control to exhibit this known behavior across multiple releases and not be resolved by now is a little embarrasing. That said, we LOVE the web.ui suite 90% of the time. Fix the bugs that cause us pain and I'll get you the remaining 10% :) Jason

# August 21, 2008 8:32 AM

ASI said:

Thx Milos great to hear on the grid!

# August 29, 2008 8:25 AM

Sean Walker said:

I too would love to see a non-resizable column option (grid wide, not just on columns). I have so many grids in so many places that only use the features of paging and sorting. I would love to be able to dumb down many of these to get better width support if that was possible. I would also love to have the ability to make the grid almost completely dumb and completely disable all the features that I do not want to use. If this could speed up rendering and load times, then I would be so very happy.

# September 4, 2008 11:44 AM

Miljan said:

As you probably know by now, we shipped Web.UI 2008.2 last week. I invite you to review the release as it has contains some features requested in this thread: 100% Grid width (with non-resizable columns), multi-level grouping and templated footer rows.

# September 24, 2008 6:29 AM

ComponentArt Web.UI 2008.2 Details Announced

Comment Notification

Comments

PAML IT said:

Scott K said:

paml it said:

Miljan said:

Elija said:

ASI said:

PAML IT said:

Miljan said:

ASI said:

milos said:

ASI said:

PAML IT said:

tombmedia said:

paml it said:

milos said:

todd said:

TicketNetwork said:

Maciej Nejmanhtowicz said:

Jason Etheridge said:

ASI said:

Sean Walker said:

Miljan said: