ComponentArt Web.UI 2008.2 Details Announced

Posted Thu Jul 10, 2008 @ 11:34 AM

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.

Posted to I Build, Therefore I Am by miljan

Posted on Thu Jul 10, 2008 @ 11:34 AM

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Comments

PAML IT
Posted on Thu Jul 10, 2008 @ 11:34 AM
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.
Scott K
Posted on Thu Jul 10, 2008 @ 11:34 AM
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.
paml it
Posted on Thu Jul 10, 2008 @ 11:34 AM
Why do you hide the comments posted to your blog?
Miljan
Posted on Thu Jul 10, 2008 @ 11:34 AM
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.
Elija
Posted on Thu Jul 10, 2008 @ 11:34 AM
Is the Editor inside AJAX UpdatePanel fixed?
ASI
Posted on Thu Jul 10, 2008 @ 11:34 AM
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.
PAML IT
Posted on Thu Jul 10, 2008 @ 11:34 AM
Miljan, Could you elaborate on the "Improved editing capabilities" of the 2008.2 grid?
Miljan
Posted on Thu Jul 10, 2008 @ 11:34 AM
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.
ASI
Posted on Thu Jul 10, 2008 @ 11:34 AM
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.
milos
Posted on Thu Jul 10, 2008 @ 11:34 AM
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.
ASI
Posted on Thu Jul 10, 2008 @ 11:34 AM
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.
PAML IT
Posted on Thu Jul 10, 2008 @ 11:34 AM
Will your new input control have built in functionality for things like Auto-Complete and Auto-Suggest?
tombmedia
Posted on Thu Jul 10, 2008 @ 11:34 AM
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.
paml it
Posted on Thu Jul 10, 2008 @ 11:34 AM
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.
milos
Posted on Thu Jul 10, 2008 @ 11:34 AM
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.
todd
Posted on Thu Jul 10, 2008 @ 11:34 AM
I was hoping the next release would contain a designer for the grid. Is this in the works?
TicketNetwork
Posted on Thu Jul 10, 2008 @ 11:34 AM
Good to hear your revisiting the grid control. Seems like this is a chance to get my 2ยข 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?
Maciej Nejmanhtowicz
Posted on Thu Jul 10, 2008 @ 11:34 AM
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
Jason Etheridge
Posted on Thu Jul 10, 2008 @ 11:34 AM
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
ASI
Posted on Thu Jul 10, 2008 @ 11:34 AM
Thx Milos great to hear on the grid!
Sean Walker
Posted on Thu Jul 10, 2008 @ 11:34 AM
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.
Miljan
Posted on Thu Jul 10, 2008 @ 11:34 AM
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.
Mike Lim
Posted on Thu Jul 10, 2008 @ 11:34 AM
In your blog post "http://www.componentart.com/blogs/miljan/archive/2007/01/08/interoperability-vs-true-asp-net-ajax-controls.aspx", you mentioned "We don't use the built-in ASP.NET viewstate nor control state at all. We have a custom viewstate mechanism which is much more efficient. Explaining the details of our viewstate implementation would perhaps make for an interesting blog post in its own right" We resolved ASP.NET viewstate/control state size problem by storing them in SessionState. There's a good link at http://szokelizer.blogsome.com/2006/11/09/how-to-put-controlstate-into-viewstate-and-how-to-put-viewstate-into-session/ which explains this. There are other problems with this implementation (e.g. session expire, web farm/garden scenarios) that we have since resolved. I currently have a yearly subscription for CA. Looking at the source codes, we noticed that CA's ViewState is implemented as hidden form fields. This works great most of the time. However for certain components (e.g. TreeView with many nodes), the amount of form field data is a lot. This slows down page load and page postback. I can probably change the source codes; put CA's ViewState back into ASP.NET ViewState which is then stored on web server SessionState. This is however going to be a very time consuming process. Is it possible for ComponentArt to allow back the ASP.NET ViewState/ControlState implementation? Perhaps a web.config setting to choose between CA's hidden form field implementation or asp.net ViewState? Sincerely hope that CA can look into this.
ASI
Posted on Thu Jul 10, 2008 @ 11:34 AM
From my comment in an earlier thread in this post: "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." Your announcement for a new Scheduler control is awesome! Would be glad to beta this control for you guys. Thanks, Luke
Northrop Grumman
Posted on Thu Jul 10, 2008 @ 11:34 AM

I found mentioned in this thread the need to NOT allow column resizing on the grids...has this been implemented?

If so, what is the property that needs to be set on the grid to prevent the user from resizing the columns?

Northrop Grumman
Posted on Thu Jul 10, 2008 @ 11:34 AM

Disregard my previous post, I found that if you set "FixedWidth="True" on the column, that does the trick!

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