WPF Elements is our suite of controls for Windows Presentation Foundation and in 3.0 we’re not only bundling in the popular Property Grid control and our stylish WPF themes, we’re also adding a whole load of new controls:

• Scheduler – Outlook-style calendar display
• DualProgressBar – display operation and sub-operation progress
• DualSlider – a handy and visual way for users to select a range
• OutlookBar – an attractive and compact tab control
• PaletteColorPicker – help your users select colors that work well together
• SplitButton – it’s a button! It’s a menu! No, it’s a benu! Or possibly a menton
• TimePicker – for selecting a time of day
• TimeSpanPicker – for selecting a duration
• RichTextToolBar – a convenient and familiar UI for formatting the WPF RichTextBox

The PropertyGrid control has also been enhanced with new themes, and WPF Themes extends these to the built-in WPF controls.

The WPF Elements 3.0 beta is in the store now and is free to current WPF Elements, WPF Property Grid and WPF Themes customers. Take it for a spin and if you run into any issues, let us know!

Well, good news! Dedicated engineers* have been labouring day and night** ever since Visual Studio 2010 came out***, and we’re now able to offer a beta release of VS File Explorer for Visual Studio 2010.

The beta release is available for free download now. Take it for a spin and let us know how you get on!

* Actual number of engineers and level of dedication may differ from that printed on promotional material.
** Actual working hours may differ from those printed on promotional material.
*** Actual project duration may differ from that printed on promotional material.

This is great news for organisations that have reseller policies, policies around making purchases from local organisation (we’re looking at you, US businesses!) and US Government organisations.

Currently ComponentSource have LightSpeed and Silverlight Elements available on their websites. It is possible for users to add reviews so if you’d like to share your experiences with our products we would appreciate you adding your review on ComponentSource.

If you have any questions please post a comment.

Some important notes about the new release that all WPF customers should be aware of:

WPF Property Grid

We will be merging our WPF Property Grid control into the WPF Elements family. It will no longer be a stand alone product to purchase from our store. It’s interesting and a little sad to see it go as its own standalone product as it was Mindscape’s second product that was released to market but it’s also an important step in continuing maturity of our WPF offering.

What does this mean for existing customers? If you own the WPF Property Grid product you will automatically be migrated to owning WPF Elements 3.0 as part of your active subscription for free.

WPF Themes

We released a WPF Themes product that included 5 themes for all the built in WPF controls. We’ve decided that this would be better bundled up with WPF Elements 3.0 as well and will also be discontinuing the WPF Themes individual product when WPF Elements 3.0 is released.

What does this mean for existing customers? If you own the WPF Themes product you will automatically be migrated to owning WPF Elements 3.0 as part of your active subscription for free.

WPF Elements 3.0

Beyond doing the product line up tango, WPF Elements will also get a big upgrade by way of new features in existing controls and new control additions. We’ve received wonderful feedback from customers about what they would like to see added (for example, a WPF Scheduler control like the Outlook calendar) and I’m looking forward to seeing how customers make use of them.

Price changes – the call-to-action part of this post!

With WPF Elements 3.0 we will be increasing the price of the product which is why we’re making this announcement now. If you are currently evaluating any of our WPF products then it would be a very good idea to purchase a 12 month subscription today and lock in the current pricing for the next 12 months. If you already have a subscription, you may wish to extend it for another 12 months now. This will represent a substantial saving over buying the products or renewing them once WPF Elements 3.0 is released. Also, note that if you have an inactive subscription, you can still re-activate it and renew for 12 months at a reduced amount from your account page.

Existing customers can extend their subscriptions here
Cannot-wait-to-be-customers can purchase from the store here

We hope that you’ll love the new WPF Elements when we launch it later in July.

Happy coding!

Visual Studio 2010 designer integration

Well, there’s not a lot to say about this — it does exactly what it says on the tin! You can now use the LightSpeed designer in Visual Studio 2010, with all your favourite features like database synchronisation, migrations, validation and so on just as they were in Visual Studio 2008. Since there’s not much to say, we’ll let the screenshot do the talking.

Breaking large models into multiple files

Large models are the bane of visual designers: as a model gets very large and complicated, the design surface gets crowded and sprawling, and it becomes hard to focus on the detail of a particular section. LightSpeed now offers the ability to break a model across multiple files using a feature we call linked models. If you use the same model name for models in multiple files, LightSpeed will merge them into a single runtime model. You can create associations that span files, and you’ll be able to use those associations at runtime just as you can use ‘normal’ associations between entities within a single model file.

By the way, if you’re one of the people who’s pressed us for this feature at a conference or user group or in the forums, you may have heard us saying that it was going to require support that was only in Visual Studio 2010. That would have been annoying, so we figured out a way to do it in 2008 as well. Good times!

Saved views in the designer

What if your model is large but doesn’t split nicely into linked files? LightSpeed 3.0 supported a number of filtering options whereby you could choose to view only a subset of your model — a particular aggregate, for example, or a set of entities related by a tag. However, you had to re-enter the filter each time you wanted to apply it. No more! LightSpeed 3.1 allows you to save these filters and access them from a handy menu. This new Quick View feature makes it easy to set up common views and convenient to jump between them according to the task at hand.

Class table inheritance

LightSpeed 3.0 supported polymorphic inheritance via single table inheritance, also known as table per hierarchy, where the data for all the entities in the hierarchy was combined into a single table representing the entire hierarchy. If derived classes have a lot of fields, that STI table starts to look a bit messy. Class table inheritance addresses this by having a separate table for each class in the hierarchy, each table storing only the fields introduced by the corresponding class. This makes the database design tighter at the expense of more complicated queries (because the tables need to be joined at runtime). LightSpeed 3.1 supports class table inheritance both at runtime and in the designer, so you can easily create CTI database schemas from a LightSpeed model.

Other highlights

LightSpeed 3.1 also includes a bunch of smaller features — too many to list here, but here are a few favourites:

• Support for invoking SQLCLR server-side methods via LINQ. This means you can now do SQL Server 2008 spatial queries using LightSpeed!
• Reminder notes in the designer so you can include comments and links on the design surface.
• A T4 directive processor so that you can write your own T4 templates against LightSpeed designer models.
• Lots of improvements to group and join support.

Check out the change log for a full list of enhancements and fixes.

Check it out!

LightSpeed 3.1 is available in the store now, and it’s a free upgrade for existing LightSpeed 3.0 users. Or grab the free Express edition from the Downloads page. LightSpeed 3.1 is a major upgrade: take it for a spin today!

We are proud to announce the release of Silverlight Elements 1.1. In this version we have added a whole bunch of interesting new controls to add an even richer user experience to your applications. All five of our current Silverlight themes have been updated to include all these new controls. We have also added new features to a few of the existing controls. The TimePicker and TimeSpanPicker controls now have up/down functionality and have the option to hide the drop down button. The Scheduler now supports custom schedule items which can be easily templated and added to the control.

Slider and Dual Slider

The Mindscape Slider control includes tick mark support as well as the usual Slider functionality. Tick marks can be displayed above or/and below the slider track, and the spacing between the tick marks can be changed. You can also specify whether or not the slider thumb should snap to the tick marks. The Slider can also be oriented vertically as well as horizontally.

The Mindscape DualSlider control includes all the features that we have put into the Slider, and also contains an additional slider thumb. This control is useful for selecting the start and end values or some kind of range. The thumbs can be moved either individually or at the same time by dragging the area between them. Various properties allow you to specify a minimum and maximum range, and also whether or not the thumbs are able to pass through each other.

You can read more information about the Slider and Dual Slider here, or play with them in our online demo.

Dock Panel

The DockPanel provides a layout strategy that arranges its children around the inside of its edges, like the WPF DockPanel. Individual items can be told which edge to be aligned against, and you can specify whether or not the last item should fill the remaining space or not. Have a look at the online demo where you can experiment with changing the width, height and dock properties of each of the items in the DockPanel.

Progress Bar

The Mindscape DualProgressBar can display the progress of individual sub-operations at the same time as the overall progress. If you don’t need to show the progress of an individual sub-operation, then you can still use this control as an enhanced version of a normal ProgressBar. Custom content can be displayed at the start, center and end of this control which can be text, images, bindings to the current progress or anything you fancy.

Read more information about the progress bar here, and have a look at it in the online demo.

Menu

The Menu control organises application commands into one easy to access location. This control is based on the familiar Windows menu component and makes is simple for users to discover what your application can do. Menus can include icons, checkable items and separators, and can be nested to provide a cascading menu effect. You can also set up particular menu items to remain open after the user has clicked on them.

You can read more information about the Menu control here, and see it in action with our online demo.

Split Button

This control is both a button and a menu combined. This control is useful when you have multiple related commands where one of the commands can be used as a default. The SplitButton acts like a button by raising an event when the user clicks on it. Further commands can be accessed from the drop down menu part of this control. Menu items can be added to the SplitButton in the same way they are added to a menu, and just like a menu the SplitButton supports cascading menus, icons and separators.

You can read more information about the SplitButton here, and see it in action with our online demo.

Expander

The Expander can tuck away its content and then display it only when the user wants to see it. This control is similar to the Expander seen in WPF and can accept any kind of visual content. You can also set it up to expand its content in an upward direction.

Outlook Bar

This control is a replica of the tab system seen in the Microsoft Outlook application. It displays a stack of tabs which can be used to select what content it should display. The thumb in this control can be dragged up and down to change the number of tabs that are visible. Tabs that have been collapsed can be seen in a smaller form in the tray at the bottom of the control. While collapsed, a tab can still be clicked to display its content. All the content and header content of each tab can be whatever you want it to be.

You can read more information about the OutlookBar here, and see it in action with our online demo.

Numeric Up Down

This is an ideal control for selecting a decimal value. The NumericUpDown displays a value which can be edited in a few different ways. The control is styled with a pair of buttons that can be used to increase or decrease the value by a specified magnitude. Clicking on the control and then using the up or down arrow keys will also increase or decrease the value. The user can even type directly into the control to input what ever number they need. This control can limit the users input by setting the minimum and maximum values, and the number of decimal places to display can also be set.

What do you think?

Looks useful? Try out the online demo and download the free trial version to give it a spin. And if there’s a new feature or control that would be useful for you, why not let us know in the forums? And you can get more information about Silverlight Elements here.

LightSpeed

• The designer now supports copying and pasting multiple properties in one operation.
• If you’re using associations to entities with composite keys and need to set up per-field column mappings, you can now do so in the designer. Instead of a single “Column Name” property on the association, you’ll see a “Column Name for X” property for each field of the composite key, e.g. “Column Name for EmployeeId” and “ColumnName for LocationId”.
• The designer no longer displays the discriminator settings when you’re using concrete table inheritance.
• We’ve fixed a couple of bugs: an issue with using constant boolean subexpressions in nested expressions in LINQ queries, a problem with multiple different joins over the same relationship and an issue with cascade delete on relationships that cross a class table inheritance hierarchy.

Silverlight Elements

• We’ve added a sample showing how to use the Scheduler control with a Web-based storage service.

As always, you can get the latest nightly builds from your account page in the store, or free versions from the Downloads page.

Visual Studio 2010 support

New Visual Studio releases always have a lot of momentum behind them and eager customers have been asking for us to get the LightSpeed design surface into VS2010 ever since beta 2 came out. We’ve had previews out throughout the beta cycle but we’re now pleased to announce that (after much last-minute gnashing of teeth and tearing of hair) it’s fully released and integrated into the LightSpeed nightly build.

Although this is currently only in the nightly builds, 3.1 will mean the non-nightly download (including Express) will include the VS2010 and VS2008 designers.

3.1 release

As mentioned, 3.1 will ship in the next couple of weeks. We’ve completed the key features that we were aiming for and are now in the process of polishing the release, fixing a few outstanding bugs, updating documentation and otherwise preparing for launch. If there’s anything in particular you would like to have documented better then post a comment – now’s the time to let us know (we do have a bunch of things we’ll improve but it always helps to be reminded!).

Pricing changes

With the release of LightSpeed 3.1 we will be increasing the price per developer. If you have been evaluating LightSpeed but haven’t quite got around to purchasing your licenses yet then you should do so before the 3.1 release! All customers get 12 months worth of updates so you’ll get 3.1 as soon as it ships as well :-)

Here, then, is a round-up of the last week or so’s fixes and enhancements across the Mindscape product range.

LightSpeed

• Visual Studio 2010 designer support! We’ll be officially launching this soon, but it’s already in the nightlies.
• Support for using SQL Server spatial data type methods in a query. Instructions here.
• Consistent read support for Amazon SimpleDB. Instructions here and here.
• Support for localising field names in validation messages. Instructions here.
• You can now add (but not remove) unique constraints via the designer and via migrations.
• The designer now remembers the zoom level when you save the model. Handy for big models where you usually want to work zoomed out.
• Fixes for a spurious error in the designer, for Oracle SYS_GUID support in the designer and for entity range variables in LINQ joins.
• Fixed a British spelling in the help file. Hey, you may think this isn’t worth mentioning, but JD brooded about it for six straight days…

Silverlight Elements

• New OutlookBar control.
• New Expander control.
• New menuing and command controls: Menu, ContextMenu and SplitButton.
• New numeric controls: Slider, DualSlider, DualProgressBar and NumericUpDown.
• New layout controls: DockPanel and a pair of truncating StackPanels.
• TimePicker and TimeSpanPicker now have up-down functionality.
• Several fixes to design-time functionality and to the UniformGrid.

WPF Property Grid

• Fix for TypeEditors mapped to built-in editors not respecting BuiltInEditorStyles.

SimpleDB Management Tools

• Visual Studio 2010 support.
• Now uses consistent reads for all queries.
• Old-style query syntax (Amazon’s Crazy-Ass Query Language (TM)) is no longer supported.

You can download the latest nightly builds from the store, or from the Downloads page for free and trial editions.

Get Visual Tools for Sharepoint FREE

The first 50 people to create accounts with Mindscape (click here to register) and then email their username and email address to jd@mindscape.co.nz will get a free license to Visual Tools for SharePoint. I’ll update this post when the give aways are complete, but be quick! UPDATE: All the free copies have been taken sorry!

What would you say…. you do?

Visual Tools for SharePoint is our first SharePoint related product and one of the exciting new features in SharePoint 2010 is “LINQ to SharePoint”. As many of you will know, our LightSpeed product has a fantastic LINQ provider and design surface for databases, so we are interested in all things LINQ. Microsoft have not made a visual design surface in Visual Studio for modeling things in SharePoint that you wish to query – you need to use an arcane command line tool. We love our Visual Studio integration and decided we could do better!

Here’s a screenshot (click to see it larger):

So you can connect to SharePoint from the VS 2010 Server Explorer, drag and drop your lists and have us create LINQ to SharePoint contexts and classes for you. No more mucking around with command lines and XML configuration files! This helps developers save time, makes generating your objects to query much easier and saves you having to leave Visual Studio 2010. Plus you can quickly update your models from the SharePoint site so as to see what’s new or changed.

What do you think?

With any new product we need end user feedback – that’s why we’re giving away copies to the first 50 users. You’ll get immediate access to the beta and a free copy of the toolkit when the retail version ships. (You’ll need Visual Studio 2010 Professional or above, and SharePoint 2010, to use the product.)

We want to evolve all of our products based on the feedback we receive and make all the changes available to users through our much loved nightly build process. Please let us know what you think in the comments on this post or in our forums :-)

So what are you waiting for? Sign up and email us your username and email address now!