It's finally here! The DevExpress ASP.NET Bootstrap controls preview that many of you been waiting for is now available to download and try in your ASP.NET WebForms project.

Please note: This is release is a CTP (community technology preview) and we are looking for your feedback.

Install v16.2.4

This preview of our upcoming Bootstrap controls is available with the 16.2.4 minor release.

After installing, you'll have the new DevExpress Bootstrap controls available in your Visual Studio toolbox. You can start experimenting with them in the same way that you used our classic ASP.NET Web Forms controls.

There is also a "Bootstrap Web Site" Web Application template now available in the DevExpress Template Gallery:

Use this template to get started and create a basic web site powered by DevExpress Bootstrap controls.

If you're a fan of NuGet, there's a DevExpress ASP.NET Bootstrap NuGet package too.

What's New?

Since we first published the Bootstrap Controls demos, we have extended the suite with a couple of additional controls.

1. Tab Control and Page Control

The Tab Control and Page Control allow you to provide a tabbed UI to your web application pages. The Tab Control is used to only display tabs, while the Page Control allows you to associate specific page content with each separate tab.

The tabs are rendered using the Bootstrap's native nav-tabs CSS class.

2. Spin Edit

The Spin Edit control is intended for editing numeric values. This control displays a text editor with spin buttons that an end-user can click on to increment or decrement the displayed value.

3. Progress Bar

The Progress Bar control allows you to provide a visual indication for the status of some process. The Progress Bar control is rendered using the Bootstrap's native progress CSS class.

4. GridView updated

We also updated our Bootstrap Grid View control with new column types to display specific kinds of data, namely Progress Bar, Spin Edit and Hyperlink columns:

5. Accessibility Support

We have provided the support for accessibility, which is now active by default. This feature will help you make your web applications more accessible by rendering additional aria-* attributes providing complementary information about various visual elements within the web application's pages. This information can be utilized by various assistive technology products (such as text-to-speech software, or screen magnifiers) to make your web application more accessible to people with disabilities. Additionally, the accessibility feature provides an enhanced keyboard navigation mechanism to ensure that an end-user will always be able to interact with your web application's interface solely using keyboard input.

Note that while our classic ASP.NET controls require you to explicitly enable semantic rendering via the accessibilityCompliant property, Bootstrap controls have these accessibility features enabled by default (the accessibilityCompliant setting only affects rendering of complementary role and aria-* attributes).

Online Demos

In November 2016, we published the early version of our ASP.NET Bootstrap controls demos. Since then, we've improved them so be sure to take a look:

DevExpress ASP.NET Bootstrap Controls - Online Demos

Feedback

The DevExpress ASP.NET Bootstrap controls are new and still in development. That means only a few of them are available at present, and with a limited set of features when compared to classic DevExpress ASP.NET controls.

With that in mind, please help us answer the following questions in the comments below:

1. Which controls would you like to see in the DevExpress ASP.NET Bootstrap controls suite?
2. What features do you need from the upcoming Bootstrap controls that exist in the classic ASP.NET controls?

Thanks!

The ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit installer now supports the release candidate of Visual Studio 2017. And we'd like your help to test our installer and give us your feedback.

Visual Studio 2017 RC

Microsoft announced the release candidate for Visual Studio 2017 in November 2016. The new Visual Studio 2017 RC provides feature updates and improvements.

Download

If you've installed Visual Studio 2017 RC then please download the installer:

ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit v17 Preview for VS 2017 RC

Note: This preview installer will only work with VS2017 RC and not with the release versions. For the stable version that works with Visual Studio release versions, please check here. This preview install is up to date with this commit.

Feedback

Download this preview and then give us your feedback on GitHub.

Try DevExpress ASP.NET

We’d like to thank you for installing the DevExpress Edition of the AJAX Control Toolkit and look forward to your feedback as you begin using it.

When we took over the fabulous ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit, our goal was to reach those web developers who want to use great web user interface controls for their web projects and DevExpress ASP.NET provides that and much more.

Try the free DevExpress 30 day trial.

Email: mharry@devexpress.com

Twitter: @mehulharry

Now that DevExtreme has official support for Angular 2, I want to show you how easy it is to get started.

The best place to start is by watching this in-depth webinar:

In the video, you will learn how to create a new Angular 2 project and start using DevExtreme widgets with a few commands.

Links

Helpful links from the webinar:

• Getting started (documentation)
• Github - DevExtreme Angular
• Angular CLI
• DevExtreme Angular Usage Samples
• Angular.io quickstart (documentation)
• Architecture
• Webinar: Using DevExtreme w/TypeScript & Angular
• Webinar: DevExtreme and Modularity: Bundles, RequireJS, and WebPack

Awesome Angular Demos

After learning the basics of getting started, I recommend that you clone and run these great Angular 2 demos that showcase the beautiful DevExtreme widgets:

DX Election:

GolfClub:

Sample Source from Webinar

In the webinar, I mentioned that I didn't want to post the sample that I was developing because I would rather that you tried it on your own. However, Jake convinced me that it can still be useful to see the code and follow along with the webinar (thanks Jake).

Github: Angular 2 + DevExtreme Webinar sample source code

Feedback

I'd love for you to watch the video, try the DevExtreme Widgets in your Angular project, and then give us your feedback.

What do you think about Angular 2 and DevExtreme widgets? Drop me a comment below, or tweet me.

Thanks!

In the 16.2.4 release, we've added a new Visual Studio extension that helps you to easily lookup the online DevExpress Documentation at: https://documentation.devexpress.com or https://help.devexpress.com

This gives you the benefit of accessing DevExpress documentation through Visual Studio without having to install the documentation into your local hard drive.

A few releases ago, we separated out the documentation from our main DXperience installation to reduce file size and improve the installation experience.

Now with this new 'help lookup' extension, you can use the handy 'F1' help lookup key in Visual Studio and it will use the online search without local documentation installed.

Here's how it works when you click a DevExpress API member (property, field, etc) and then press 'F1'. Click the play button below the image:

Installation

Download and install the DXperience v16.2.4 release and this new extension will be available in your Visual Studio.

This extension works with Visual Studio 2012, 2013, 2015, and 2017 RC.

Using the extension

Set Visual Studio's Help Preference to 'Launch in Browser': use HELP –> Set Help Preference –> Launch in Browser menu item:

To make sure this feature is set, you may need to switch this setting from 'Launch in Help Viewer' and then back to 'Launch in Browser'.

Now when you write code that uses DevExpress API and press F1 on different API members (namespaces, classes, interfaces, enums, methods, properties, events, fields), you'll be directed to the help topic online!

Feedback

Currently, the extension works only with code editors and in the standard 'Properties' window. We plan to support the DevExpress designers later.

If you find any issues or have any feedback about this new extension then please contact our support@devexpress.com team and let us know.

What do you think about the DevExpress Visual Studio online help extension? Drop me a comment below, or tweet me.

Thanks!

Have you ever wondered, "Hey, how do you get a make fast, searchable, and mobile-friendly ASP.NET Grid?"

I'm glad you asked because I have the answer for you. First, start with DevExpress ASP.NET controls, of course.

Best Practices

How you design your web app matters to its performance, functionality, and appearance. To create a fast and mobile-friendly ASP.NET Grid that can filter results, you need to consider how you think about data access, grid features, and Bootstrap.

Watch this recent webinar where I cover this topic in-depth:

In the video, you will learn a few best practices that we recommend when creating an ASP.NET Grid with scenario I described above.

Sample Source

Download the full Visual Studio solution for the sample in the webinar video here:

Best Practice - ASPxGridView - Online Dictionary mobile friendly web application

To download it, click the 'Example' link on the right-side of the page.

Feedback

I'd love for you to watch the video, try our Code Central sample, and then give us your feedback.

What do you think about the "Best Practices for a Fast, Responsive, Searchable ASP.NET Grid" webinar? Drop me a comment below, or tweet me.

Thanks!

Now that Visual Studio 2017 has been released, we've updated the Ajax Control Toolkit to work with the latest version of VS2017. This support means that you can use the Visual Studio designer and toolbox to drag-and-drop controls on to your WebForms.

This minor release for the Ajax Control Toolkit includes a few fixes and improvements too. Take a look at this Github diff to see some of the changes.

You can download the update release here:

ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit v17.0.0 - Visual Studio 2017 supported

Feedback

Download this update release and then give us your feedback on GitHub.

Try DevExpress ASP.NET

We’d like to thank you for installing the DevExpress Edition of the AJAX Control Toolkit and look forward to your feedback as you begin using it.

When we took over the fabulous ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit, our goal was to reach those web developers who want to use great web user interface controls for their web projects and DevExpress ASP.NET provides that and much more.

Try the free DevExpress 30 day trial.

Email: mharry@devexpress.com

Twitter: @mehulharry

The preview release of the DevExpress NuGet feed is now available for all DevExpress customers.

In early March 2017, we released a private beta feed of our NuGet packages as an experiment because some customers needed them for their build scenarios. They did not want to run our complete installer on the build server but install only the necessary assemblies for compliation. NuGet packages are great for this scenario, however they do have limitations like not installing design time wizards and (File-New) project templates into Visual Studio.

To add the DevExpress NuGet feed into your Visual Studio, you need a specific authorization key that is generated for your individual accounts. This key makes sure that you have access to the proper NuGet packages. Therefore, if you want the Dashboard NuGet packages, then you'll need to have a Universal license.

To get the key is easy. Simply login to your DevExpress account and go the download manager. There at the bottom of your list of products that you've purchased, you'll see a section that specifies your NuGet authorization key:

The key will display as a number and it will also be a link. So you'll see your official key, something like this (but please note this is not a real key -- I just bashed a bit on my keyboard's number pad!):

e8238459894859485849859485948594895849859844958945K

And if you copy the link then you'll have the URL too:

https://nuget.devexpress.com/e8238459894859485849859485948594895849859844958945K/api

Once you have copied your key/URL from the download manager then follow this excellent step-by-step guide to setup your Visual Studio instance for our NuGet packages:

DevExpress NuGet Packages: T466415

Packages

Use the list below to determine which packages you need for your project:

• DevExpress.Web (All ASP.NET WebForms and ASP.NET MVC projects)
• DevExpress.Web.Mvc (ASP.NET MVC Projects)
• DevExpress.Web.Mvc5 (ASP.NET MVC Projects)
• DevExpress.Web.Office (Spreadsheet and RichEdit controls)
• DevExpress.Web.Reporting (Reporting)
• DevExpress.Web.Scheduler (Scheduler)
• DevExpress.Web.Themes (Themes)
• DevExpress.Web.Visualization (Chart and Gauge controls)
• DevExpress.Web.Bootstrap (ASP.NET Bootstrap controls)
• DevExpress.Web.Dashboard (ASP.NET WebForms Dashboard) - v16.2.5
• DevExpress.Web.MVC.Dashboard (ASP.NET MVC Dashboard) - v16.2.5
• DevExpress.Web.MVC5.Dashboard (ASP.NET MVC Dashboard) - v16.2.5
• DevExpress.Document.Processor - v16.2.6
• DevExpress.Xpo - v16.2.6
• DevExtreme.AspNet.Core - v16.2.6
• DevExtreme.AspNet.Mvc - v16.2.6

Required

The DevExpress NuGet feed requires the following:

1. You must be a licensed customer
2. Only certain development platforms like ASP.NET are currently available
3. You should realize that this NuGet support is still only available as a 'beta', we are still working on the full implementation
4. You must be using version 16.2, since that version is all we support
5. Please read the section about "Limitations" before you switch to using NuGet packages

Limitations

The biggest limitation for NuGet packages is that by design they cannot affect the Visual Studio IDE. In other words, they are most convenient for development scenarios such as build servers.

What this means in practice is that we will not be providing DevExpress design-time assemblies via NuGet, and hence the DevExpress controls will not be available in the Visual Studio Toolbox if you use these new packages. You will still have to install the product via our installation program for those design-time experiences.

If you run into any issues then please contact our support department and they can help you.

When you’re passing a date between a client and server in JSON format, you could pass it in any number of formats. This inconsistency causes some serious headaches for your projects. In fact, XKCD highlights the problem (and solution) fairly accurately here:

ISO 8601

The general solution is to use a common format like ISO 8601. And while most JSON serializers use this format, other issues come up.

After reading the date from the JSON payload, you typically want to parse this date into a JavaScript Date object. For DevExtreme, we had decided to allow the browsers to parse these date strings. Unfortunately, not all browsers parse the date strings correctly.

For example, let’s say we had this value in our JSON:

"OrderDate":"1996-07-04T00:00:00"

When this was loaded by our DataGrid and viewed in Chrome, the time would shift according to the time zone. So, this OrderDate when displayed in the DevExtreme DataGrid’s date column could display a day before. Therefore, July 3rd instead of July 4th. This affected our other widgets too like the Calendar, Scheduler, PivotGrid, DateBox, etc.

So to solve this, we decided that it would best to parse these date strings internally by the DevExtreme framework rather the browser to get the most accurate result.

The Force Awakens

We’ve added a new option in v16.2.6 called, forceIsoDateParsing, which solves the issue by correctly parsing and serializing the ISO dates for you. And you can enable it easily by setting this option to true. For example, here's how to enable it in the head section of an MVC view that uses the DevExtreme MVC Wrappers:

<head>
  ...<script>
    DevExpress.config({ forceIsoDateParsing: true });</script></head>

Warning

However, enabling this feature in an existing DevExtreme project could have some unexpected behavior. While the forceIsoDateParsing option will fix the issue, we recommend that you test this feature in your testing/staging environments before you release it to production. Because dates will now display accurately, they may shift appointments in the Scheduler or display different times in the DataGrid, as an example.

For new projects, you should enable it by default.

Where does this matter?

While this is a general issue with ISO dates and DevExtreme, we found that the following scenarios should be concerned with this issue:

• Editing dates with DataGrid
• Editing appointments
• Anything date related

Optional until v17.1

In v16.2.6 release, the forceIsoDateParsing option is not enabled by default. Which means that you need to enable it manually.

However, in v17.1, it will be enabled by default. So, that is why we recommend you this test and let us know your results.

In general, this feature will help you and we’re only being cautious to warn you if you find that your dates have shifted. The good news is that they will now display correctly regardless of the browser or timezone. The bad news is that it could have unexpected behavior that I mentioned earlier.

If you run into any issues then please contact our support department and they can help you.

Today marks the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit's 11 year anniversary! To celebrate, we're releasing v17.1.0 that contains new features, bug fixes, an updated installer, and NuGet packages. More on this below.

A long time ago...

Originally known as the “Atlas” Control Toolkit, this library was released on April 12th, 2006. If you'd like to go down memory lane, here's the official announcement that was followed by ScottGu's excellent blog post.

The first version of the AJAX Control Toolkit contained 35 UI controls. Later, a number of useful controls were added: charts, file upload controls, a color picker, and an HTML editor.

The toolkit has changed owners and gone through lots of source code changes. Check out this visualization of the AJAX Control Toolkit's source changes since 2009:

DevExpress Maintained & Upgraded

It's hard to believe but you can still upgrade the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit from the very first release to the latest v17.1 without (major) issues. This is no small feat since it has changed source and evolved many times (see video). In fact, the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit (DevExpress Edition) supports the latest versions of:

• All major modern browsers (Chrome, IE, Firefox)
• .NET Framework
• Visual Studio IDE

v17.1 - Major Changes

ColorPickerExtender - new palette

A new continuous color palette was added to the ColorPickerExtender. Many thanks to Yoann Nivel for contributing this feature!

The new color palette is an optional property and can be enabled with the following code:

<ajaxToolkit:ColorPickerExtender PaletteStyle="Continuous" />

HtmlEditorExtender - Preview mode

Since the HtmlEditor has been deprecated, we've added the preview mode to it's replacement, the HtmlEditorExtender:

This mode allows you to click on pasted links, which is not possible in content mode. To enable it, use this property:

<ajaxToolkit:HtmlEditorExtender DisplaySourceTab="true" />

AjaxFileUpload handler path - new property

A new property now allows you to specify the upload handler path programmatically for the AjaxFileUpload:

ajaxFileUpload.UploadHandlerPath = "MyFolder/AjaxFileUploadHandler.axd"

Helpful links

• GitHub v17.1.0 release notes
• ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit Documentation
• How To Report An Issue

Helpful documentation articles are available here:

• Samples/Demos
• Installation Guide
• Uninstall Guide
• Troubleshooting Installer Issues
• Visual Studio IDE support
• Browser support
• Upgrading from v7.x and below

Download v17.1.0

You can download the latest release here:

Click the download button above and the get the latest bits.

Or use the Nuget package: ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit Nuget package

Or download the installer and/or source from GitHub:

• AjaxControlToolkit.Installer.17.1.0.exe
• Source code (zip)
• Source code (tar.gz)

Try DevExpress ASP.NET

We’d like to thank you for installing the DevExpress Edition of the AJAX Control Toolkit and look forward to your feedback as you begin using it.

When we took over the fabulous ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit, our goal was to reach those web developers who want to use great web user interface controls for their web projects and DevExpress ASP.NET provides that and much more.

Try the free DevExpress 30 day trial.

Email: mharry@devexpress.com

Twitter: @mehulharry

In the DXperience v2017.1 release we've added slick new features to the DevExpress ASP.NET Scheduler control:

1. New Agenda View

The Scheduler control now includes the highly-anticipated agenda view. An agenda view is helpful because it only shows your upcoming appointments. This saves you time when you need to find what's next on your schedule. And our new agenda view also has a great look to it that was inspired by popular online calendar services:

2. Timeline View Improvements

The Scheduler's timeline view had a problem where it would squeeze together appointments so that you wouldn't be able to read them:

This happens because the Timeline has too many intervals. For example, in the image above, 14 intervals (two weeks) are set and the width of the editor is 900px. So, all 14 intervals are shown and it is hard to read appointments because the text doesn't fit in the container.

To solve this, we've added the "DisplayedIntervalCount" property that lets you restrict the visible intervals to the editor's width. So for the image above, we'll set the "DisplayedIntervalCount = 3" and reduce the visible intervals from 14 to 3:

Now, we can see the appointments and their text. However, limit the visible intervals doesn't mean that the other intervals will not be displayed. We've added horizontal scrolling to view the rest of the intervals:

This approach does have one drawback. If you want to see an appointment that is further to the right (in the intervals), then you'll need to scroll to the right. To help with this scenario, you can use the forward button which will jump to the next appointment:

3. Keyboard Support

The DevExpress ASP.NET Scheduler Control now offers keyboard shortcut support for a variety of end-user actions including time cell and appointment navigation and selection, appointment editing and view switching. You can also create additional shortcuts and associate them with your custom client-side logic.

4. Client API Improvements

We've improved the Scheduler's client API and added two events that you can override and add your own custom client actions:

• CellClick
• CellDoubleClick

Finally, there's also a new ASPxClientScheduler.GetVisibleAppointments method that returns the Scheduler's visible appointments. These client improvements came directly as a result of your feedback so keep that coming please.

Which of the enhancements to the DevExpress ASP.NET Scheduler Control are you most excited about? Drop me a line below.

Thanks!

We're introducing a new ASP.NET control in the v17.1 release: the Hint control.

The Hint control provides, well, hints. A small notification popup, in other words. In the image below, we're using the new Hint control to show the full GridView cell text on the mouse-over event:

This saves you from defining wide columns on the GridView but still be able to show the user the full text of the cell. Previously, we relied on our handy DevExpress ASP.NET Popup control for similar tasks. However, the popup control provides a lot more features and tends to be heavier for small tasks that require only a hint. So, we created the Hint control to offer you another way to display lightweight notifications.

Light Client-Side

The unique thing about our new Hint control is that it's mostly a client-side control which is wrapped in a server-side ASP.NET control. Why would we do that? Well, the Hint control is really lightweight and it would be overkill to generate it on the server.

Features

As you might expect, the DevExpress ASP.NET Hint Control generates its content on demand and displays it within a box along with an arrow targeting the specified UI element on a web page.

Features include:

• A trigger action to display the hint (hover, click, focus, programmatic).
• Customizable delay before the display of the hint.
• Animation effects.
• Callout element availability.
• Position over the target element (bottom, top, left, right).
• Title text/markup (static or retrieved from the target element's attribute).
• Content text/markup (static or retrieved from the target element's attribute).
• Customizable size (height/width).
• Absolute positioning (x/y).

What do you think about the new DevExpress ASP.NET Hint control? Drop me a line below.

Thanks!

The DevExtreme set of widgets provide you great features, functionality, beauty, and integration with popular frameworks like Angular. Getting started is easy with DevExtreme because it's available through the installer and also these great package managers: npm, bower, and NuGet! Today, I'm happy to announce that we're making it even easier, because now you can also get DevExtreme on GitHub:

https://github.com/DevExpress/DevExtreme/

GitHub rocks

GitHub is great for client-side libraries and developers like you because GitHub repositories provide for:

• Contribute
• Report issues
• Get early previews

With DevExtreme on GitHub, it'll make it easier for you, our customers, to access DevExtreme through the most popular source-code repository but also to interact with the DevExtreme developers. Our developers use an Agile development approach and GitHub works great with this process of sprints, spikes, etc. So our developers have been looking forward to making our repo public to DevExtreme in the hands of more developers and to get your feedback.

Pre-release builds

Another benefit of hosting on GitHub is that we'll be able to provide "pre-release" packages on npm, bower, and NuGet. These packages will provide access to new upcoming enhancements that the team is working on well before we release them via the usual DevExpress Download Center. You'll see new features in advance of the official stable releases on devexpress.com). And by giving us early feedback, you can help guide our plans.

Contribute

You can contribute fixes and suggestions back to the DevExtreme GitHub repo by submitting a pull request.

Get Started

Getting started with our GitHub repo is easy as forking it right from the command line. Or download it from one these package managers: npm, bower, or NuGet.

Star it now!

Go to the DevExtreme GitHub page and click the "Star" link at the top please. This will get you regular updates and news about our repository.

Then click the 'Watch' button to get updates.

License FAQ

As you may have gathered by reading between the lines, DevExtreme now provides both a commercial and non-commercial license. If your project falls under the "non-commercial" category then you can now use DevExtreme for free (but without support). Learn more here: DevExtreme Licensing.

What do you think about DevExtreme on GitHub? Drop me a line below.

Email: mharry@devexpress.com

Twitter: @mehulharry

The new DevExpress ASP.NET Bootstrap controls are now officially available in the v2017.1 release. These are a new set of ASP.NET WebForms controls that provide great integration with the Bootstrap framework.

If you'd like some background about the Bootstrap controls like why we made them, the benefits, and what's been happening in the last year since we announced them then please take a look at these blog posts:

• Announcing ASP.NET Bootstrap-Enabled Controls
• Try DevExpress ASP.NET Bootstrap-Enabled Control Demos
• DevExpress ASP.NET Bootstrap Preview is Available Now (v16.2.4)

For now, let's dig into this official release...

What's included?

Support for the Bootstrap framework out-of-the-box. That means you can start to use the controls with Microsoft's ASP.NET project templates that use Bootstrap or use a starter project template that we provide. This also means that you can use virtually any Bootstrap theme available out there today.

There's also four major category of controls that are included with the initial release: GridView, Charts, Navigation, and Editors. Because they're ASP.NET controls, you can customize them through Visual Studio:

GridView

Our new Bootstrap GridView supports many of the same features as the ASPxGridView. Features like databinding, editing, exporting, templates, filtering, and more!

Charts

For the charts, we've integrated the excellent DevExtreme Charts as ASP.NET server controls. This way, you get the best of both worlds. You'll be able to databind on the server while still getting the client-side (svg-based) charts that produce great effects.

Navigation

An Accordion, Menu, Pager, Popup, Tabs, and TreeView are included. These are commonly used controls in a Bootstrap based website so you'll be happy to know that you can use DevExpress controls that provide more features than typical Bootstrap controls:

Editors

There are 15 editor controls which include: Button, ButtonEdit, Calendar, CheckBox, CheckBoxList, UploadControl, ComboBox, DateEdit, ListBox, Memo, ProgressBar, RadioButtonList, Spin Editor, and TextBox. There's also a special control, called FormLayout, that uses many of the editors to help you build adaptive form editor layouts easily.

We've also added the excellent validation features to help you create great input forms. For example, you can make a custom validation form using our Bootstrap editor controls like so:

Visual Studio Templates

To help you get started, we've aded a Bootstrap project template within the DevExpress Template Gallery:

Themes & Beautiful Demos

We've updated the Bootstrap demos for this official release and I recommend you try them out. For now, download the v17.1 release available through your download center. Then launch the Bootstrap demos from the v17.1 Demo Center and you'll see the new home screen:

Because these are Bootstrap based controls, you can use them with nearly any free or paid Bootstrap themes. For our new Bootstrap demos, we've have incorporated all the free Bootstrap themes from Bootstwatch.com. And we've also tested our controls with a few paid themes but, due to licensing, we cannot release those with our demos. While we cannot test every theme out there, I encourage you to try different Bootstrap themes with our controls. You'll be amazed at how well our controls adapt to the theme. Of course, if you find any issues, then please let us know and we'll work to improve our controls.

Click the gear icon on the top right to change settings like the Bootstrap theme.

Classic vs Bootstrap?

By the numbers, the current (classic) DevExpress ASP.NET WebForms subscription offers 100+ controls, including the very powerful ones like our office controls. Not all of these controls are available in the Bootstrap controls. Our plan is not to replace our current set of WebForms controls but to provide an alternative for those of you who choose the Bootstrap framework.

I recommend that for new projects, you consider using the Bootstrap controls after you've verified the necessary controls are available there. It is likely that in the future we may add more Bootstrap controls based on your feedback. So be sure to let us know your thoughts.

What about ASP.NET MVC?

I'm happy to say that thanks to your feedback, we're working on an ASP.NET MVC version too. It'll likely be in a future major release so stay tuned to this blog and our newsletters for more info.

Compatibility

These new controls are compatible with the latest version of Bootstrap: Currently v3.3.7 release.

Feedback

What do you think of the official release of the DevExpress Bootstrap Controls? Drop me a line below.

Thanks!

I'm happy to announce that the official release of our DevExtreme MVC Controls for ASP.NET MVC (v3 and higher) and .NET Core (v1.0 and v1.1) is available in the v17.1 release. We started this journey to bring the versatile client-side functionality of our DevExtreme JavaScript widgets to ASP.NET MVC almost a year ago. Some developers prefer this approach over the other excellent ASP.NET MVC Controls that we offer. If you want to catch up on some of the past news about these controls then please take a look here: 'DevExtreme MVC Controls Blog Posts Archive'.

By using the 'DevExtreme MVC Controls' you get:

• Every Feature of DevExtreme in Your MVC App
• DevExtreme Widgets with Razor Code Syntax
• Seamless Data Binding
• Client-Side Data Validation
• 200+ Demos
• Visual Studio Integration

Part of ASP.NET Subscription

The DevExtreme MVC controls are available as part of the ASP.NET Subscription (v17.1) installation. Learn more about our subscriptions here.

Controls not wrappers

We've been referring to our new MVC offering as 'wrappers' because they are client-side JavaScript widgets that are encapsulated in a server-side ASP.NET MVC control. 'Wrappers' was an internal codename. At DevExpress, a user interface (UI) control is something that has properties, features, functionality, UI, etc. And that's what these controls offer your ASP.NET MVC projects. So, henceforth, we'll officially call them the 'DevExtreme MVC Controls'.

v17.1 release:

It takes a lot to bring a suite of controls to release state and you'll be happy to know that we've got the important bits for you covered:

• Documentation
• Technical Demos that cover 200+ use-case scenarios.
• Integrated Project Tools allow you to add DevExtreme controls to existing ASP.NET MVC and .NET Core projects.
• Visual Studio® 2017 Support
• C# and Visual Basic Support
• Strongly-Typed 'EditorFor' Helpers for DevExtreme Editors

EditorFor Helpers

This was a necessary piece of functionality that we wanted to make sure was there before release. 'EditorFor' helpers simplify the data binding of DevExtreme editors to model properties. 'EditorFor' helpers auto populate widget properties (e.g. name, value, placeholder, validation settings, etc.).

More to come

What's great about these controls is that any time we add or improve the core DevExtreme JavaScript widgets, then these DevExtreme MVC Controls get the benefits too. For example, we're introducing a TreeList widget which will be part of these MVC controls too.

What do you think about the DevExtreme MVC Controls? Drop me a line below.

Email: mharry@devexpress.com

Twitter: @mehulharry

In the v17.1 DevExtreme release, we're introducing a new HTML 5 client-side TreeList widget!

The TreeList is a widget that displays data from a local or remote source in the form of a multi-column tree view. Basically, the TreeList has almost all the features and functionality of the excellent DevExtreme DataGrid but in a tree-style (i.e. hierarchical) layout:

We also offer the TreeView widget, which is great for navigation purposes, but a TreeList is richer and provides more powerful features like data editing.

Features

The TreeList is packed with the following features:

• Powerful databinding – the TreeList supports binding to data sources containing hierarchical or plain data.
• Virtual mode and virtual scrolling – the TreeList can show large amount of data with good performance
• Data Editing and Input Validation
• Data Filtering and Search
• Data Sorting
• Single and Multiple Row Selection
• Fixed and Band columns
• Column Chooser
• Column Resizing and Reordering
• Keyboard Navigation, Right-To-Left and WAI-ARIA support
• Adaptability
• And more...

Get Started

Watch this five and half minute video that shows you how to get started with the new DevExtreme TreeList widget:

Angular, ASP.NET MVC, .NET Core, & More

DevExtreme widgets integrate well with frameworks and libraries like Angular, jQuery, ASP.NET MVC, and more.

What do you think about the new DevExtreme TreeList widget? Drop me a line below.

Email: mharry@devexpress.com

Twitter: @mehulharry

Check out these two new features of the powerful DevExtreme DataGrid widget in the v17.1 release.

Advanced Column Resizing

You now have two choices of how the DataGrid will resize columns:

• widget - modifies the width of the entire widget. In other words, the widget itself will grow or shrink when a column is resized.
• nextColumn - the widget width stays the same when a column is resized but instead the column immediately to the right will expand or contract.

This gif shows the two options in action:

You can still control the minimum column size using the columnMinWidth and column.minWidth options.

Popup Edit Form

A new popup edit form will display a modal popup that provides your end-users an alternative way to edit the grid's data:

By default, the Popup Edit Form is auto-generated based on column settings, but you can customize it through the options or redesign it using templates.

And both these features are available for the new TreeList widget as well.

What do you think about the new DevExtreme DataGrid enhancements? Drop me a line below.

Email: mharry@devexpress.com

Twitter: @mehulharry

A couple of years ago, Facebook released React, 'a JavaScript library for building user interfaces'. It's been gaining popularity since its release and many developers have asked us, "when will DevExpress support the React library?" Well, we're hyped about React too and I've got great news!

I'm happy to announce that we've been working on a new Data Grid for the React library. We're calling it the 'React Data Grid' and it'll be available in the coming weeks as a community technology preview (CTP).

We're starting with the Data Grid and we have plans to provide even more controls going forward. Now, let's dig into how we designed our React control(s) and how they can help you.

Native not wrapper

Our new React Data Grid is a native control for the React library. While time consuming, we decided to create a new Data Grid from scratch. An easier approach would have been to re-use the existing (and excellent) DevExtreme Data Grid widget and simply provided a wrapper. However, we listened to your feedback about how you prefer native controls and we agree. Native controls work better for React's architecture.

Creating 'native' React components instead of jQuery wrappers provides benefits like:

• Can be used in isomorphic apps (server-side + client-side);
• Utilizing React built-in performance optimization with help of immutable state
• Stateless (controlled) mode is available for using in Redux-based apps and state persistence.
• Lightweight due to composable architecture and no extra dependencies (such as jQuery)
• API is familiar to React developers
• Leverage "Virtual DOM" - allows React to perform efficient DOM updates and get great client-side performance.

So, to provide you the best UI experience and take advantage of React's features, we are building 'native' React components. To be fair, wrappers are great in some scenarios. For example, the DevExtreme ASP.NET MVC Controls are really the DevExtreme client-side JavaScript widgets that are wrapped as ASP.NET MVC controls. So they provide you the benefit of using client-side DevExtreme widgets as ASP.NET MVC controls in the ASP.NET MVC and .NET Core frameworks.

Themes & other components

Bootstrap

For themes, we've decided to integrate the popular Bootstrap front-end framework. This allows you to use any compatible Bootstrap 3 theme that's available in the vast Bootstrap ecosystem.

It also means that our React Data Grid works seamlessly with other Bootstrap-based components available in the popular React-Bootstrap library. Currently, we only offer the Data Grid and no 'simple' components such as editors, buttons, etc. So, you can start building your React app using 'simple' React components from open-source libraries like React-Bootstrap. Then make-it-awesome by including our rich business React components like our React Data Grid.

Material-UI

We're also working on supporting the popular open-source implementation of the 'Material UI' concept for React, Material-UI library. Like the Bootstrap React components, you can also use 'simple' Material UI React components from this library and then add our rich business React components (Data Grid, etc).

Both of these technologies will allow you to apply themes easily and provide simple components that are not in our React component set. Basically, we want to complement the existing popular UI libraries for React. This saves you time when you need simple controls and powerful DevExpress React controls.

Templates

Our React Data Grid will also provide UI templates that allow you to modify, extend, and customize the markup that is rendered by our React Data Grid.

Features === Plugins

Our React Data Grid is packed with great features like:

• Editing - Create/Update/Delete
• Data Sorting and Grouping
• Filter Row
• Detail Row
• Paging
• Multiple Row Selection
• Virtual Scrolling
• Templates

We're also looking into adding more features like: Column resizing/reordering, column chooser, fixed columns/rows, header filter, bands, and more.

Composable & Extensible

The Data Grid features listed above will not be part of the grid. Typically, features like editing are included in the component and you simply enable or disable them via a property. However, our React Data Grid will use a 'Composable and Extensible Plugin-based Architecture'. Therefore, the features are plugins and you enable them through the source code:

This approach has the following benefits:

1. Our React Data Grid will be lighter because it will only load the features that you need.
2. Plugin architecture allows you to extend our React Data Grid with custom plugins. If you want a feature that is not supported by our grid then a custom plugin can be written to extend the grid's functionality.

Performance

By building our grid natively in React, we've achieved outstanding performance. We researched and incorporated the performance tricks and best practices provided by the React team. In fact, it's based on a functional approach that utilizes immutability and pure functions. Our 'React Data Grid' is fast:

To see it in action and learn more, be sure to sign up for the webinar.

Upcoming webinar

Sign up for our upcoming webinar where I'll talk about our React Data Grid:

Register for webinar

What do you think about our new React Data Grid? Drop me a line below.

Email: mharry@devexpress.com

Twitter: @mehulharry

One of our primary goals for DevExtreme in 2017 was to improve our HTML5 Scheduler's performance. I'm happy to report that the DevExtreme Scheduler's client-side rendering performance is faster than ever. Check out the difference when compared to our previous v16.2 release:

Rendering Improvements

We've improved our HTML 5 Scheduler widget's rendering logic. Previously, any action with a single appointment always re-rendered all appointments displayed in the current view. With the improved logic in the v17.1 release, appointments are only re-rendered when one of the following occurs:

• Dragging an appointment
• Resizing an appointment
• Changing an appointment using the appointment form
• Adding an appointment
• Deleting an appointment

These improvements provide a better end-user experience. The changes also make the DevExtreme Scheduler as fast (and faster in some cases) than the competition. For example, here's comparison with other popular calendar/scheduler widgets when 'creating a single appointment':

What do you think about the DevExtreme Scheduler's performance improvements? Drop me a line below.

Email: mharry@devexpress.com

Twitter: @mehulharry

Check out these two new enhancements to our ASP.NET Grid controls that will help your end-users:

Command Toolbar

A new command toolbar has now been integrated into our DevExpress ASP.NET Grid, Card View, Vertical Grid, and TreeList Controls. The new command toolbar is great for your users because they will have access to common commands like edit buttons or search filtering in a convenient location (at the top of the GridView). By having them in the toolbar, your Grid will also save space within the control:

The new toolbar can be enabled with default buttons or you can customize it by adding your most frequently used grid commands for quick access. You can also add or remove toolbars, change their position, and contents. Toolbar items can trigger standard grid commands (e.g. data item editing, deleting, creating, etc.) and any custom actions too.

And because it's part of the GridView, the new command toolbar supports any of the beautiful themes that are provided by DevExpress ASP.NET Controls.

Touch-Enabled Customization Dialog

We've also improved the end-user experience for customizing our GridView on mobile devices. A new Customization Dialog allows you to apply column level data shaping operations with absolute ease when using touch-enabled devices. The new dialog is optimized for tablets, smartphones, and desktops/laptops with touch screen displays. This modal dialog has larger touch-targets and allows your end-users to easily customize the following grid options:

• Column Chooser
• Sorting
• Filtering
• Grouping

Both of these features are available for our ASP.NET WebForms and MVC versions of the controls mentioned above. And they are part of the v17.1 release.

Which of the enhancements are you most excited about? Drop me a line below.

Thanks!

Now that the v17.1 release is available, you can try out a new client-side JavaScript UI widget that's available with DevExtreme, DropDownBox:

The new DropDownBox widget combines a dropdown and a text field. And it let's you select items like our SelectBox widget but it allows you to extend it's functionality with templates. With the DropDownBox, you can embed a DataGrid, TreeList, TreeView, etc. And the embedded Grid or TreeList widget can filter, search, sort, and edit the data.

Try the demo online here: DropDownBox Demo - Single Selection

The DropDownBox widget is lightweight and still comes packet with these great features:

• Binding to all DevExtreme dataSources, arrays, as well as binding through WebService and OData services
• Client-side templates
• Full keyboard support
• Validation
• Support for all major tablets and mobile browsers: (Chrome, Mozilla, Android’s default browser, iOS Safari, Opera)
• Deferred rendering
• Right-to-left support
• WAI-ARIA Accessibility support

Get started with the new DropDownBox widget by watching this short video:

Then download the latest DevExtreme and try the new DropDownBox widget in your projects.