The Extended WPF Toolkit goes v1.5
- Posted: Jan 18, 2012 at 6:00 AM
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- 5 Comments
For WPF Wednesday (I think Wednesday is going to be a kind of a rotating theme day... from WPF, to Web, "Wild" and Weird...) we're going to take another look at the Extended WPF Toolkit project. It's been nine months since we last looked at it, Today's toolkit time with the Extended WPF Toolkit and since then we've gotten a new version with a bunch of new controls.
Also last time we didn't look at the cool sample app that's included in the source tree...
Extended WPF Toolkit - Extended WPF Toolkit 1.5.0
Want an easier way to install the Extended WPF Toolkit?
The Extended WPF Toolkit is available on Nuget.What's in the 1.5.0 Release?
- BusyIndicator
- ButtonSpinner
- Calculator
- CalculatorUpDown
- CheckListBox - New Control
- ChildWindow
- CollectionEditor - New Control
- CollectionEditorDialog - New Control
- ColorCanvas
- ColorPicker
- DateTimePicker
- DateTimeUpDown
- DecimalUpDown
- DoubleUpDown
- DropDownButton - New Control
- IntegerUpDown
- Magnifier
- MaskedTextBox
- MessageBox
- MultiLineTextEditor - New Control
- PrimitiveTypeCollectionEditor - New Control
- PropertyGrid - Beta
- RichTextBox
- RichTextBoxFormatBar
- SplitButton
- TimePicker
- WatermarkTextBox
- Wizard - New Control
So as you can see, v1.5 has a number of new cool things to play with.
For example the Wizard control. Many app's use them and many dev's re-invent that wheel when they do. This control looks simple, yet configurable enough, that maybe we don't need to re-invent it anymore (and even if we do, since the source is available, we don't have to start from scratch! 
Then there's the some of the other controls, new and old, too;
Like one of my favorite, the calculator control
Or the watermark textbox
Or the new WPF Property Grid;
One thing about these samples... They are "live." They are not static examples or screenshots, but instead live, working code.
Speaking of the Sample app. I thought it very cool that the sample app used Prism. Prism is meant to help you build composite applications, separating the shell and components and allowing them all to evolve independently.
So what does that mean? It means that what you're seeing above is a simple shell that hosts modules that do the work. That once created, you're pretty much done with the shell and you can focus on the specific modules.
The Sample shell is a simple host for the sample modules. In this case modules are added to the shell via the app.config.
If we take a peek at the wizard sample module;
Okay, okay, I know, enough samples. Here's a snap of the Toolkit project itself;
As you can see the Toolkit project is well segmented by control, making it very easy for you to find the source for the control of interest. For example, for the wizard control;
If you're building WPF applications or re-usable controls for them, this toolkit is one you should check out...
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I wantthe semantic zoom control from win8 for wpf!
Hooray! Glad to see WPF is still alive and kicking butt!!
Very sweet@!
I like this set a lot. I've been testing the PropertyGrid to investigate if my object model is working properly, but I think there may be a bug in there. There's beta behind it in the list so it could actually not be my own fault, but I actually suspect it still might be.
The problem I have is this: I have a collection of Attributes, and these various Attributes, e.g. StringAttribute, all inherit from the same Attribute object. In a DataGrid control, the contents of these properties appear correct. From the properties it's showing it appears to be using the Attribute base object type, which makes sense. However, in the PropertyGrid, some of the properties on the Base object don't seem to work right.
Another collection, which is identical except that it's a homogenous list of Access attributes, works with no issues. So I'm guessing it has something to do with the inheritance of properties on the object.
The key property I am having trouble with is ID, which is based on a ProfileAttributeEnum. The list of values is shown properly in the combobox, but the value is set to its default value of NotSet, where the DataGrid is showing the right value, and if I access it in code through either casting as Attribute or StringAttribute I get the right values as well. I've done some experiments with adding an override for the Attribute property on the StringAttribute, but nothing seems to work.
Anyone any idea?
Don't get me wrong: I love the ext wpf toolkit but I just have to jump in and crash this party.
I think it's a shame that a Microsoft employee (correct me if I'm wrong but niners are MS employees aren't they ?) mentions the ext wpf toolkit without mentioning the original wpf toolkit. oh, wait, that's right. Can't do that. It's been abandoned without even a working build for .net 4.0. Oops, my bad. :-(
Yes, I sound bitter because I think it's a CRYING shame that inside a multi-billion dollar company not a SINGLE MS employee gets the time (what 2 days ?) to clean up the wpf toolkit (that is, get rid of the controls that made it into the framework and fix some long-waiting bugs) and release a clean .net 4 build.
I know the last 3.5 build works when used from a 4.0 app but it just makes my eyes bleed to see all that duplicate code (not to mention fiddling with the duplicate controls in different namespace).
Come on Microsoft ! Please !
Now where did I leave my meds ?
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