Infragistics announced the latest release of its flagship user-interface toolset, NetAdvantage for .NET 2007 Volume 3, which includes support for Windows Vista-style interfaces in ASP.NET and Windows Forms; Export to PDF, Excel, and XPS; and improved developer help features. The new Windows Forms controls include a Vista-style WinNavigationBar breadcrumb component. Existing controls, such as WinEditors and WinScrollbar have also been updated so that developers can build Vista look-and-feel UIs, even without WPF installed on the client platform. Infragistics is emphasizing the toolsets' ease of use: "We don't want developers to have to mess with a lot of code," said Andrew Flick, Infragistics's product manager of rich clients, "We want them to create UIs with as little as one property setting--to make it very easy to create these new user interfaces."
The ASP.NET toolset now includes the ability to export documents in the formats of PDF, XPS (Microsoft's XML Paper specification), and as Excel documents. Among the new ASP.NET UI elements are a WebChart component to export charts (including the new Histogram chart type); improved AJAX support for the WYSIWYG WebHTMLEditor, and the WebGridDocumentExporter component, which exports WebGrid data into Excel workbooks. The toolset allows you to create Excel documents on a client machine without having Excel running. Other new Excel-based features include exporting of images, hidden ranges in formulas, frozen rows and columns, and control of trackable document properties, such as author, title, category, and so on.
Andrew also touted the toolsets' help-support and usability improvements. "We want to really give developers the ability to created compelling user experiences, but also provide some of the back-office material they need to get their job done," he said, "Not quite as glamorous as the UI side, but we still want to provide that capability as a key and integral part of application development."
Help upgrades include simplified index filters; F1 Help support for classes, properties, and so on; better help search with support for standard Microsoft Technology drop down-list filters, and VS2005 "How Do I" tutorial pages, including external links to Infragistics' DevCenter and third-party newsgroups.
Infragistics also announced that it will release TestAdvantage for Windows Forms 2007 Volume 3 in 30 days. For information, visit the NetAdvantage for .NET 2007 site.