ComponentOne Simplifies Application Development

Developers looking to deliver great user experiences on the desktop, the Web and mobile devices choose ComponentOne

to speed up the delivery of their projects. For more than two decades, ComponentOne has led the market with its award-winning UI controls, tools and solutions.
“ComponentOne is always on the cutting edge,” said Chris Bannon, Wijmo product manager at ComponentOne, a division of GrapeCity. “Unlike some of our competitors, we’re dedicated to supporting existing and legacy technologies.”
ComponentOne’s products are a favorite among developers building applications using Windows Forms, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), ASP.NET WebForms, Model-View-Controller (MVC), Silverlight, Windows Phone, Mobile, or ActiveX. Its flagship products include ComponentOne Studio Enterprise, Spread Studio for .NET, and ActiveReports. Other products include HTML5 tools, LightSwitch extensions, and Doc-To-Help—a popular solution for publishing professional-quality user manuals and Help systems.

Introducing Studio Enterprise 2014 v1
Studio Enterprise is a suite of .NET controls for professional developers building the latest touch-enabled apps or maintaining and updating legacy applications. Using Studio Enterprise, developers can deliver rich, responsive desktop and Web apps on time and under budget. Studio Enterprise includes controls for Windows Forms, WPF, ActiveX, HTML5, MVC, ASP.NET, Silverlight, Windows Phone, and WinRT.
“Studio Enterprise is the complete solution for a company that needs a select type of tool or a variety of tools for any Microsoft platform,” said Bannon. “It includes the best data grids, charts and reporting tools on the market.”
The latest version takes data visualization and UIs to a new level with new theme support, built-in chart grouping and aggregation, and new chart types for financial applications. Theming has been extended across the entire Windows Forms platform so developers can theme each and every element with a single line of code. In addition, the FlexGrid control has been updated to provide users with filtered data and other column filters when filtering is applied to a column. There have also been XAML-related enhancements. The chart control for XAML now supports built-in grouping and aggregation. Using this feature, developers can display summarized data in a chart using a small amount of code, or use grouping to improve the readability of a chart. In addition, Studio Enterprise supports Microsoft’s UI automation framework which enables applications and coded UI testing to examine user interface elements. Later this year, ComponentOne will add more features to the XAML stack, including a new Pivot Grid, modern-UI-inspired controls for WPF, an improved map control, and more.

Simplify Mobile and Web Development
Wijmo Enterprise 2014 v1 is a complete set of UI controls for mobile and Web application development. This latest release features jQuery Mobile 1.4 support, a new jQuery Mobile Theme, and two new jQuery UI Themes, as well as a new Candlestick Chart for displaying stock market data that shows the high and low values of stocks traded in a day.
“Wijmo is a set of HTML5 controls that integrate with existing frameworks like AngularJS,” said Bannon. “We’re now providing the same core controls to JavaScript developers that you would find in .NET.”
SpreadJS, which is also part of Wijmo Enterprise, has been updated. It is a spreadsheet solution that allows JavaScript developers to embed powerful, Excel-like spreadsheet functionality into their applications. The newest release includes full touch support, picture support, Structured References, and more. Its performance has also been improved, making initializing, data loading, and UI operations much faster.
“We improved performance of UI operations like scrolling, selection, and editing,” said Bannon. “The initializing and data binding speeds have also improved a lot. No matter how large the data source is, SpreadJS spends the same amount of time when initializing and data loading.”
SpreadJS’s sister product, Spread Studio for .NET, is the world’s best-selling spreadsheet/grid component suite for.NET. The latest release includes Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 support across Windows Forms, ASP.NET, WPF, WinRT, and Silverlight platforms. Spread will support Pivot Tables and touch later in 2014.

Make Reporting Easy
ComponentOne recently introduced ActiveReports 8, which includes a new .NET Reporting engine and self-service options. This well-established reporting tool for HTML5, WPF, Windows Forms, ASP.NET, and Windows Azure makes it easy to create sophisticated .NET reports using layout designers and new data visualization tools.
“We’ve always had a developer edition and we had a product for enterprises,” said Bannon. “All of that has been rolled together in ActiveReports 8 so developers still have the same great reporting tools plus new optional server and ad hoc designer components that the C-suite can just plug in and use.”
ActiveReports 9, coming later this year, will add an HTML5-based portal for ActiveReports Server, usability enhancements, and speed improvements.
Learn more at www.componentone.com.