ActiveReports Web Designer is based on HTML5/JS technology stack. The designer is an integrated reporting application and comes packed with a powerful yet intuitive user interface that facilitates users in creating summarized and structured reports anywhere on any device.

You can move all dialogs by dragging the header, and you can resize some dialogs such as the Expression Editor and Tablix Wizard by dragging the corner.

Web Designer Interface Elements

The Report Design Surface is where you can drag and drop entities and attributes to create tables and charts and other controls to design your reports. It is visible on the Home tab and the Report tab. See below for more information.

• Ribbon tabs: The ribbon on the designer window consists of following tabs:
  • Menu: Contains report explorer, group editor, and report controls that assist in designing reports. You can also find Preview button to preview reports.
    • Explorer: Provides an overview on hierarchy of added report items. It displays the current selection and also allows selecting other report items. The Section names in Section report can also be viewed in the Explorer. To resize any section, use Properties panel.
    • Group Editor: Shows Column and Row hierarchies of Tablix members for currently selected Tablix or Table data region.
    • Layers: Opens the Layers List window that displays a list of layers in the report along with their possibility and lock options. See Layers in ActiveReports documentation for details.
      
      
  • Preview: Shows report preview. In RDL Dashboard report, the preview is always in the Galley Mode. See Web Viewers in ActiveReports documentation for more information on viewer UI.
  • File: Contains options to create, open or save reports - Page report, RDL report, and Section report. It also contains the version information in About option and help documentation link in Help option.
  • Home: Consists of report editing options such as cut, copy, paste, and delete. It also provides shortcuts for text formatting such as font, font size, font color, and horizontal and vertical text alignments.
  • Report: Contains options to add, delete, or move pages (in Page report) and add or remove header and footer (in RDL report and Section report), and change report themes. You also get option to convert an RDL report to RDL Multi-Section Report.
  • Script: Lets you use VB.NET or C# script to port your custom logic to report layouts. This permits layouts saved to report XML (.rpx) files to serve as stand-alone reports.
    

    Note: Following points must be noted in Web Designer as compared to ActiveReports Designer control (see link):

    • Script tab is not available for Page and RDL reports. Users can still work with scripts, but cannot add or edit them directly.
    • In Section report, the 'Object' and 'Event' drop-downs in built-in code editor that help quick navigation and code generation, are not currently available.
    • The built-in code editor is currently a simple text area without any additional functionality like syntax highlighting.
  • Parameters: Contains the design area for designing a custom parameter panel. The controls making the panel have default properties set like name, label, default value, etc.
    Note: Parameters tab is not available for Section report.
  • Properties: Displays the properties of the selected report element. If more than one element is selected, only their common properties are shown. Unlike in Page and RDL reports, in Section report, you can change the way properties appear in the Properties pane to: Categorized (into groups of related properties) or Alphabetical (by name).
  • Data: Contains options to manage data sets and parameters. It also displays common values such as current date and time, page number, total pages, and more.
  • Stylesheet: Contains styles, which are a set of properties that you can apply to selected controls in your reports to quickly change their appearance.
    Note: Stylesheet tab is available only for Section report.
  • Undo/Redo: To undo or redo actions on designer.
    
    
• Add Continuous Section: This tab is present in the RDL Multi-Section and RDL Dashboard reports for adding multiple sections in these reports.
• Designer Buttons: Designer buttons consist of options to change appearance and behavior of the design area:
  • Grid: Click this option to show or hide the grid. Grids help in accurate placements of controls.
  • Snap to Grid and Snap to Guides: When Snap to Grid option is enabled, the selected control snaps to the grid at set locations. When Snap to Guides option is enabled, the selected control snaps to the vertical or horizontal lines relative to the position of other controls. This is helpful for consistent spacing and alignment of controls.
    Note: Snap lines are not supported in Section report's design area.
  • Ruler (disabled by default): When the ruler is enabled, you can drag the ruler's markers to change the report margins.
    
• Zoom support: Using the zoom in (+) and zoom out (-) buttons, you can change the zoom level of the design area. You can also use shortcuts [Ctrl] + [+] to zoom in and [Ctrl] + [-] to zoom out.
  
• Ruler Units: Lets you change the ruler measurements for a report to Centimeters (cm) or Inches (in) using ruler units.
• Properties Mode: Lets you switch between the Properties Mode to Show Advanced Properties or Show Basic Properties.
  Note: For Section report, you can not switch between basic and advanced mode for the properties.

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