ActiveReports offers an integrated designer that lets you create report layouts in Visual Studio and edit them at design time, visually, and through code, script, or regular expressions. Like any form in Visual Studio, it includes a Properties panel with extensive properties for each element of the report, and also adds its own Toolbox filled with report controls, and a Report Explorer with a tree view of report controls.
The designer supports three types of report layouts: section layout, page layout, and rdl layout.
This layout presents reports in three banded sections by default: page header, detail and page footer. You can remove the page header and footer, add a report header and footer, and add up to 32 group headers and footers. Drag controls onto these sections to display your report data. Reports designed in this layout are saved in RPX format.
This layout defines reports in pages where the same page layout can be used throughout the report or separate layout pages are designed for complex reports. Reports designed in this layout are saved in Rdlx format.
This layout defines reports where controls grow vertically to accommodate data. Reports designed in this layout are saved in Rdlx format.
Note that a theme you select for your Visual Studio, is automatically applied to the ActiveReports Designer. For example, if you select the Dark theme for your Visual Studio, this theme is applied automatically to the Designer. The Visual Studio theme is extended to such ActiveReports Designer elements as Reports Library, Layer List, Report Explorer, and Group Editor.
The theme integration works for all reports (Page, RDLX, and Section) opened in supported Visual Studio versions.
