ComponentOne 2023 Roadmap

February 06 2023

Are you ready for another big year for .NET and ComponentOne? We have a lot planned for .NET desktop, web, and mobile development platforms, and especially for FlexGrid across all platforms. Here's a look at what's to come in 2023 from GrapeCity's ComponentOne control suite.

Ready to start 2023 off right? Download ComponentOne Today!

WinForms Roadmap

.NET 6, .NET 8, Visual Studio 2022 Design Time

You'll see many more features and enhancements for .NET 6, .NET 7, and Visual Studio 2022 as we continue enhancing the design-time experience for our most popular controls like C1Ribbon and FlexChart. New controls for .NET 6+ will include a multi-column combo (replacing C1Combo), radial menu, and porting our classic C1Pdf library to .NET Standard. And we will have full .NET 8 support before the end of the year.

FlexGrid for WinForms Roadmap

You’ve asked for them, and we will keep delivering them. Our popular FlexGrid for WinForms will get more must-have features this year. You can expect these features in 2023 for .NET 4.8 and 6+:

Highlight all occurrences of found text during a search
Display images and checkboxes within tree grid nodes
Save and reload column layouts without data
Built-in filter expression editing
Mouse-over/hover styles
And more!

New WinForms Themes

Yes, we know, the time has finally come to provide new themes for WinForms. We will update our input controls to support Windows 11 UI styles and provide a complete Office 365-inspired theme for the entire WinForms Edition.

GeoJSON Mapping

Our Maps for WinForms will be updated to support GeoJSON formatted data. GeoJSON is a JSON-based format that describes various geographical features (e.g., countries, provinces, cities, etc.) and can include other non-spatial data related to these features.

WinForms 4.0 Version Support Update

Three years ago we announced that the .NET 4.0 version of our WinForms controls would enter maintenance mode, which meant bug fixes would be included. Now it's time for us to shift focus completely to .NET 4.5.2 and higher, so we will end support for .NET 4.0 by December 31, 2023.

WPF Roadmap

.NET 6, .NET 8, Visual Studio 2022 Design Time

For WPF, we are more focused on .NET 6+ development with enhancements for .NET 6, .NET 7, and Visual Studio 2022. We’ll continue to improve the design-time experience with additional suggested actions for more controls and port more controls from .NET Framework to .NET 6, including C1Pdf, C1Rating, and Gauges. And we will have full .NET 8 support before the end of the year.

FlexGrid for WPF Roadmap

And just like in WinForms, we will focus on enhancing FlexGrid as we strive to have the fastest WPF datagrid in the world. If you recall, last year we improved it so much that we reached a billion rows! We are continuing to push the envelope with performance optimization. You can expect these features in 2023 for .NET 6+:

Performance enhancements for custom cell rendering (up to 30% faster!)
Multi-range (listbox-style) selection of rows
Improved validation and error styling
Scroll by row/column
Column footers
And more!

GeoJSON Mapping

Our Maps for WPF will be updated to support GeoJSON formatted data. GeoJSON is a JSON-based format that describes various geographical features (e.g., countries, provinces, cities, etc.) and can include other non-spatial data related to these features.

Gauges for WPF 6.0

Our gauges for WPF will be overhauled for .NET 6 and .NET 8 development. We plan to provide three simple radial, linear, and bulletgraph gauges for modern-looking applications.

Update on Chart3D for WPF

We have changed direction and decided not to invest in Chart3D for WPF in .NET 6.0. If you are looking for this control, please get in touch with us (comment on this post).

WPF 4.0 & 4.5.2 Support Update

Last year we announced that the .NET 4.0 version of our WPF controls would enter maintenance mode, which meant bug fixes would be included. Now it's time for us to shift focus completely to .NET 4.5.2 and higher, so we will end support for .NET 4.0 by December 31, 2023.

Additionally, our .NET Framework 4.5.2 WPF controls will now enter maintenance mode. This means we will only fix critical bugs. New features and controls will be added to .NET 4.6.2 version and higher.

WinUI & MAUI Roadmap

In late 2022 we rolled out a preview of our FlexGrid control for MAUI. This year we will finish the control for production use.

For WinUI & MAUI, we will focus primarily on delivering the most full-featured datagrid control with FlexGrid. We have plans to add value to FlexGrid with advanced data filter UI for built-in column header or sidebar filtering similar to e-commerce websites.

Blazor Roadmap

For Blazor, we are focused on finally bringing our document viewer, FlexViewer, to the web platform. Plus, we will continue to enhance FlexGrid for Blazor.

Other FlexGrid features planned include column picker, footers, state persistence, and pinned columns. Our new FlexViewer for Blazor will bring PDF and FlexReport viewing to your Blazor web apps.

And, of course, we will continue .NET 6, .NET 7, and add .NET 8 support for Blazor.

ASP.NET MVC Roadmap

For ASP.NET Core MVC, we plan to release a new .NET 6-based version of the entire suite. This will ensure better performance for .NET 6 and .NET 7-based web applications. Until now, we have supported .NET 6+ with our .NET Core 3.1-based libraries.

FlexReport for .NET Core, Azure

Per user requests, we are working to provide FlexReport for .NET Core so that it can support more deployments, including Azure. We’ll also include Azure support for our ASP.NET Core Reporting Web API.

Data Services Roadmap

Our Data Services Edition will continue to expand in 2023, focusing on performance enhancements, additional data source connectors, and a new Workflow library!

Data Connectors are being enhanced with logging, proxy authentication, and Entity Framework Core 6.0 support.

Workflow Library for .NET

Our upcoming Workflow library will bring various data operations into developer-created workflows. It will include a .NET core library and designer for automating tasks for immediate use or scheduled operations. The library will have various uses, from scheduling reports to migrating data automatically. Stay tuned for more.

ActiveX Support Update

Sadly, the time has finally come to say goodbye to our ActiveX support. We continued to offer support for our legacy ActiveX controls for more than a decade after Microsoft ended its support. But with continuous updates to Windows that introduce more and more headaches, we have decided to end our official support by the end of 2023. We will still provide downloads to the latest bits for anyone who needs them. Plus, we have made it possible to license the source code.

If you still haven’t migrated from ActiveX to .NET - what are you waiting for? Our .NET controls for WinForms offer the smoothest transition available if you were using VSFlexGrid, True Db Grid (now with .NET 6+ availability), VSView, and more.

Let Us Know What You Think

Please note that the plans mentioned are intentional, but as things go in software development, they are always subject to change. Let us know in the comments what you think about our roadmap and what you would like to see.

Ready to start 2023 off right? Download ComponentOne Today!