2018 is over, and December was a big month for Spread.NET. We released Spread.NET 12 and we're looking forward to an exciting new year in 2019 – the most exciting new year ever for Windows Forms developers, with the Microsoft's recent announcements about .NET Core 3 and the Windows Desktop open source initiative for the next Windows Forms and Windows Presentation Foundation.
We're also very excited about the upcoming new version of Microsoft Visual Studio 2019!
.NET Core 3, Windows Forms, WPF, and Visual Studio 2019
Microsoft's recent announcements regarding the plans for .NET Core 3 to include Windows Forms and WPF, and the open sourcing of both of those Windows Desktop technologies, and the recent pre-release of Visual Studio 2019, will make for a very exciting 2019 for GrapeCity Spread.NET. We have many major enhancements planned for the upcoming scheduled service releases and next major version, but by far the most important news is that GrapeCity Spread.NET intends to fully support this transition to .NET Core 3 and Visual Studio 2019 and be actively involved in this development effort.
Support legacy customers and introduce new .NET Core 3.0 components
As we move Spread.NET to the new .NET Core 3 platform, we intend to continue supporting legacy customers using the .NET Framework target, and we'll continue to support builds of the Spread.NET components which target the .NET Framework while we introduce the new components for .NET Core 3 Windows Forms and WPF. We'll continue to focus on backwards compatibility and enhance the LegacyBehaviors of Spread.NET Windows Forms incrementally in each scheduled service release of 2019. We'll also continue to focus on performance by integrating more features with the core GrapeCity.Spreadsheet engine.
Service Pack Releases
GrapeCity Spread.NET 12 will have two major service releases in April 2019 and July 2019, and the version 13 release is planned for late 2019. In each of these releases, we'll introduce new features and enhancements and fix reported issues. We plan to improve the new VSTO-based API layer that implements the spreadsheet core to include missing functionality in these incremental updates.
We also plan to handle as many customer requests for feature enhancements as possible in each of these upcoming service releases, so if there's some key feature or functionality missing in Spread.NET 12, please let us know! Several of our planned enhancements come directly from customers.
For the first service pack in April, enhancements include:
- Spilled array support
- 7 New calculation functions: FILTER, RANDARRAY, SEQUENCE, SINGLE, SORT, SORTBY, UNIQUE
- Improved printing and PDF support for Microsoft Excel flat-style gradient and pattern fills
- Support for 1-based indexing like Microsoft Excel VSTO APIs (customer requested!)
- Slicers: import and export to/from XLSX and UI for run-time; design-time and API support to come later (customer requested!)
- Deselect the selection like Microsoft Excel (customer requested!)
- New constructor for AsyncFunction with FunctionAttributes
We will continue to add minor feature updates in the next service release in July, and your feedback is very important!
Spread.NET 13 for .NET Core 3 and .NET Framework 4.5.2
GrapeCity Spread.NET 13 in November 2019 will feature many new enhancements:
- Support for .NET Core 3, Visual Studio 2019 and .NET Framework 4.5.2+
- New shapes engine integrated with the spreadsheet core, offering many new and enhanced features
- Excel-like slicers that allow you to better visualize your data
- Data visualization functions, enhanced sparklines, and custom function support for creating custom data visualization functions
This will be a very exciting year! Please let us know about any additional features you are looking for in Spread.NET.
Sean Lawyer