What's New in XAML 2013 v1

This first release of 2013 introduces a lot of new controls in Studio for WinRT XAML since it is a newer and faster growing platform. But that's not to say the other platforms are left in the dark. There are plenty of new and exciting features all around. Here's my top 10:

1. New Tile Controls

Create tiled displays and navigation hubs with the new C1Tile controls. Tiles make it easy to replicate the Windows 8 and Windows Phone start screen experience in your own apps. Get several different tile controls that support sliding and flipping animations with live updates. Combine tiles with different containers to achieve endless layout possibilities. For instance put them inside a StackPanel or WrapPanel for basic layouts, or inside a WinRT GridView for selection and drag/drop. These new controls are available in Silverlight, WPF, Windows Phone and WinRT XAML.

2. C1CollectionView

The C1CollectionView class gives you sorting, filtering and grouping capabilities in WinRT. These features are missing from the standard WinRT CollectionView and CollectionViewSource implementations. That makes this class very useful. Plus, you can use it with any data bound control. The C1FlexGrid control also has built-in support for C1CollectionView when you bind it to any regular collection.

3. Auto-Complete Editing in FlexGrid

The C1FlexGrid control now supports Excel-style auto complete when editing. The AutoComplete property enables users to efficiently add entries based on items already present on the column being edited. This is available in Silverlight and WPF.

4. Docking Enhanced

The C1DockControl is enhanced to behave more like Visual Studio. For instance you can rip out tabs to make them floating and even dock floating tabs into other floating tabs. This is available in Silverlight and WPF.

5. Windows Phone 8 Support

Studio for Windows Phone now includes a complete 8.0 control library fully tested with Windows Phone 8 SDK. We also still ship the 7.1 library.

6. Windows Store RichTextBox Control

While it is just a beta release, the C1RichTextBox control brings HTML editing and display to the WinRT platform. This control edits and parses HTML documents into native XAML elements so you can use the control to display content from the Web or as a complete rich text editor. It has support for all basic formatting features of HTML, plus document history and image/table/hyperlink insertion. The control is now available to all XAML platforms.

7. Encrypted File support in C1PdfViewer

The C1PdfViewer control now has support for reading encrypted files. The LoadDocument method now takes an additional, optional password parameter. You can use the ParsingError event to capture the user attempting to load encrypted files. This is available in Silverlight, WPF, Windows Phone and WinRT XAML.

8. Improved MVVM support in C1Gauges

C1Gauges have improved support for MVVM scenarios. For instance, the C1GaugeLabel, C1GaugeMark and C1GaugeRange elements support binding. This is available in WPF, Silverlight, Windows Phone and WinRT XAML.

9. Clipboard Support in C1DataGrid

The C1DataGrid control has improved clipboard support. See the ClipboardCopyMode and ClipboardPasteMode properties. This is available in Silverlight and WPF.

10. Turkish Localization

While Turkish developers may be a small niche of our user base, this new feature shows how committed we are to built-in global localization as we now provide localized resources for all of our Silverlight and WPF controls in more than 20 languages. Download the 2013 v1 release for the Studio of your choice.