Today we are releasing an update to Indigo studio, which is bumps it up to version 2 update 2. Like always, each update adds new features and bug fixes aimed at making the Indigo Studio work harder for you.

With this update we are releasing the following highlight features:

• iOS 7 pack!
• Auto recover files
• Export of HTML code assets (BETA)

For our Infragistics ULTIMATE customers, this coincides with the release of Infragistics ULTIMATE 13.2.

iOS 7 Pack

It's not been long since we released the iOS pack. And then, Apple shipped iOS 7. So naturally, almost all of you have been asking when will Indigo Studio be offering the iOS 7 pack. Well, today!

Fig 1. Comparing iOS 7 pack with iOS 6

iOS 7 pack/style is mostly similar to iOS 6 in terms of functionality, but has a new visual design language. And while you could restyle the iOS 6 pack to get a similar look and feel, we realize this can be tedious. Moreover, some styles are difficult to achieve. You don't have to worry about getting the right iOS 7 look because we took care of it for you!

How to use the iOS 7 pack after you update? Simple. Fire up your screen designer and choose iPhone or iPad viewport, and Indigo automatically selects the right toolbox for you!

Auto Recover Files

The thing we hate most is when our users lose design work because Indigo Studio quit suddenly, before you had a chance to save. Our apologies! Some of it is just the nature of software where wires do get crossed. Hopefully, no more!

With this update, if for some reason Indigo quits, next time you restart the application, you will see the following auto-recover dialog:

Fig 2. The new auto-recover dialog in Indigo Studio

This feature allows you to review the recovered changes, and then you could either save or discard the changes. Most of you may never see this dialog, but if you are curious about the workflow, make some changes to your design, and force quit Indigo Studio :D.

Naturally, we hope that you never have to see this dialog! If you do, please send us a note so that we can diagnose what happened.

Exporting HTML Code Assets (BETA)

We are also introducing a BETA feature which allows anyone viewing a prototype to export HTML code assets based on what's being shown in the browser.

This feature should really appeal to our Infragistics ULTIMATE customers! Assume someone designed a screen using controls from the essentials toolbox, and they included all the usual suspects - Grid, Chart, Map, Dropdowns etc. They share the prototype with you. To get code assets, simple look for the code export option in the prototype toolbar, and just like that you can view the HTML code. 

Fig 3. View HTML Code Assets

But this goes a step farther if you are already using Ignite UI, our jQuery/HTML 5 controls. When you copy and paste this code in to your HTML editor, you will find that all the simulated controls in the prototype have been replaced with actual IGNITE UI controls! This can give you a running start. That is, you can add features to any of the controls to take it to the next level.

We also shipped a new samples/demo for Ignite UI. If you are looking to add features to the GRID, for example, simply find the sample, and copy-paste the feature declarations. You can see more on how this done here:

Watch video on Ignite UI/jQuery & HTML 5 controls

To use this feature in your prototype, simply allow export of code assets when sharing a prototype. We kept this optional so that you have control over what the user can see or do. Sometimes exporting code assets is highly relevant, and at other times not so much.

Please bear in mind that this is a BETA feature, and we are looking to improve this based on your feedback. Reach out to us at indigo AT infragistics.com with your thoughts so that we can explore ways to make it better, together.

Fig 4. Enabling export of HTML code assets when sharing prototype

Other Capabilities We Added

• You can now decide whether to show annotations or highlight interactive elements when the user views the prototype 
• Indigo Studio remembers the folder path which you used when sharing a prototype to a folder (e.g., Dropbox Public Folder)
• When using icons, Indigo Studio will remember the last icon-group used. For example, if you used an icon from the "toolbar" category, the next time you launch the icon picker, the "toolbar" category is automatically selected.

How to Get This update?

Here's how to update the version of Indigo Studio installed on your machine:

• If you have the option to automatically check for updates on startup checked, you should see a dialog box pop up when you launch Indigo. Simply click update, and Indigo Studio will do the rest. This is the easier approach.
• If for some reason you chose not to automatically check for updates, go to MENU > HELP & ABOUT and use the "CHECK FOR UPDATES" option.

Fig 5. Checking for updates in Indigo Studio

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For those who have contacted Indigo Studio Support team already know that we are committed to get you up and running. Thank you for all the complements you have been sharing about our support team and the product. If for some reason you are having trouble with Indigo Studio, check out our help topics, forums or contact support.

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Shhhh… Do you hear that?  That’s the sound of another mind blowing, face melting, feature packed, Chuck Norris* approved release of Infragistics WPF and Silverlight controls.  That’s right kiddies, this 13.2 release brings a number of new controls, new features, new themes, new styles, and much needed updates to an already industry leading WPF and Silverlight control suite.  Let’s stop wasting time and get to what’s new!

XamRichTextEditor

You’ve been asking, we’ve been listening, and now your wait is over.  I am excited to announce our brand new xamRichTextEditor control, which is a highly customizable rich text editing control that provides functionality modeled after the features and behavior of Microsoft Word.  So imagine taking Microsoft Word, removing all the crap you don’t care about or need, and then making a control out of it.  Well, that’s exactly what we did.  Even though this is a v1 release, it is packed with features.

Formatting Options

What formatting options do we have?  More like, what formatting options don’t we have!  The XamRichTextEditor has support for a number of text formatting options; such as font styles (bold, italic, underline, strikethrough), font name, font size, superscript and subscript, foreground and background colors, paragraph alignment (left, center, right, justify) and indention, as well as multi-level bulleted and numbered lists.

Not happy with the built in bullet and numbered lists options?  Why don’t you use your own?  You can easily create custom lists to meet your application requirements. You don’t need to settle for the default options.

Image Support

What about image support?  Well, we got that too.  The xamRichTextEditor not only has support for inserting and displaying images, but you can even flip the image horizontally or vertically, crop it, set margins, resize it, and even rotate it.

Table Support

You need tables?  Yeah, we got tables!  If you want, you can even have tables, inside of tables, insides of tables.  That’s a lot of tables.

MVVM Support

What’s that you say?  What about MVVM support?  Don’t you worry, we have your MVVM needs covered.  You can easily data bind your rich text from a property in your ViewModel to the xamRichTextEditor by using one of the DocumentAdapters we have available.  Choose from RTF, plain text, and DOCX.  Don’t think you’re limited to just one DocumentAdapter per xamRichTextEditor control.  Feel free to data bind to multiple formats using all three DocumentAdapers on a single xamRichTextEditor instance.  Not only do we provide data binding to VewModels, but we also provide built-in support for over 34 commands that you can data bind to your buttons to apply many of the formatting options to the target xamRichTextEditor control’s content.

And More…

We even have a number of great editor customizations such as view splitting, zooming, capability to show hidden symbols, control over the caret color, control over the text update mode such as insert or overwrite, and more.  Need to export the content?  No problem!  The xamRichTextEditor supports importing and exporting to/from RTF, DOCX, and plain text formats. We also provide an extensible API that allows you to provide support for other custom formats.

Alight Brian, but what about hyperlinks, undo and redo, multiple selection, tab stops, find and replace, clipboard support, and drop caps? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and YES!  It has all of those features and more.  As you can see, this control is packed with features.  Don’t even get me going on the xamRichTextEditor’s performance.  I challenge you to find a WPF and Silverlight rich text control with better performance!

The xamRichTextEditor is provided in both WPF and Silverlight versions with an API that is common across both platforms, enabling you to incorporate all of these great rich text editing capabilities into your cross platform applications. 

XamBulletGraph

Our next brand new control to make its way into our WPF and Silverlight offering is the highly requested xamBulletGraph.  Linear by design, it provides a simple and concise view of a primary measure, or measures, compared against a scale and, optionally, some other measure.  The xamBulletGraph control provides you with the ability to create attractive data presentations, replacing meters and gauges that are used on dashboards, with simple, yet straightforward and clear bar charts. A bullet graph is one of the most effective and efficient ways to present progress towards goals, good/better/best ranges, or compare multiple measurements in as little horizontal or vertical space as possible.

Need your bullet graph to display vertically?  No problem, the xamBulletGraph has configuration options to orient it either horizontal or vertical.  Need control over the visual elements of the xamBulletGraph?  We got you covered!  You have complete control over the performance bar, comparative marker, ranges, tick marks, scale, labels, border, background, titles, and more.  The xamBulletGraph has all the feature you would expect in a bullet graph control. 

XamLinearGauge

Now, you may be asking yourself, “don’t you already have a xamLinearGauge control”, and you are absolutely correct.  Let me introduce you to the brand new version of our xamLinearGauge.  This is a complete rewrite from the ground up.  It has all the bells and whistle of the old version, but takes advantages of all of our lessons learned while writing the old one.  We have improved the control API, usability, stability, and performance, as well as added new features and capabilities.

Change various attributes of the needle, including the needle color, length, shape. Use one of the predefined shapes – rectangle, triangle, needle, and trapezoid or create one of your own.

You have complete control over scale, including the start and end points, major and minor tick marks, labels, and color ranges.  You can change its’ orientation from horizontal to vertical, as well as take advantage customized tooltips.  With support for the Motion Framework, you can animate transitions between different configuration states and set the speed for those transitions.

This new xamLinearGauge will ultimately replace our previously released version.  That means, from now on, you will want to use this new xamLinearGauges, and if you’re upgrading, you will want to start switching all the old linear gauges to use this new one.    The new xamLinearGauge API is not backwards compatible with the legacy linear gauge.

XamRadialGauge

Yup, that’s right.  We have written a brand new version of the xamRadialGauge control, which replaces the older version. 

You control the Start and End positions of the scale, major and minor tick marks, labels, color ranges and sweep direction. You can create full 360 degree scales, or half circular gauges with 180 degree scales, 90 degrees, 45 degrees or any custom value you want.

Feel free to customize various attributes of the needle, including the needle color, length, point, base, and cap to fit your application needs. The following needle shapes are built-in; None, Rectangle, Triangle, Needle, Trapezoid, Rectangle With Bulb, Triangle With Bulb, Needle With Bulb, and Trapezoid With Bulb.

The xamRadialGauge control also has Motion Framework support built right into the control.  You can easily animate transitions between different configuration states. The control gradually animates as it redraws changes to the needle, needle position, scale range, color range and more. You can control the speed of the animations by setting the desired Transition Duration.

Same story here.  This new xamRadialGauge replaces the existing xamRadialGauge that was previously released.  The APIs are not compatible, so you should start using this new xamRadialGauge, and migrating your existing radial gauges over to this new version.

XamDataChart Updates

We heard you loud and clear!  We gave our industry leading xamDataChart control some much needed love as well.  The xamDataChart is a real work horse, capable of displaying millions of data points in real-time with refresh rates measured in just a few milliseconds, and we spent a lot of time implementing a little “fit, finish, and polish” to our xamDataChart to make it even more feature rich and visual stunning.

Chart Title and Subtitle

The title and subtitle feature of the xamDataChart control allows you to add information to the top section of the chart control. When adding a title and/or subtitle to the chart control, the content of the chart is automatically resized to allow for the title and/or subtitle information.

Axis Titles

The axis title feature of the xamDataChart control allows you to add contextual information to the x-axis and y-axis of the xamDataChart control.  You can customize the axis title by specifying properties of the TitleSettings object such as the angle, font size and position.

Series Highlighting

This feature allows you to highlight an entire series or individual items within the series.  For example, highlights the entire line in a series such as the LineSeries as it is all one shape; however, highlights can be applied to each individual column in a series such as ColumnSeries.  Individual markers can be highlighted in all supported series.

Drop Shadows

The xamDataChart now supports drop shadows to enhance the visuals of individual series.  Developers can control various properties such as the shadow depth/offset/direction, color, and blur.

New Default Style

We heard a lot of feedback regarding the xamDataChart’s default look and feel when dragging it from the Visual Studio toolbox onto the design surface, and we made sure to improve your experience.  You no longer have to spend hours setting properties, modify a control template, or creating new styles altogether.  We spent a lot of time creating a new default style to make the xamDataChart kick you in the eyeballs with visual awesomeness.  As of now, we are shipping it as a separate style that you can apply to your application.  In a future release, and after we gather some feedback on our changes, we will officially make it the new default style, and you will never again see those old blue and gray scale colors.  So if you like what we’ve done, you have to let us know!

And More…

We added a lot of other great features and improvements such as startup animations, nicely styled default tooltips, performance improvements, and more.  There are so many xamDataChart features I could talk about, that a single blog post can’t do it justice.

XamGeographicMap Updates

We updated our high performance xamGeographicMap control to include a new High Density Geographic Scatter Series.  A High Density Geographic Scatter Series can be used to show millions of data points without sacrificing performance. The map plot area with more densely populated data points are represented by condensed color pixels, and loosely distributed data points are represented by pixels of another color.  Options are available to control the palette of colors used and to change the min/max heat properties of the series in order to adjust how heat colors are mapped.

XamPieChart and XamDoughnutChart Updates

We made a nice improvement to both our xamPieChart and our xamDoughnutChart which allows you to add curves to your labeling callout lines.  You can now add two types of curves to the straight lines used for the callout lines in the xamDoughnutChart and xamPieChart. You may choose whether to use a straight line or one of the curves, change the line style and control the spacing between the label and the end of the line.

New Metro Dark Theme

Our popular Metro theme just got a lot better. The Metro theme, which is a clean, modern, and touch friendly theme inspired by Microsoft’s Design Style has just received a new Dark version. The Dark version helps to reduce eye string that can happen when staring at screens for many hours with lighter themes.  Honestly, it just looks cool!

Themes for Microsoft Controls

The IG, Offfice 2010, and Metro themes now have support for over 19 standard Microsoft WPF and Silverlight controls.  Your application will no longer look like a Frankenstein of different styles.  Now, your application’s UI will seamlessly integrate with the full range of Infragistics WPF and Silverlight controls.

IG Theme

Metro Light and Dark Themes

Office 2010 Blue Theme

Radial Menu (CTP)

Even though this release was already packed with a ton of great controls and features, we managed to squeeze in one more new control.  Inspired by the Microsoft OneNote radial menu, the xamRadialMenu provides a circular menu that orients the commands around the user, rather than requiring the user to negotiate a nested hierarchy of drop downs. Most commonly used as a context menu, the xamRadialMenu allows you to drill down into related sub-menu items with the ability to navigate back to the main level menu item. Although the xamRadialMenu is optimized for touch, it works just as well for mouse and keyboard interactions.

Although this is being released as a CTP control, it is package with functionality.  It’s has configuration options for setting the number of wedges, rotation, size, and more.  It has a number of built in tools such as a radio button, color well, numeric items and gauges, as well as a list tool.  With support for recent items, tooltips, key tips, keyboard navigation, MVVM support, this control has everything you need to build your own touch based applications.

Let’s Wrap This Baby Up!

This release of Infragistics WPF and Silverlight 13.2 is packed full of new controls, new features, new themes, new styles, and much needed updates.  This is a massive release!  I couldn’t even cover every new feature.  There is just way too many of them.  I hope you are as excited about this release as I am.  We worked hard to bring you the best controls available, and we continue to make investments into the controls you need the most.

As you have probably noticed, things are changing at Infragistics, and your voice is louder than ever.  If you have ideas about new features we should bring to our controls, important issues we need to fix, or even brand new controls you’d like us to introduce, please let us know by posting them on our Product Ideas website.  Follow and engage with us on Twitter via @infragistics. You can also follow and contact me directly on Twitter at @brianlagunas. Also make sure to connect with our various teams via our Community Forms where you can interact with Infragistics engineers and other customers.

If you are not using our WPF or Silverlight controls yet, remember that a free evaluation download is only a click away.

Lastly, when you do build something cool with our controls, please make sure to let us know.

*Chuck Norris is not affiliated with Infragistics and did not officially approve this release.  This was simply a reference to how awesome this release is.

Roughly 7 months ago, we announced the release of a brand new product from Infragistics for Windows 8 development.  Now, it is time for another update to the Infragistics Windows UI control toolset with the release of 13.2.  In our first release of Windows UI 13.1 back in April, we had put so much awesomeness into a single release, that we had to leave some great features out of the controls and had to leave them as a CTP.  So, most of our 13.2 release is all about finishing what we started in 13.1.  This means giving our xamGrid, Persistence Framework, and Excel Framework some much needed love.  We are also throwing in a new control in the form of a CTP.  Enough of the intro stuff, let’s see what we have been working on.

XamGrid

We have spent a lot of time in 13.2 getting the xamGrid just right for Windows 8.  Actually, this is where we spent the majority of our time.  If you have been using the xamGrid since it’s initial release, then you already know that the xamGrid control is a hierarchical data grid control designed to handle large amounts of data. With numerous column features, editors, and capabilities, the xamGrid is the most feature rich and functional data grid available.  It provides support for a true hierarchical data source to the n-level, allowing you to display complex business data with master/detail data relationships and different column layouts at each level. With support for paging and deferred scrolling, the xamGrid handles large data sets with no problem. Besides support for hierarchical data, you can also create n-level groupings on your data. Grouping (GroupBy) in combination with our intuitive filtering capabilities, allows you to shape your data to fit your needs with no compromises.

With the ability to define as many columns as you want, the xamGrid provides the most column options available in any grid. The xamGrid supports column moving, resizing, grouping (not to be confused with data grouping, aka GroupBy), column fixing (pinning), and even provides your end-users a column chooser all with the touch of a finger.

The xamGrid comes with the largest selection of editors on the market. Built-in editors include a CheckBox column, ComboBox column, DateTime column, Hyperlink column, Image column, and a Text column. Need more than that? No problem, the xamGrid also provides you with Template and Unbound columns to fit any scenario.

The xamGrid has been optimized for touch enabling even the most complex actions with the touch of a finger. New touch friendly selection grippers have been added to enable the selection of multiple cells with a simple drag operation. A new touch optimized column menu had been added, giving you access to common column operations such as sorting, group by, summaries, column pinning, access to the column chooser, and more, all with a simple tap gesture.

From data annotation support, to summaries, to clipboard support, to exporting to excel, and much more; the xamGrid is packed with features making it the most feature rich and functional data grid available for Windows 8 development.

Persistence Framework

With the Persistence Framework, you can persist control settings from any dependency object (including non-Infragistics controls) using Infragistics’ Control Persistence Framework to manage saving and loading the settings you want persisted to any external source. This framework makes it very easy for you to give your end-users the ability to save off their preferences and the layout of your application’s user interface down to the most detailed settings - such as which grid columns are fixes - and then re-load the same layout when they come back again.

Excel Framework

Using the Infragistics Excel Framework allows you to work with spreadsheet data using familiar Microsoft Excel spreadsheet objects like Workbooks, Worksheets, Cells, Formulas and many more. The Excel Library makes it easy for you to represent the data of your application in an Excel spreadsheet as well as transfer data from Excel into your application.  The best part about the Excel Framework is that it is a simple class library that runs completely independent of Microsoft Excel.  That means you don’t need to have Excel installed on the client machine.

The following is a list of the supported versions of Excel.

• Microsoft Excel 97
• Microsoft Excel 2000
• Microsoft Excel 2002
• Microsoft Excel 2003
• Microsoft Excel 2007
• Microsoft Excel 2010

XamRadialMenu (CTP)

Now, for the newest control to join the Windows UI control toolset.  The new xamRadialMenu!  Inspired by the Microsoft OneNote radial menu, the xamRadialMenu provides a circular menu that orients the commands around the user, rather than requiring the user to negotiate a nested hierarchy of drop downs. Most commonly used as a context menu, the xamRadialMenu allows you to drill down into related sub-menu items with the ability to navigate back to the main level menu item. Although the xamRadialMenu is optimized for touch, it works just as well for mouse and keyboard interactions.

As you can probably tell from the screenshots, this thing is packed with features.  It does just about everything the Microsoft OneNote Radial Menu does, but better.  I’ll cover this control in more detail in a later post.

That’s It

If you are not using our Windows UI controls yet, remember that a free evaluation download is only a click away.

If you have ideas about new features we should bring to our controls, important issues we need to fix, or even brand new controls you’d like us to introduce, please let us know by posting them on our Product Ideas website.  Follow and engage with us on Twitter via @infragistics. You can also follow and contact me directly on Twitter at @brianlagunas. Also make sure to connect with our various teams via our Community Forms where you can interact with Infragistics engineers and other customers.

Lastly, when you do build something cool with our controls, please make sure to let us know.

Exciting Changes at Infragistics

Wow, we’ve been busy over here. In 13.2 we made lots of changes: we transformed our brands, updated our products and their features, redesigned our website, and updated our pricing structure – all for the better! At Infragistics, we’re proud to be the company that helps you deliver stunning applications easily and we want everything we do to reflect that.

New Branding and Products

One thing we think a lot about is simplicity. There is elegance in simplicity. When we looked at our products, we realized that most of our customers were faced with unnecessary complexity. We had more than 20 different products available and we knew that most customers were making the decision to purchase our top two products.  It was time for us to simplify.

So we turned Infragistics NetAdvantage for .NETversion13.1 into Infragistics Professional 13.2, and Infragistics NetAdvantage Ultimate version 13.1 into Infragistics Ultimate 13.2. We think you’ll agree that these less complicated names truly simplify things and make it much easier to find what you are looking for.

New Features

13.2 has a lot to offer. Most importantly, this new release of Infragistics Ultimate now includes our amazing design tool, Indigo Studio. It’s a complete solution for designing interactive prototypes that target mobile, desktop & web scenarios.  With Indigo Studio, designers and developers can focus on the user experience of the application before writing a single line of code. 

For desktop, web and mobile development, we’ve updated our entire line of controls to bring you the “ultimate” experience from start to finish. We’ve added support for the latest Microsoft Office and Windows 8 inspired user interface, along with support for touch-enabled rich-client desktop & responsive web apps that help you develop for the iPad, iPhone, Android devices and the Surface.

If you need to reach the broadest set of devices, our Ignite UI HTML5 / JQuery tools help you create a single application that will look native on any mobile device or desktop. And if you need no-compromise performance, only Infragistics has native Objective-C controls for building iOS apps with iOS 7 styles, native Java controls for Android apps and native Windows Phone controls. Finally, when you’re ready to test your applications, we’ve got you covered with automated UI testing tools for both Windows Forms & WPF.

New Website

In line with our promise to simplify, we’re doing everything we can to also streamline the experience of trying out our products. Many of our site’s less-visited pages have been shifted out to make it easier to find what you are looking for. But maybe the most exciting thing on our website is the introduction of our new Getting Started Videos on Infragistics’ YouTube channel. I encourage you to subscribe to this channel as we’ll be continually posting new videos – for all skill levels – to ensure you get the most out of your Infragistics controls. We think this will be very helpful to kick start your next project.

New Pricing

For the 13.2 release, we’ve modestly increased prices on new license purchases & renewals. But what about existing customers? Are we increasing renewal prices now? No. We have a little something called the Ultimate Gift and as you’ll see we want to make sure this transition is smooth. For example, if you’re a customer who used to have an ASP.NET subscription, congratulations - you just got a free upgrade to our Professional version!  This is our little way of saying thank you to our customers. For more information, check out the Ultimate Gift on our website.

Summary

As you can see, there’s a lot going on at Infragistics - and we’re just getting started! There is so much more we want to do to help you build stunning applications quickly. With new brands, new products, new features, new videos and more, we hope you are as excited as we are. We can’t wait to show you what’s IN development.

Intro

Last week a customer asked in our forums how to add data at run time to the IGChartView.  After answering the question I figured I would convert the sample over to Xamarin.

So attached is a zip file with both the Xamarin-iOS sample with the IGChartView and an Objective -C version written in XCode.

The different series in the IGChartView all have datasource helper objects which take the array of data and process it for the various series to render.  In this example we are using a IGLineSeries, so the IGCategorySeriesDataSourceHelper will be used.  This data source helper is what we would use for area charts, bar charts, column charts, and line charts. 

Basic Process

The basic process for adding more data into the chart is to add the data to the underlying data array which is feeding the datasource helper and then tell chart that data at a particular index has been modified.

<p >So in Xamarin iOS C#

// On the Tick, make a new object in the bounds.
MyDataObject newOb = this.createDataObject ();
// Since we only want to show the last twenty data points, remove the first if we have hit the threshold
if (_dataArray.Count >= 21) {
// remove the data point and tell the chart that the point of data has been removed.
_dataArray.RemoveAt (0);
_chart.RemoveItem (0, _helper);
}

// now add in our new data point and tell the chart that a new point has been added.
_dataArray.Add (newOb);
_convertedData = _dataArray.ToArray ();
_helper.Data = _convertedData;
_chart.InsertItem (_convertedData.Length - 1, _helper);

And in Objective C

// Since we only want to show the last twenty data points, remove the first if we have hit the threshold
if (_dataArray.count >= 21) {
// remove the data point and tell the chart that the point of data has been removed.
[_dataArray removeObjectAtIndex:0];
[_chart removeItemAtIndex:0 withSource:_helper];
}

// adds a new data object to our underlying data collection
[_dataArray addObject:[self createDataObject]];

// tells the chart to put a new point into the view
[_chart insertItemAtIndex:(_dataArray.count-1) withSource:_helper];

So what is the above code doing. First it's checking that we are only showing 20 data points. I wanted to show a limited window of data. I could have let it add points indefinitely but that would only clutter the layout over time and make it very difficult to read. After it removes the expired point of data, it tells the chart that the data at that point has been removed. Then it adds a new point and tells the chart a new point has been added.

So we can add and remove data easily and allow the UI to reflect those changes.

Now this next part isn't in the sample, but we can also change data in place and have the UI reflect those changes as well.  

So if we take the existing sample code and make a few modifications we will demonstrate how to update data in the chart rather then add / remove it.

First we want to change the series being used from an IGLineSeries to and IGColumnSeries.

Objective C
IGColumnSeries* lineSeries = (IGColumnSeries*)[_chart addSeriesForType:[IGColumnSeries class] usingKey:@"series1" withDataSource:_helper firstAxisKey:@"xAxis" secondAxisKey:@"yAxis"];
// adding a transitionDuration (how long an animation will run) onto the series so that when data switches it will animate the change. lineSeries.transitionDuration =0.5;

Then in the tick we change the code to modify an existing member of our data array and then inform the chart of the change.

int newValue = rand() % 10;
int indexToChange = rand() % 10;
MyDataObject* obj = [_dataArray objectAtIndex:indexToChange];
obj.value = newValue;
[_chart updateItemAtIndex:indexToChange withSource:_helper];

So I hope you liked this little demonstration on how you can update data and have those changes reflect in the IGDataChart. Hopefully I will be able to get back to my book app in the near future.

By Darrell Kress

With every release of Infragistics Reporting comes a set of release notes that reflects the state of resolved bugs and new additions from the previous release. You’ll find the notes useful to help determine the resolution of existing issues from a past release and as a means of determining where to test your applications when upgrading from one version to the next.

Release notes are available in PDF format and summarize the changes to this release along with a listing of each item. In order to download the release notes, use the following link:

• PDF (Infragistics Reporting 2013 Volume 2, Build 13.2.20132.1040)

Note: There is an issue with the Infragistics Platform Installer that doesn’t allow installing Reporting's plugin for Visual Studio 2013. This issue will be fixed shortly. In the meantime, please follow these steps to successfully install the VS2013 plugin:

1. Download and install Reporting from the Infragistics Ultimate 2013 Vol. 2 Platform Installer.
   
   

2. Search for the "Setups" folder created by the Platform Installer’s installation.
   
   

3. Run Reporting's installer (located in the Setup Folder) and choose Change.
   
   

4. Select VS 2013 Plugin and install.
   
   

One of the things that tripped me up when I first started using Ember.js was a lack of guidance in project structure. The early guides and samples placed all of the JavaScript into a few files and all of the templates were contained in script blocks inside of a single HTML file. To me, this seemed like a bit of a mess and it was very uncomfortable. Thankfully, as Ember has matured so have the tools around it. In this post, I’ll explain what the project “structure” looks like in a basic “out of the box” Ember.js application and then explore a few better approaches using build tools.

This is post #2 in a series on Ember.js. You can find the other posts here.

“Out of the box” structure

I use the word “structure” loosely here as there is very little structure imposed by the framework in terms of filenames or folder structure in the application. Essentially, if named and ordered properly, all of your JavaScript code could go in one file and many early samples did just that. Even now, the Ember Starter Kit comes with a structure that looks like this:

The guidance in TODO.txt states “Start writing your app in js/app.js.” and “Describe your application HTML in index.html.” This is fine for a small app, but it sure doesn’t scale well if we’re building ambitious web applications. In fact, you end up with an HTML file that looks like this:

All of these script blocks littered in the index.html file really started to bother me after a while and I had been wondering if there was another way. What I wanted to do was have each template exist in its own file and these would be referenced properly where needed by Ember. Thankfully, there’s a feature of Handlebars that allows for precompilation of templates and this is just what is needed to do what I wanted to do. It gets even better though. There are application workflows for Ember that make this process even easier. I’m going to briefly introduce the two options I have tried and show how they provide structure to the application building process. In future posts I will go into more detail on features offered by these tools.

Ember App Kit

Ember App Kit was created by Stefan Penner of the Ember.js team. It is billed as “A template for ambitious web applications” which, of course, fits quite well with the Ember tagline.

The main features of the Ember App Kit are: Asset compilation (including Handlebars, LESS/SASS, CoffeeScript, and minified JS and CSS), ES6 Module support, testing with QUnit and Karma, and dependency management using Bower.

The Ember App Kit is built around Grunt which is an amazing task runner for JS that was built with Node.js. I will describe the setup of many of the optional Grunt tasks in a future post. What we are mainly concerned at with Ember App Kit for now is the project structure inside of the app folder. Here’s what the top-level of the app folder looks like:

Note that I have expanded the templates folder. Each template inside of this folder is taking the place of one of those stray script blocks we had in the original approach. This is a much more structured approach! The application structure is described in detail in the Ember App Kit Getting Started guide.

Yeoman and the Ember generator

Yeoman is described by it’s maintainers as “modern workflows for modern webapps”. It consists of three separate tools that work together to help jumpstart and develop applications that enable best practices. Much like Ember App Kit, Yeoman uses Grunt as the build tool. It also uses Bower for client dependency management. The extra added pieces for Yeoman are Yo which is a scaffolding tool and one of the many generators maintained by the community. Using the Yo command line tool one can scaffold out an entire application from a generator. In our case, the generator we’ll take a look at is generator-ember.

When you run the Ember generator using Yo, you’ll get asked if you want to install Twitter Bootstrap for Sass. This is a nice touch since many developers are using Bootstrap and many Ember devs are using Sass. I’m much more of a Foundation fan so it would be nice to have a choice, but it’s easy enough to add later so no worries. Yeoman will scaffold out an Ember application and the Grunt tasks are pre-configured for Sass, minification, template precompilation, and LiveReload (which will automatically rebuild files and reload the browser any time you save a file). I’ll discuss the details of generator-ember in a future post.

Again, the most important thing to look at for now is the application structure generator-ember offers. Just like with Ember App Kit, there is an app folder. Inside of this, the structure looks like:

The app/scripts folder is where all of the JavaScript files for the app should go. There are folders for the major categories of files such as models, views, controllers, and routes. Also inside of app/ is a templates folder where you will store your Handlebars templates. Like Ember App Kit, all of these folders are configured to be watched and built by Grunt. Once again, this definitely adds much needed structure to an Ember application. The Ember generator also includes subgenerators for adding models, views, and controllers. You can read about these subgenerators on the generator-ember Github page. I’ll talk about them in more detail in a future post.

Summary

Ember.js does not impose a set structure for the application files in terms of folders and file names within a project. Thankfully, we have some great tools to help establish some best practices. Whether you choose Ember App Kit or generator-ember with Yeoman, I think it is easy to see how both of these approaches help facilitate easier project collaboration and maintenance. Try the different options before deciding on one to use for your project.

Contact

If you want to comment or reach out to me, the best place to do that is on Twitter @brentschooley. I can also be reached via email at bschooley@infragistics.com.

This is where I’ll be collecting my posts for my Ember.js tutorial series. Follow along and learn Ember.js from the ground up!

Posts:

• Ember.js Basics - What is Ember? - This post provides an introduction to the Ember.js framework.
• Ember.js Basics - Project Structure - This post discusses options for structuring your Ember.js application.

Contact

If you want to comment or reach out to me, the best place to do that is on Twitter @brentschooley. I can also be reached via email at bschooley@infragistics.com.

With every release comes a set of release notes that reflects the state of resolved bugs and new additions from the previous release. You’ll find the notes useful to help determine the resolution of existing issues from a past release and as a means of determining where to test your applications when upgrading from one version to the next.

Release notes are available in both PDF and Excel formats. The PDF summarizes the changes to this release along with a listing of each item. The Excel sheet includes each change item and makes it easy for you to sort, filter and otherwise manipulate the data to your liking.

Download the Release Notes

ASP.NET 2013 Volume 2

• PDF (ASP.NET 2013 Volume 2, Build 13.2.20132.1003)
• Excel (ASP.NET 2013 Volume 2, Build 13.2.20132.1003)

With every release of Infragistics Reporting comes a set of release notes that reflects the state of resolved bugs and new additions from the previous release. You’ll find the notes useful to help determine the resolution of existing issues from a past release and as a means of determining where to test your applications when upgrading from one version to the next.

The Release Notes are available in PDF format and summarize the changes to this release along with a listing of each item. In order to download the release notes, use the following links:

Reporting 2012 Volume 2

• PDF (NetAdvantage Reporting 2012 Volume 2, Build 12.2.20122.2074)

Reporting 2013 Volume 1

• PDF (NetAdvantage Reporting 2013 Volume 1, Build 13.1.20131.1058)

Release notes reflect the state of resolved bugs and new additions from the previous release. You will find these notes useful to help determine the resolution of existing issues from a past release and as a means of determining where to test your applications when upgrading from one version to the next.

Release notes are available in both PDF and Excel formats. The PDF summarizes the changes to this release along with a listing of each item. The Excel sheet includes each change item and makes it easy for you to sort, filter and otherwise manipulate the data to your liking.

Download the Release Notes

• PDF - Infragistics WPF 2013 Volume 2
• Excel - Infragistics WPF 2013 Volume 2

Release notes reflect the state of resolved bugs and new additions from the previous release. You wll find these notes useful to help determine the resolution of existing issues from a past release and as a means of determining where to test your applications when upgrading from one version to the next.

Release notes are available in both PDF and Excel formats. The PDF summarizes the changes to this release along with a listing of each item. The Excel sheet includes each change item and makes it easy for you to sort, filter and otherwise manipulate the data to your liking.

Download the Release Notes

• PDF - Infragistics Silverlight 2013 Volume 2
• Excel - Infragistics Silverlight 2013 Volume 2

With every release comes a set of release notes that reflects the state of resolved bugs and new additions from the previous release. You’ll find the notes useful to help determine the resolution of existing issues from a past release and as a means of determining where to test your applications when upgrading from one version to the next.

Release notes are available in both PDF and Excel formats. The PDF summarizes the changes to this release along with a listing of each item. The Excel sheet includes each change item and makes it easy for you to sort, filter and otherwise manipulate the data to your liking.

Download the Release Notes

Ignite UI 2013 Volume 2

• PDF (Ignite UI 2013 Volume 2, Build 13.2.20132.1010)
• Excel (Ignite UI 2013 Volume 2, Build 13.2.20132.1010)

Call to action: Vote on User Voice for Silverlight to be open sourced http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio/suggestions/5042512-open-source-silverlight 

Originally posted on my personal blog http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2013/11/22/is-it-time-to-open-source-silverlight/

For all intents and purposes Microsoft now views Silverlight as “Done”. While it is no longer in active development it is still being “supported” through to 2021 (source).
In today’s age of the “modern public web” with a variety of devices, Silverlight’s purpose no longer stands.

However there is still a section of the .Net community that would like to see further development done on the Silverlight framework. It has a nice collection of portable technologies allows it a small niche in the desktop environment. A quick look at some common request lists brings up the following stats:

• 5,720+ votes to release Silverlight 6 https://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio/suggestions/3556619-silverlight-6
• Feature requests for Silverlight (deprecated but still relevant) http://dotnet.uservoice.com/forums/4325-silverlight-feature-suggestions
• Microsoft connect list of active Silverlight feature requests: http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/SearchResults.aspx?KeywordSearchIn=2&SearchQuery=%22silverlight%22&FeedbackType=2&Status=1&Scope=0&SortOrder=10&TabView=1

Rather than letting Silverlight decay in a locked up source control in the Microsoft vaults, I call on them to instead release it into the hands of the community to see what they can build with it. Microsoft may no longer have a long term vision for it, but the community itself may find ways to extend it in ways Microsoft didn’t envision.
Earlier this year Microsoft open sourced RIA Services on Outer Curve http://www.outercurve.org/Galleries/ASPNETOpenSourceGallery/OpenRIAServices, it would be great to see this extended to the entire Silverlight framework.

We’ve seen what can happen with amazing technologies when they are released into the wild. e.g ID software released the Quake 1 source code to the community, it has since been extended greatly and ported to a variety of platforms. A version was even created for Silverlight http://www.innoveware.com/ql3/QuakeLight.html. Which makes sense as XNA running on Silverlight was a popular technology for students.

I’ve used games as examples of ways to extend it as that is what hobbyists usually latch onto first. But there are equal reasons why people still using it on internal LoB applications would want to continue to extend the core framework, e.g:

• Custom mouse cursors
• better databinding support
• Bringing Silverlight XAML up to parity with WPF
• Porting Silverlight to other platforms (e.g. Moonlight on Linux)

Silverlight still has a nice portable core of useful technologies, now is the time to start asking the question if it is time to Open Source it rather than let it mothball. There may be uses in the community for it now, in another 2-3 years its usefulness in the community would be lost. This may be a great point to release Silverlight to the community.
Microsoft, let the community know if there is a way we can assist in making this happen.

By David Burela

In the past, I have posted a lot of resources in a series for HTML5 developers. I hope these have been as helpful for others as they have been for me. That series got me thinking about doing a series for other developers as well, and I think I’ve finally decided on iOS as the focus. There are a lot of great resources out there for iOS, but I’m not convinced that everyone who is doing iOS development is aware of them. So with that in mind, let’s jump right into the first resource: objc.io

objc.io - A periodical about best practices and advanced techniques in Objective-C

objc.io started with its first issue in June 2013 and has continued as a monthly publication ever since. This online magazine style publication aims to provide high quality content centered around a single theme once a month. Each issue starts with an editorial article that sets up the theme for the issue. After the editorial there are roughly 4–8 articles based on the theme. The writing quality is superb and some of the best stuff you will find on the internet for iOS development. While the focus is on the Objective-C language, Xamarin developers should still read this as many of the best practices are applicable for C# iOS developers as well.

One thing I really like is the ability to subscribe so that you always know when the latest issue is posted. You can do this in a variety of ways. For starters, you can subscribe to their mailing list. This will send you a short email when each issue is posted. If you are running OS X Mavericks, you can register for a push notification to be sent to your Mac when each issue is posted. If you prefer to read on your iPhone or iPad, objc.io is even available as a Newsstand app. This is a great option if you want to support the objc.io team as it carries a $4.99 monthly subscription. It really is a great format for reading this material. All of the other options are completely free though.

Summary

I highly recommend iOS developers of all types (obj-c and Xamarin, etc.) check objc.io out. Currently there are 6 issues and they are being added once a month. This periodical will definitely make you think about things you may not have considered before.

Contact

If you want to comment or reach out to me, the best place to do that is on Twitter @brentschooley. I can also be reached via email at bschooley@infragistics.com.

• Concepts presented here are general and are entirely platform and framework independent.
• Implementation is specific to the platform and the testing framework that is being utilized.

1. Team Foundation Server (TFS) - manages the CI process
2. QUnit - unit testing framework for JavaScript
3. QUnit runner - automated runner for running and extracting the test results

What is this GenericTestResult that we have there?