Category Archives: Product Releases

news about recent products released by MindFusion.

MindFusion.WPF Pack, 2016.R1

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The new release of MindFUsion WPF Control Suite lists many new features, aimed to empower developers to create compelling business applications with even less efforts. The pack also includes new samples and tutorials. Below are the details:

License keys
There is no separate trial build of the control assemblies anymore. Instead, set the LicenseKey property of the controls to disable their evaluation mode and stop displaying trial messages. If your application contains more than one control by MindFusion, you could call MindFusion.Licensing.LicenseManager.AddLicense(key) from application start-up code to specify the key once instead of setting it per each control.

Visual Studio 2015 support
MindFusion Pack for WPF now includes support for Visual Studio 2015. The installer can create VS2015 toolbox palette for the component.

Barcodes
The new BarcodeLabel class allow displaying EAN, UPC or QR barcodes.

BarcodeLabel: QR barcodes

BarcodeLabel: QR barcodes

MindFusion Chart ControlMindFusion.Charting for WPF

Multiple Axes
The chart control enables developers to create unlimited number of axes of each type – X, X2, Y and Y2. Each axis is an instance of the Axis class and has its own set of properties for complete customization – label style, brush, tick length etc. You can set the X and Y axes of each ChartSeries to a series of your choice and thus bind each chart series to different axes, if you wish.

Multiple axes in the WPF chart control.

Multiple axes in the WPF chart control.

Improved Zooming
Selected area with width smaller than MinZoomSpan does not evoke any action in the control. In addition, the new ZoomChanged event fires whenever zoom occurs and provides useful data for the zoom action with its ZoomChangedArgs.

Cross Hair Improvements
The cross hair control has been improved with several new properties, a method and an event. The properties are:

The new CrossHairPosition method returns the current location of the cross hair. For more precise handling of cross hair movements a new event is available – CrossHairPositionChanged.

Greatly Improved 3D Charts
3D charts have received plenty of improvements, new properties and performance optimizations:

  • PointMergeThreshold – The property sets the radius of an area around a given point where no other points are drawn. The result is better performance especially in charts with numerous points, which happen to be close to one another.
  • InterpolationType.None – A new InterpolationType has been added to the InterpolationType, which does not interpolation but adds data directly and connects the points with triangulation.

The SurfaceType enum has been replaced with three bool properties, which makes the API easier to understand and use.

ScatterFaceSize – the property regulates the size of the polygons that build a 3D scatter. Bigger values lead to bigger polygons, which results in faster performance and more rough scatter mesh.

Effect3D.ShaderEffect – the property can be applied to all 3D chart elements, including scatters and performs much faster.

3D surface chart with color map and wire frame.

3D surface chart with color map and wire frame.

Exporting Images
Two new methods have been added for exporting the chart as an image – CreateImage and ExportImage.

Custom Formatting of Labels in Real-time Charts
A new property has been added to the RealTimeChart library – Axis.LabelFormatProvider. Use it to specify custom formatting of numeric labels. If required, you can specify format arguments for your format classes with Axis.LabelFormat.

MindFusion WebForms DiagrammerMindFusion.Diagramming for WPF

Free-form nodes
A FreeFormNode collects all points from users’ mouse or touch input and displays them as node’s outline. To let users draw free-form nodes interactively, set Diagram.Behavior to DrawFreeForms or LinkFreeforms. Use the Points property of FreeFormNode to get or set outline points programmatically. If the Closed property is set, the node is drawn as a closed shape and its interior filled, or otherwise the node is drawn as a poly-line. If the distance between first and last points drawn by user is shorter than Diagram.AutoCloseDistance, the node’s Closed property is automatically set to true . AutoCloseDistance default value is Double.MaxValue , so free-form nodes are always closed.

Wpf Diagram: Free Shapes

Wpf Diagram: Free Shapes

Shape control points
Shape formulas can now be parameterized by associating control points with Shape objects. Each control point is passed to the shape script as a named variable. Apart from the name, you can specify the default, min and max coordinates for each parameter via the ShapeControlPoint constructor, and whether to treat its values as percents or fixed offset.

Resize table columns and rows
Columns and rows of a TableNode can now be resized interactively if its AllowResizeColumns or AllowResizeRows properties are enabled. In order to resize, move the mouse pointer to the border line on column’s right side or row’s bottom side until it shows resize cursor and start dragging. The control raises TableColumnResizing and TableRowResizing events to let you validate new size or prevent resizing some elements.

Barcode nodes
The BarcodeNode class displays EAN, UPC or QR barcodes as node’s content. In-place edit operations let users enter new numeric codes for 1D codes or text strings for QR codes. The barcode format is specified via the Format property, the encoded number or text is set via Content, and color of 1D bars / 2D modules via BarColor.

Barcode diagram nodes

Barcode diagram nodes

Support for Visio stencils
The diagram can now display shapes from stencil files in Visio 2003 XML stencil format (.vsx). To load a stencil file, use an instance of the VisioStencil class. The shapes are displayed in the diagram through VisioNode objects.

ShapeDesigner improvements

  • The ShapeDesigner control supports undo. Call its Undo or Redo methods to respectively undo or redo a change done to the designed shape.
  • ZoomFactor property added to ShapeDesigner. It also supports interactive zoom in/out via mouse wheel.
  • The SelectedElement property exposes the graphic element currently selected in ShapeDesigner canvas. You can bind to its stroke and brush properties to create alternative user interface for editing element attributes.

AnchorPatern improvements

  • The XUnit and YUnit properties allow specifying the coordinates of an AnchorPoint as a fixed offset from the node’s top-left corner rather than in percentage, so that the point position does not change when the node is resized.
  • The AnchorPattern property of Shape class lets you associate anchor points with shape definitions. If a ShapeNode instance does not contain its own AnchorPattern, it will derive the one defined by the node’s Shape.
  • The RowAnchorPattern property lets you specify default AnchorPattern for all table rows.

Map-16x16MindFusion.Mapping for WPF

Zoom control
The ZoomControl class lets user change interactively the current zoom level and scroll position of a MapView. To set it up, add a ZoomControl to the page, place it anywhere over a MapView, and set the control’s Target property to that view. Set the ZoomStep and ScrollStep properties to specify the amount added to view’s zoom level or scroll position by ZoomControl’s buttons.

map-control-zooming

Miscellaneous

  • The new Behavior property lets users select multiple map elements interactively.

WPF Reporting ToolMindFusion.Reporting for WPF

Report Parameters
Parameters can now be added to a report through the new Parameters collection of the Report class. The parameters provide name, description and value and can be of any type, including expression. For more information about parameters, check the Report Parameters topic.

Barcodes
MindFusion.Reporting for WPF reports can now display UPC-A, UPC-E, EAN-8, EAN-13, and QR barcodes. The barcodes are represented by the new Barcode report item.

wpf_barcode_report_items

Schedule ControlMindFusion.Scheduling for WPF

Interactive Recurrence Rescheduling
Recurrences can be rescheduled interactively by holding down the RescheduleRecurrenceKey while dragging a recurrent item. The control tries to preserve the current pattern of the recurrence when possible.

New Theme
A new built-in theme is available in MindFusion.Scheduling for WPF – the Light theme. It is available through the ThemeType enumeration.

The new 'Light' theme

The new ‘Light’ theme

New Members
Several new properties and events have been added to the control:

You can read details about the new features of the pack at the news page on the forum. The trial version is available for direct download from this link:

Download MindFusion.Pack for WPF 2016.R1

About MindFusion.Wpf Pack: A set of advanced WPF components that help you build your business application easy and on time. The tools provide you with a complete set of features to create, edit and render complex flowcharts, charts, diagrams, calendars, schedules, maps and reports. A set of gauges and UI elements is also included. Each component offers various samples, tutorials and detailed documentation. The controls offer simple and intuitive API, completely customizable appearance, numerous input/output options and a rich event set. Each tool has been thoroughly tested to guarantee that you and your application get the high quality and performance you deserve.

You can read more about the capabilities of each component at its features page:

Prices and licenses are explained in details at the buy page.

MindFusion.WinForms Pack, 2016.R1

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MindFusion Pack for WinForms, 2016.R1 has been released. Here is an overview of the new features. You can find details about each new feature here.

Visual Studio 2015 support
MindFusion Pack for WinForms now includes support for Visual Studio 2015. The installer can create VS2015 toolbox palette for the components.

Barcodes
The new BarcodeLabel and BarcodePrinter classes allow displaying and printing EAN, UPC or QR barcodes.

BarcodeLabel: QR barcodes

BarcodeLabel: QR barcodes

MindFusion WebForms DiagrammerMindFusion.Diagramming

Street maps
MapNodes can render street maps in OpenStreetMap format. Call FromXml method of MapContent to load an .osm file.

MindFusion WinForms Street maps

MindFusion WinForms Street maps

Resize table columns and rows
Columns and rows of a TableNode can now be resized interactively if its AllowResizeColumns or AllowResizeRows properties are enabled. In order to resize, move the mouse pointer to the border line on column’s right side or row’s bottom side until it shows resize cursor and start dragging.

Barcode nodes
The BarcodeNode class displays EAN, UPC or QR barcodes as node’s content. In-place edit operations let users enter new numeric codes for 1D codes or text strings for QR codes.

Miscellaneous

  • Support for .NET 2 has been dropped; the minimum supported .NET framework version now is 3.5.
  • Distribution now includes a set of digitally-signed assemblies.
  • Undo/redo records for in-place edit operations are now created automatically. They are represented by instances of the EditTextCmd class.
  • CompositeNode supports vertical scrolling in EditComponent (only via keyboard).
  • Support for FromPage and ToPage properties of PrinterSettings .
  • CreateBarcodeNode methods added to the Factory class.
  • The BarcodeNodeStyle property of Diagram defines the default appearance of BarcodeNodes.
  • Improved speed when dragging large hierarchies of grouped nodes.
  • ZoomControl can now be used with other components by MindFusion and has been moved to MindFusion.Common.WinForms assembly and namespace.
  • and much more.

Map-16x16MindFusion.Mapping

Street maps
You can render street maps in OpenStreetMap format by adding a StreetMapLayer instance to the MapView. In order to load a street map, create a new StreetMapLayer > object and call its Map‘s LoadFromXml method to load the corresponding *.osm file.

Zoom control
The ZoomControl class lets user change interactively the current zoom level and scroll position of a MapView. To set it up, add a ZoomControl to the form, place it anywhere over a MapView, and set the control’s Target property to that view.

map-control-zooming

Multiple selection
Now it’s possible to select multiple decorations or map shapes by drawing a selection rectangle. To enable that, set the Behavior property to Select. Selected elements are stored in the Selection collection of respective layer objects.

API changes

  • The type of MapElement‘s Label property has been changed from string to Label class. The FontName and FontSize properties have been moved from MapElement to Label.
  • Type of Layers property changed from List to ObservableCollection .

WPF Reporting ToolMindFusion.Reporting

Barcodes
MindFusion.Reporting reports can now display UPC-A, UPC-E, EAN-8, EAN-13, and QR barcodes. The barcodes are represented by the new Barcode report item.

WinForms Reporter: Barcode Report Items

WinForms Reporter: Barcode Report Items

Miscellaneous

WebForms Scheduler by MindFusionMindFusion.Scheduling

Improved List View
The List view can now display an additional header and a footer. To turn them on, set the appropriate flag to the HeaderStyle property of the ListViewSettings class. The FooterFormat and MainHeaderFormat properties let you customize the text in the respective header. The text can also be customized through the CustomizeText event of the Calendar class. The size of the headers can be specified through the MainHeaderSize and FooterSize properties. Interactive Recurrence Rescheduling Recurrences can be rescheduled interactively by holding down the RescheduleRecurrenceKey while dragging a recurrent item. The control tries to preserve the current pattern of the recurrence when possible.

New Theme
A new built-in theme is available in MindFusion.Scheduling – the Light theme. It is available through the ThemeType enumeration.

The new 'Light' theme

The new ‘Light’ theme

New Properties
Several new properties have been added to the control:

Miscellaneous

Spreadsheet-16x16MindFusion.Spreadsheet

Autofiltering
Worksheets now support autofiltering. To enable it, call the AutoFilter method of the CellRange class. To specify autofiltering criteria for individual columns, use the AutoFilter overload.

WinForms Spreadsheet: Auto filtering

Multiple Selection
MindFusion.Spreadsheet now supports selection of multiple cell ranges. Cell ranges can be added to the selection interactively, by holding down the CTRL key while dragging with the mouse, or programmatically, by using one of the new methods of the Selection class: Add, AddRow, and AddColumn.

Miscellaneous

Installer for the latest version can be downloaded at https://www.mindfusion.eu/WinFormsTrial.zip

Updated assemblies are also available as MindFusion.Pack NuGet package.

About MindFusion.WinForms Pack: A set of five WinForms programming components that provide your application with a rich choice of diagramming, charting, scheduling, mapping, reporting and gauge features. The tools are very easy to implement and use. They boast intuitive API and various step-by-step tutorials to get you started. Both online and offline documentation is available.

A sample browser presents you with all the samples for each control to let you easily navigate to what you need. You can check some of the features of each component right now if you look at the online demos:

Visit the features – page of the components for more information about their capabilities:

You can check the prices and licensing scheme here. All components are royalty-free.

Charting for WPF, V2.0

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The list below describes recent changes and additions to MindFusion.Charting for WPF:

Support for Multiple Axes

The chart can now render multiple axes at each side of the plot area. To enable that, add a new Axis instance to the XAxes collection properties for bottom axes, to YAxes collection for left-hand axes, and X2Axes / Y2Axes for respectively top and right sides. The old AxisSettings class and XAxisSettings / YAxisSettings objects have been removed, and now their properties are set independently for each Axis instance in the collections.

Multiple axes in the WPF chart control.

Multiple axes in the WPF chart control.

Improved Zooming

Selected area with width smaller than MinZoomSpan does not evoke any action in the control. In addition, the new ZoomChanged event fires whenever zoom occurs and provides useful data for the zoom action with its ZoomChangedArgs.

Cross Hair Improvements

The cross hair control has been improved with several new properties, a method and an event. The properties are:

The new CrossHairPosition method returns the current location of the cross hair. For more precise handling of cross hair movements a new event is available – CrossHairPositionChanged.

Cross hair is drawn in a WPF column chart.

Cross hair is drawn in a WPF column chart.

Greatly Improved 3D Charts

3D charts have received plenty of improvements, new properties and performance optimizations: PointMergeThreshold – The property sets the radius of an area around a given point where no other points are drawn. The result is better performance especially in charts with numerous points, which happen to be close to one another. Of points with similar coordinates only a single one is rendered, the rest are omitted.

InterpolationType.None – A new InterpolationType has been added to the InterpolationType enum, which does not interpolate but adds data directly and connects the points with triangulation.

The SurfaceType enum has been replaced with three bool properties, which makes the API easier to understand and use.

ScatterFaceSize – the property regulates the size of the polygons that build a 3D scatter. Bigger values lead to bigger polygons, which results in faster performance and rougher scatter mesh. Effect3D.ShaderEffect – the property can be applied to all 3D chart elements, including scatters and performs much faster.

3D surface chart with color map and wire frame.

3D surface chart with color map and wire frame.

Exporting Images

Two new methods have been added for exporting the chart as an image – CreateImage and ExportImage.

Custom Formatting of Labels in Real-time Charts

A new property has been added to the RealTimeChart library – Axis.LabelFormatProvider. Use it to specify custom formatting of numeric labels. If required, you can specify format arguments for your format classes with Axis.LabelFormat.

Direct download of the trial version is available from here:

Download MindFusion.Charting for WPF 2.0 Trial Version

You are welcome to contact us with any questions, problems or inquiries about the Charting for Wpf control or any other of our products. MindFusion has always put special emphasis on providing excellent customer support and we usually answer your inquiries in a few hours of receiving them.

About MindFusion.Charting for Wpf: A programming component that combines powerful charting capabilities with an elegant API and easy use. Among the features of the control are fully customizable grid, positive and negative values on all chart axes, 3D charts, gauges and many more – read a detailed list here.

The control provides detailed documentation and various samples that demonstrate how to customize every type of chart. It supports a wide range of 2D and 3D charts including bar, line, radar, bubble pie etc. You can add tooltips, define themes, perform hit testing, zoom and more.

Diagramming for ASP.NET, V5.5

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Here is the list of the recent changes and additions to MindFusion WebForms Diagram control:

Resize table columns and rows

Note: This feature is not available in ImageMap mode.

Columns and rows of a TableNode can now be resized interactively if its AllowResizeColumns or AllowResizeRows properties are enabled. In order to resize, move the mouse pointer to the border line on column’s right side or row’s bottom side until it shows resize cursor and start dragging. The control raises TableColumnResizing and TableRowResizing events to let you validate new size or prevent resizing some elements. The TableColumnResized and TableRowResized events are raised after the operation completes.

Diagramming for ASP.NET: Table Nodes

Diagramming for ASP.NET: Table Nodes

Canvas mode improvements

  • Shape library files and ShapeLibraryLocation properties of DiagramView and ShapeListBox can now be used in Canvas mode.
  • Items can now be deleted using Backspace key when running on Mac.
  • Caption divider line in TableNode and ContainerNode is now rendered clipped when caption height is smaller than corner radius.
  • The TooltipDelay property specifies the delay in milliseconds before showing tooltips.
  • The Orientation property of NodeListView lets you set the view’s orientation to Horizontal or Vertical (members of Orientation enum).
  • Fixed overlaps in client-side TreeLayout when arranging nodes of different sizes.
  • Fixed a bug where deserialization of custom item classes worked correctly only if their names contained Node or Link suffix.
  • MsAjaxLocation and JQueryLocation properties let you change the location of external script libraries.
Diagramming for ASP.NET: Node Shapes

Diagramming for ASP.NET: Node Shapes

ImageMap mode improvements

  • Image generator implementation changed from Page to IHttpHandler , this makes it more lightweight avoiding the full page life-cycle.
  • Image generation is now implemented by the built-in ImageHandler class inside MindFusion.Common.WebForms assembly and it no longer requires adding external .aspx file to the project. Instead, it can be listed in web.config file: 
    <handlers>
    <add name="ImageHandler" path="ImageGen.ashx" verb="GET" type="MindFusion.Common.WebForms.ImageHandler, MindFusion.Common.WebForms">
</add></handlers>
  • For convenience, there is still optional ImageGen.ashx provided as external file for easier set-up of the project (add existing file instead of changing web.config).
  • ZoomControl no longer draws using <canvas> element when running in ImageMap mode, but uses ImageHandler to generate bitmaps.

API changes

ZoomControl can now be used with other MindFusion components and has been moved to MindFusion.Common.WebForms namespace and assembly.

Here is a direct link to download the trial version:

Download MindFusion.Diagramming for ASP.NET, V5.5 Trial Version

Technical support
MindFusion support team is happy to assist you with any questions you might have about Diagramming for ASP.NET or any other of our products. You can leave a message at the discussion board, use the help desk or e-mail support@mindfusion.eu.. We strive to provide competent and detailed answers to your questions within hours of receiving them.

About Diagramming for ASP.NET: An advanced WebForms programming component that offers all the functionality that is needed for creating, styling and presenting attractive flowcharts, hierarchies, trees, graphs, schemes, diagrams and many more. The control offers numerous utility methods, path finding and cycle detection, rich event set and many useful user interaction features like tool tips, multiple selection, copy/paste to/from Windows clipboard and many more.

NetDiagram offers more than 100 predefined node shapes, scrollable tables, 13 automatic layouts and many more. You can check the online demo to see some of the features in action. The control includes many samples, detailed documentation and step-by-step tutorials. Every features is duly documented and there’s plenty of code to copy. The component is not only powerful and scalable, but easy to learn and fun to use.

Diagramming for JavaScript, V2.5

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The new release of MindFusion Diagramming library for JavaScript contains some useful new features and improvements. Below are the details:

Resize of table columns and rows

Columns and rows of a TableNode can now be resized interactively if its AllowResizeColumns or AllowResizeRows properties are enabled. In order to resize, move the mouse pointer to the border line on column’s right side or row’s bottom side until it shows resize cursor and start dragging. The control raises tableColumnResizing and tableRowResizing events to let you validate new size or prevent resizing some elements. The tableColumnResized and tableRowResized events are raised after the operation completes.

JavaScript Table Nodes: Resize

JavaScript Table Nodes: Resize

Shape libraries

The ShapeLibrary class lets you use custom geometric shapes created using MindFusion ShapeDesigner tool. Call its loadFromXml method to load a library XML file. getShapes returns an array of the loaded Shape objects. The ShapeLibraryLocation property of NodeListView creates a prototype ShapeNode object for each shape from the specified library.

Miscellaneous

  • TextStroke and TextStrokeThickness properties of DiagramItem let you set color and thickness of text outlines.
  • Items can now be deleted using Backspace key when running on Mac.
  • Caption divider line in TableNode and ContainerNode is now rendered clipped when caption height is smaller than corner radius.
  • The TooltipDelay property specifies the delay in milliseconds before showing tooltips.
  • The Orientation property of NodeListView lets you set the view’s orientation to Horizontal or Vertical .
  • MindFusion.Common.js contains code shared with other JavaScript libraries by MindFusion. It must be loaded before the MindFusion.Diagramming.js script.

Fixed bugs

  • Fixed overlaps in TreeLayout when arranging nodes of different sizes.
  • Anchor points indices were not serialized and could be reset to different values when loading from JSON.
  • Deserialization of custom item classes worked correctly only if their names contained Node or Link suffix.

Registered customers with an active upgrade subscription can download the licensed version from the clients area on our site.

A trial version is available for direct download from the following link:

Download MindFusion Diagramming Library for JavaScript, V2.5

We are glad to receive any comments, suggestions and feedback. You can write us at e-mail support@mindfusion.eu or use the help desk. You can use the JsDiagram section on MindFusion forum to post questions about the tool.

About Diagramming for JavaScript Library: Written 100% in JavaScript, this tool uses HTML5 Canvas to draw impressive diagrams, schemes, flowcharts, trees and many more. It is browser independent, easy to use and integrate into any web application. JsDiagram supports a variety of predefined node shapes, customizable links, rich event set and many appearance options.

The user interaction model includes resizing / moving / selecting and modifying any diagram element. The tool boasts an elegant API, which is documented in details as well numerous step-by-step guides and tutorials. Various samples are provided to let you learn quickly how to use the most important features of the library – check them here. JsDiagram is not only the perfect choice for creating any type of diagram in the browser – it can also arrange it the way you wish with a mouse click using one of its automatic graph layout algorithms. For more details about the features of the component, please visit the Diagram for JavaScript page.