Lies, damned lies, and roadmaps

In less than 4 weeks' time DevExpress will hold its 2010 Summit. The Summit is the occasion where, every year, around the New Year, the management, team leads, and evangelists all meet together, listen and watch each other's presentations about where we are, and where we'd like to be, and discuss the proposed features and enhancements for the upcoming year. Of course, this time around, it's all about the Roadmap for 2011.

And, as always it seems, what a time to be deciding on future directions. Let me count the ways.

Has the Spark Disappeared from Silverlight and WPF?

Not on our watch! Microsoft’s PR department maybe descending into meltdown in the aftermath of PDC 2010, but we are taking a leaf out of the Brits' book, remaining calm and carrying on.

Silverlight is integral to many of your applications, and, as such, our controls are subject to continuing development and enhancement.

XPF is proving a fantastic springboard for our Silverlight and WPF controls, and the news just keeps coming.

Silverlight/WPF Layout Control: Available Items Support WPF Rich Edit Control and WPF Ribbon - Design Time Support What’s coming for Silverlight and WPF in v2010 Vol 2 – Summary

Souping up the ASP.NET HTML Editor

Performance is a huge consideration for web developers, and at every turn we try to make our controls reflect that.

The development team have been fine tuning the internals of the ASP.NET HTML Editor, and the result is almost a 42% decrease in its time taken to render.

Why not pop the hood and check out the other improvements to the ASP.NET HTML Editor?

ASP.NET HTML Editor Performance Improvements ASP.NET HTML Editor - Improved Toolbar

Gary Gets Fresh with the Frameworks

The DevExpress blogs have been practically sizzling with hot news on our business application frameworks.

Gary has been getting up close and personal with XAF and XPO to bring you the latest previews from the development team, and who wouldn’t when there are so many great-looking improvements to get your hands on?

Let us know what you think of the latest round of enhancements to be added to XPO and XAF.

XPO - Explicit Transactions N-Tier, Instance/Field-level Security and Much More in XPO XAF – Detail View Performance Improvements XAF – Filtering Improvements

DevConnections 2010: The Miller Mind Meld

What is Miller up to this time? No sooner had he quit tripping through the 60s with his Xbox guitar, than a futuristic head-piece appeared.

We always knew Mark had ambitions for global domination, but with his CodeRush Mind Meld, has he come one step closer?

What is Miller up to now? The Mind Meld CodeRush at DevConnections

XtraReports and Entity Framework: Binding Master-Detail to Entity Objects

Hanging out at DevConnections this week, Seth spent some time with Julie Lerman talking Entity Framework.

Julie has been there, done that and written the book. She really is all that and a bag of chips as far as Entity Framework is concerned.

What this pairing resulted in, was a solution to using Entity Framework as a source for a report, and achieving a master-detail type binding to the generated entity objects.

Could this help you? Check it out and let us know what you think.

Entity Framework Tutorial from Julie Lerman

Webinar: An Open Forum with the DevExpress Team

As Julian alluded to in his Message from the CTO, the DevExpress Company Summit is on the horizon.

We invite you to join us in an open forum with the management and development team leads. Take the opportunity to let us know the direction in which you want to see the 2011 Roadmap head. Bring your questions, comments and concerns to us, and make your voice heard on this interactive webinar.

Register your seat for this free webinar and join us live.

Free DevExpress Webinar: Ask DevExpress

Webinar: Credit Crunch Code – Pay Back Your Technical Debt

Technical debt, the silent killer that stalks all software development projects.

As developers we know it exists, and we know when its “interest payments” are bogging us down, but what metrics can we can use to measure its effects and how can we present those to our management teams?

In this free webinar, Gary will outline some of the anti-patterns that commonly cause technical debt. Takeaways will include ways to quantify and mitigate against these debt-ridden patterns.

Register now for your chance to join us on this live webinar.

Free DevExpress Webinar: Technical Debt

eXpand: An Open Source Project with XAF

Apostolis Bekiaris joined the DX-Squad a little over a year ago. His focus for the DevExpress community is XAF.

Having been involved with XAF since it was first made available, he has gained a significant amount of experience and knowledge about the framework. Seeing an opening in XAF's accessibility for developers, he decided to fill it with an open source project.

Read this introductory interview with Tolis, one of the creators of eXpand, and download the extension framework for yourself.

eXpand: An Extension Framework for XAF

DevExpress Webinars: 'The dog ate my laptop'

Fortunately for many of us, our school days are long since over, and with them went the creative excuses for unfinished homework.

Whatever your reason for missing a DevExpress webinar, do not panic. You will always find recordings of the live webinars available to view on the DevExpress Channel.

But honestly, you missed some great ones!

Science of a Great User Experience Getting Things Done for Geeks Mobile Web Best Practices