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2009/10/26 (09:10)
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DevExpress Newsletter

22 October 2009
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Message from the CTO

Commoditization

After the rather controversial topic of the last newsletter's Message, I promised Joe Hendricks, one of our DXperience Universal customers, on Twitter that I would talk about orange juice this time around.

When you go to the supermarket wanting to buy orange juice, what sways your selection of which one to buy? After all, not to put too fine a point on it, orange juice is just orange juice.

Perhaps it's the brand you always buy. Perhaps you go for the one with lots of pulp, or the one with none at all. Perhaps you just choose the cheapest. Perhaps you peruse the label to see if it was reconstituted or not. Perhaps you like the added calcium variety. Perhaps you tried them all at one point in a blind tasting, and now just go for the one you liked the best. Perhaps you prefer a carton, or a bottle, be it plastic or glass. Perhaps you go for the ultra expensive juice that was fresh-squeezed on the farm during the dawn hours, with the dew still beading on the fruit.

My point is that orange juice is a commodity. One juice is very much like another, so there are other considerations you take into account before you buy. I'd venture to say that it's the same with buying UI controls: they are also commodities.

When you buy a control, say a grid, you are not just buying any old grid, you have other considerations. After all, grids are all pretty similar, when push comes to shove. So, you also consider things like your familiarity with the vendor, how long they've been in business, how often they issue updates, the documentation (in all the forms it exists), how well the technical support team deal with your questions, how open the vendor is, the ease with which you understand the API and the design, the ease with which your users enjoy using the control and find it intuitive, how flexible the design is, and so on. Maybe it's performance, or the "weight" of the grid rendered in a web page, or the availability of the source code, or a particular feature that makes you decide on a particular one.

At DevExpress, we understand this situation clearly. That's why we not only try and create the best controls you've ever seen or used (biased, me?), but we also spend a lot of time on the supporting "infrastructure" for the controls: our support team, our documentation, our videos, our skins/themes, our regular updates and upgrades, our community efforts, our desire to make software development fun, DXSquad, our evangelists, our management team, and so on. You get all of that for free when you buy any of our controls.

So, next time you need some orange juice, try DXperience.


Julian M Bucknall, CTO
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Contents

Sneak Peek v2009.3: DXCharts for WPF
On the Road with DevExpress ? What's Miller up to this Time?
IDE Tools News: WPF or GDI? Neither. Or Maybe Both
ASP.NET Training in Amsterdam ? Dates for your Diary
Lowdown on the VCL Component Suite
Searching for Customization ? A Case Study from Veriquant
News from the DevExpress Channel
Community Bloggers: Quick Add Reference ? Visual Studio Plug-in
Top 5 Support Issues

Sneak Peek v2009.3: DXCharts for WPF

Another sneak peek for you to feast your eyes on! With the DevExpress development teams working towards code freeze news is beginning to filter out about the enhancements that will feature on v2009 vol 3. This week Julian is focusing on the plethora of options that will augment the experience with DXCharts for WPF. Check it out and tell us what you think.

* Sneak peek: enhancements for charts in WPF in v2009 vol 3

On the Road with DevExpress ? What's Miller up to this Time?

That season is upon us all again ? it's Tradeshow Time! Where are you going to be this Fall? DevExpress is hitting Microsoft TechEd Europe in Berlin, followed by what is shaping up to be a spectacular Platinum Sponsorship Showdown at Microsoft PDC. We've got contests, we've got John Lennon, we've got Miller on a guitar ... and he is challenging you! Check out the latest snoops into the tradeshow green rooms in our posts below and let us know where we can catch up with you this November!

* Getting Into the Groove: Microsoft TechEd Europe 2009
* Mark Miller Will Beat You With a Guitar!
* Rock Out With CodeRush At PDC 2009

IDE Tools News: WPF or GDI? Neither. Or Maybe Both

This week Mark Miller takes you deep into the DevExpress labs to reveal how the IDE Tools team built a framework to abstract the drawing layer away from CodeRush plug-ins. Now a single code base can paint on both GDI and WPF. Mind blowing, to say the least.

* DX Labs: Single Code Base Driving GDI and WPF Simultaneously from CodeRush Plug-ins

ASP.NET Training in Amsterdam ? Dates for your Diary

Our ASP.NET training is live! Have your PA clear your diary for November 23rd and 24th and book your place on our 2-day course now. After your initial feedback, Oliver has updated his blog with more details on the course format and goals, as well as an overview to the content that you can expect if you join us.

Places are very limited so please book now to avoid losing your seat on the course. There is an early bird offer available until November 2nd, details of which you can read in Oliver blog. We are looking forward to seeing you there!

* Amsterdam Training Class: Get It While It's Hot

Lowdown on the VCL Component Suite

Build v47 of our suite of VCL controls is teetering on the edge of a full release. It's so tantalizing close that Richard Morris couldn't resist getting a look in and seeing what the development team were working on. Build v47 includes a brand new major release of ExpressLayout Control v2 and a new beta of the upcoming major update to the ExpressPrinting library v4. It's all systems go for the team as they count down to the release. So while you're hitting F5 on one screen why not take a look at Richard's preview and drop us a line with your feedback.

* More new VCL controls - v47 and a new ExpressLayout Control

Searching for Customization ? A Case Study from Veriquant

Brandon Owensby found himself stuck in a situation that I'll bet many of us have encountered: working with products on a task that intuitively should be straightforward, but in practice is far from it. After a frustrating battle with the limitations and lack of customization of the Microsoft .NET Framework grid control, Brandon sought out an alternative solution and hit upon the XtraGrid and XtraReports from DevExpress.

"Every element of the grid was super customizable from simple things like: numerous settings, being able to easily create my own version of classes, and having the ability to override almost every function easily. I was able to recreate what I had done before with the default .NET grid control in a fraction of the time with XtraGrid and I got more functionality to boot."

Check out how Brandon got hooked on the XtraGrid in our latest developer story.

* Brandon Owensby, Software Developer with Veriquant

News from the DevExpress Channel

The team behind the DevExpress Channel have been celebrating this week after hitting a pretty impressive milestone ? screencast number 500! And what better way to celebrate than to bring you a collection of neat feature tours of the latest additions to your DevExpress arsenal ? our WPF controls. Don't forget, if you are working on a Windows Presentation Foundation project, get only the controls you need with DXperience WPF. This package offers you full access to all of our WPF components in one tidy subscription.

* Download your 30-day free trial of our WPF components

Over to Amanda to take you on your tour of DXperience WPF.

* WPF Grid - Feature Tour
* WPF Charts - Feature Tour
* WPF Carousel - Feature Tour
* WPF Bars - Feature Tour
* WPF NavBar - Feature Tour

Community Bloggers: Quick Add Reference ? Visual Studio Plug-in

Anyone familiar with our newsletter would think that Rory Becker doesn't have a day job! This week Mehul Harry chatted to him about another great plug-in, CR_QuickAddReference, that uses DXCore to address the slow "Add Reference" dialog window in Visual Studio.

Check out the video and give us your thoughts, and don't forget to drop Rory a line with your own ideas for plug-ins that you would like to see!

* Video: Quick Add Reference ? Visual Studio Plug-in

Top 5 Support Issues

Here's this week's top 5 list:

* DXCarousel - Handle the Click event for carousel items
* ASPxEditors - Highlight a focused editor via client-side scripting
* XtraGrid - Show a child form for editing a GridView's focused row
* XtraGrid - Populate the Auto Filter Row based on the Filter Panel's criterion
* XAF - Implement a controller that will work for more than one target object type
For the latest DevExpress news and training materials:
Read blogs on DevExpress community site
Watch Training Videos and Interviews on DevExpress Channel
Follow DevExpress on Twitter
Join the DevExpress Facebook Page
 
 
 
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