This is the time of year in which our clients and many of my co-workers begin inquiring as to what lies ahead here at GrapeCity in 2015. I have tons of new and exciting stuff to share with you about our development efforts in 2015. Here is a quick summary of what we have already done this year and what's planned for the months ahead. Thank you to those of you who have submitted feature requests and/or have given us feedback over the last year. It is through your feedback and insight that we are able to keep making our products better. Without further ado, here's our roadmap for 2015:
Wijmo 5
The collection of JavaScript controls released in October of 2014 will have significant new controls added to the suite this year, including Financial Charts, FlexSheet and TreeView. You'll notice we will be improving our existing controls with additional extensions and new features. For example, we have recently extended the FlexGrid control to support row and column freezing, column-based filters, and a grouping UI. We have also extended the FlexChart control to support multiple Y-axes, log-axes, and a range selector. We will soon add FlexChart extensions for analytics and interactions. In parallel with this work, we will keep improving the mobile experience for all controls. A good example of this is the implementation of focus handling in all of our input controls, providing you the ability to detect whether actions were caused by mouse or touch interaction to fine-tune the control behavior. Throughout the year we will be continually improving our support for the most popular tools and frameworks in the industry, such as Microsoft Visual Studio IntelliSense, Ember.js components and future versions of AngularJS.
SpreadJS
We will introduce a new lightweight Spread control for ASP.NET with MVC support. This new control will have a new "Worksheets" layout, and we will decouple the calc engine so it can be used with the regular HTML DOM. Plus, we will introduce enhanced cell types for more flexible data entry scenarios. These will include phone number, credit card number, zip code, address, and others.
ASP.NET
We will launch a new ASP.NET MVC Edition. This new product will include an MVC version of the FlexGrid control and other visualization controls like charts, gauges, and input controls, as well as project templates, editor templates, and professionally designed themes. Microsoft is planning on a major redesign of ASP.NET and we will have tools that further complement the new concepts introduced in ASP.NET 5. Our controls will support this next version of ASP.NET as soon as it is released. The ASP.NET Web Forms Edition will include a touch-enabled GridView, new features in our Map control and an Excel-like lightweight spreadsheet control.
LightSwitch
In April we plan to release a new set of LightSwitch HTML controls based on our popular Wijmo5 JavaScript controls. We'll Introduce FlexGrid for LightSwitch, a versatile datagrid built on cutting edge technologies like HTML5, CSS, and ECMAScript 5. With FlexGrid you can show tabular or hierarchical data with ease with built-in support for grouping, filtering, sorting, editing. In subsequent releases we will debut Chart and Gauge controls for LightSwitch.
Xuni
Our newest product offering will focus on data visualization in the beginning of 2015. In the 2015/v2 release of Xuni slated for July 2015, the emphasis will be on data input and analysis using what will be a newly added FlexGrid control along with input controls for cross-platform mobile development. Towards November of 2015, and the third version of Xuni, we will expand the offering to include scheduling, reporting and documents. The bigger story with Xuni is how we are offering it. In v1 we are supporting Xamarin.Forms usage only, but in v2 we will introduce native offerings for Android and iOS developers writing in Java and Objective-C. Xuni Enterprise will include everything for all languages and devices and we'll also have sub editions of Xuni for each type of user. Of course, Xuni Enterprise will be part of GrapeCity ComponentOne Ultimate.
WinForms
In the 2015 v1 release, which is scheduled for March, our WinForms edition of controls will include the following enhancements:
- A new RangeSlider control, support for SSAS cubes in our OLAP controls, an improved C1ReportDesigner application, and performance improvements in several controls.
In the v2 (July) and v3 (November) releases we are planning to add the following:
- Support for new barcode encodings (included in the stand-alone BarCode control as well as in C1Report), data-binding support in C1GanttView, new controls in C1Input, and major enhancements in C1Report, including better Crystal reports import and a new ribbon-based print preview control.
XAML
For our WPF edition of controls, we will introduce a new FlexSheet control for easily importing spreadsheets, applying formulas, manipulating rows, and performing cell styling. In addition, we will add barcodes for WPF and unveil a new documents/reporting library developed for C1Reports. Plus, we will support themes for the standard Microsoft Ribbon control. Other enhancements include: asynchronous processing for OLAP (all versions), ShapeFile support in C1Maps, and OpenType support in our PdfViewer control. For WinRT, the focus is on Windows 10 support. In 2015/v1, we will improve touch support in FlexGrid and Calendar with some unique features like row/column reordering by touch, and quick month-year touch navigation in calendar. We will also add a few small controls that you'll find useful like range slider and grid splitter, and we're closing the gap between tablet and phone apps by supporting all remaining WinRT 8.1 controls on the phone (OrgChart, Sparkline, and Scheduler). Finally, we will release a FlexSheet control for WPF (a beta version will be available in 2015/v1).
ActiveReports
In 2015, we will introduce new lightweight viewers for all platforms. In parallel with this, we are working on various optimizations for performance and memory usage. We will also introduce shared styling functionality between RDL and Page Reports, so single style sheets can be used for multiple reports with tighter integration between core and designers, along with expanded public APIs to allow for more customization and configuration control. Additionally, we will add enhancements to our Word and PDF export, and to 'Section Reports' including Expressions, and RenderDevice support.
Spread
This year we will add Pivot Table functionality to the WinForms version of Spread, and will add full browser/touch support to the ASP.NET version of the product. We will also add various optimizations for performance and memory usage, making Spread even faster than it is today. We look forward to all that this year will bring, including new technologies and partnerships, and look forward to bringing the most relevant new features and products now and in the future. As always, we welcome your feedback, let us know what else you'd like to see here.
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