The Silverlight development team has been hard at work creating our Silverlight datagrid, and I thought that I would let you in on our progress and give you a glimpse as to what you can expect when it's released. Last year at PDC 2009, we demoed what was an early-stage version of the grid. Since then, it has come a long way and is nearing feature completion.
Xceed DataGrid for Silverlight takes user experience to a whole other level. Perfectly smooth horizontal and vertical scrolling, fully animated column reordering and resizing, customizable animations for group expansion and collapse, as well as transition animations for when rows are added or removed, provides an unprecedented level of UI slickness and responsiveness.
Asynchronous data virtualization. THE must-have in a Silverlight data grid, it’s the cornerstone on which Xceed DataGrid for Silverlight is built. We’ve packed a lot into our implementation of this, such as major advancements in how virtualized data is handled, automatic discovery, active pre-fetching and caching of data, quick navigation, and instant grouping. You can add to that built-in support for WCF Data Services and WCF RIA Services, as well as "event-driven" and "full-list" data sources (i.e., pass-through data virtualization) and many more to come, which means that where you get your data from no longer matters. Just connect to the source, and we handle the rest. Simple. Trust me: you haven't seen anything like this in any other grid before.
Sometimes, appearances are everything. Don't like the yellow/orange/i-am-sorry-Catherine-i-do-not-know-the-exact-color border in the PDC-demo theme? Change it! Xceed DataGrid for Silverlight is 100% "blendable" and its elements can be customized to match the look and feel of any application. Or if you prefer, you can use one of the built-in themes that were designed for the grid with user experience in mind.
Now, I know the first question our current WPF clients will have is this: "I have a project that currently uses Xceed DataGrid for WPF. Can I just switch it out for the Silverlight version?" The answer to that is no, you can't. Why? Well there are a couple of reasons. First, Silverlight is not WPF; there are things you can do in WPF that you can't do in Silverlight. Doing a direct API port would have been 1) nearly impossible and 2) would not have allowed us to take full advantage of the Silverlight platform. Second, since the initial release of Xceed DataGrid for WPF, we have developed new, innovative ways of handling data, but it would be impossible to implement them in that product without doing major breaking changes. With our upcoming Silverlight datagrid, we have been able to implement these new techniques without worrying about backwards compatibility. At any rate, although it is not a direct API port, the API will feel very familiar and you should feel right at home using the Silverlight datagrid. We intend to also provide a WPF-compiled version of the Silverlight grid, so if you want to build for both platforms, you will have the option to do so with the Silverlight datagrid.
Want a quick point-by-point list of the features/goodies that we are aiming for? Here you go:
UI
- Ultra smooth and responsive tabular layout
- Multi-level grouping
- Sorting
- Filtering
- Sticky group containers
- Animated vertical and horizontal scrolling
- Fixed and scrollable headers and footers
- Easy group navigation (think something similar to the group-navigation control in Xceed DataGrid for WPF)
- Animated column reordering and resizing
- Row and cell selection
Data Virtualization
- Asynchronous data loading for continuously responsive UI
- Minimal (if at all) code required
- No discovery needed on remote data source
- Pre-fetching and caching of data
- Instant expanding and collapsing of groups
- Quick navigation through data source
- Support for almost any type of data source including WCF Data Services and WCF RIA Services
Editing
- Default editors for all the common data types
- Ability to create custom cell editor controls
- Validation (e.g., IDataErrorInfo, INotifyDataErrorInfo)
While you wait for the official launch of Xceed DataGrid for Silverlight, I will (hopefully) be blogging about specific features and how easily they can be used in any Silverlight application. I will also take you on indepth tours of some of the design concepts behind our latest baby 
In order to get feedback from the community, we will be opening a private beta in March to make sure that we have the best possible product when it is officially released. If you are interested, send me an email to datagridbeta@xceed.com letting me know the type of project in which Xceed DataGrid for Silverlight would be used (e.g., new project, moving existing WPF project to Silverlight, replacing an existing grid) and the timeframe needed to make a decision, and I will sign you up for the beta.
Questions, comments, feature requests? Now's the time!
