Xceed Spring 2023 Release: Exciting Updates, MAUI Expansion, and the Future of .NET

Spring 2023 Release and Updates

Welcome to our first release of the year! We have exciting updates to many of our products, as well as a few surprises in store for you.

First and foremost, let's discuss our WPF products, which remain the primary platform for our UI components.

WPF

Introducing the latest version of Xceed DataGrid for WPF: Version 7.2 not only offers numerous bug fixes but also introduces a new feature for its filtering functionality - flag enumeration filtering. This eagerly anticipated functionality is now available, and I will provide more details in an upcoming blog post, complete with code snippets to demonstrate its correct implementation. Keep an eye out for further features and enhancements to this product in the coming months.

Xceed Extended Toolkit for WPF has also received its share of updates. We continue to develop new features for ExtendedTabControl, the latest addition to the toolkit. This release introduces two new events: AddTabEvent, which is triggered when a new TabItem is added to the control, and RemoveTabEvent, raised when a TabItem is removed. ExtendedTabControl now supports adding custom-type items using the ItemsSource. In total, this version includes 16 bug fixes and improvements. Expect more updates to this product in the near future.

.NET libraries

Moving on to our non-UI controls, I'd like to remind users that our libraries are compatible with recent versions of .NET (.NET 5, .NET 6, .NET 7). One of our most popular products, Xceed Words for .NET, has received 30 bug fixes and improvements, particularly addressing PDF exportation. The next major feature, HTML support, will arrive in the subsequent release, allowing you to create and export Word documents to and from HTML. This highly anticipated functionality will be available soon!

Xceed Workbooks for .NET has also been updated, with new DeleteRange and InsertRange methods enabling the removal or insertion of a range of cells. Additional bug fixes and improvements have been included in this release. The same goes for Xceed Zip for .NET, for which we are committed to maintaining its reputation as the best .NET compression library on the market.

While this covers our current product lineup, look forward to more exciting updates this summer.

.NET 8 and beyond

As for the future of Xceed, I'd like to mention that we are already exploring .NET 8. A beta version is available for testing with Visual Studio 2022 preview edition. Our goal is to ensure that all of our controls are updated so that you won't have to worry about compatibility issues with new .NET versions and Xceed products.

Xceed is growing its team to develop products for a new platform: MAUI. But what exactly is MAUI? MAUI (.NET Multi-platform App UI) is a cross-platform framework designed for building modern, native UIs for Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS using a single, shared codebase. It streamlines the development process by enabling developers to create applications for multiple platforms with .NET and C# programming language, saving both time and effort. However, MAUI currently lacks a comprehensive set of controls.

Leveraging our extensive expertise, Xceed will be launching Xceed Toolkit for .NET MAUI later this year. A free version, featuring a limited control list, is set to be available between late May and early June. Our objective is to develop controls for these platforms that make WPF programmers feel right at home. We'll be sharing more details about this toolkit in the coming weeks, so be sure to keep an eye on the News section of our website.

Thank you for your continued support, and happy coding!