How to copy or clone an existing report

Today I've updated a related Support Center article where I listed several possible ways of accomplishing this task. 

I would appreciate it if you describe in comments which approach # you are using yourself or describe your own solution, if it is not listed there. Thanks in advance!

Documentation updates with regard to ways to resize windows in XAF

We have recently updated our online documentation in this regard, so you may be interested to check it out:
    Task-Based Help > How to: Adjust the Size and Style of Pop-up Dialogs (WinForms)
    Task-Based Help > How to: Adjust the Size and Style of Pop-up Dialogs (ASP.NET)

Attentive readers could notice that the PopupWindowShowAction.CustomizePopupWindowParams event arguments now provide the new Size and Maximized properties that can be used to specify the popup window size from a platform-agnostic module in certain cases (check the end of both articles above for more details on the limitations).

Of course, these code solutions can be further improved based on your business requirements. For instance, if you want to provide a developer or application user with the capability to specify sizes in the Model Editor, you can extend required View node types (e.g., IModelView) with the Width and Height attributes in the Application Model and then modify the aforementioned code to read these attributes respectively. Refer to the eXpressApp Framework > Concepts > Application Model > Extend and Customize the Application Model in Code article for more details.

Please tell me about your experience with these solutions or about anything you would love to improve in this regard. Thanks in advance.

The Frame.GetController method may return null when the XafApplication.OptimizedControllersCreation property is set to True

With XAF v17.1, Solution Wizard sets the XafApplication.OptimizedControllersCreation property to True for newly created XAF projects (existing projects will not be affected). 

To avoid possible null reference exceptions in nested List Views, always check if the Frame.GetController<ControllerType> method result is not null when the OptimizedControllersCreation property is true. The latter option is required to get faster loading of DetailView when it contains a lot of nested ListView items (learn more...).

Our online documentation was already updated to describe this optimization specificity and add these null-checks everywhere; e.g., check theses examples: one, two. KB articles, Code Examples and popular Support Center tickets are not yet updated, but we hope to do this with time as well. Should you find missing checks in our learning materials, please contact us.

ASPxColorPickerPropertyEditor - New ASPxColorEdit-based editor for color properties

With XAF v17.1, you can consider using the new DevExpress.ExpressApp.Web.Editors.ASPx.ASPxColorPickerPropertyEditor class for representing color properties. It is enabled by default only in newly created XAF v17.1+ projects (existing projects will continue using the previous ASPxColorPropertyEditor). 

Refer to the Property Editors | Color Properties section in the FeatureCenter.Web demo to play with the new editor live.

This is a small feature, but it is still worth mentioning here because we received several user requests for it. Finally, we wanted to go away from the custom tailored editor we used (it was created many years ago before ASPxColorEdit) and this was a good task for a junior developer☺.

What about you? Are you using this editor in your apps? If so, please tell us more about your typical uses.

Web Layout Manager improvements and important changes in XAF v17.1

In the 17.1 version, we have improved the scenario of loading the ASPxPageControl tab content when XafApplication.DelayedViewItemsInitialization equals True and the Conditional Appearance module is involved. So, if you encountered missing or not fully loaded tab contents in this configuration, and had to previously adjust the application-level DelayedViewItemsInitialization or View-level DelayedItemsInitialization options to avoid this behavior (learn more...), starting with v17.1, it is possible to revert these options to True by default. 

Take special note that these improvements required us to introduce some changes, which may affect a very small group of users who created and registered custom layout group templates in WebLayoutManager. Frankly speaking, this was needed for very advanced scenarios (we could locate only a few cases in our large Support Center database), so we expect that the majority of XAF users will not be affected by these changes. Anyway, if you feel or know that you could have been affected, refer to the Web Layout Manager improvements and important changes in XAF v17.1 KB Article for more details.

BTW, have you ever created custom layout item and group templates for WebLayoutManager?:-) If so, please share your use-cases in comments. I am asking because it is quite possible that we already have better solutions for you (e.g., expandable/collapsible layout groups are already supported out-of-the-box)!

The latest XAF v16.2.6 hot fix build for missing collections in the filter editor and a few other issues

I wanted to draw your attention to the subject because the official v16.2.6 contained a few trending issues which were not covered by our automated tests till now:

http://downloads.devexpress.com/Share/DXP/170410/DevExpressComponents-16.2.6.17100.exe

Thankfully, we could provide quick fixes for them and also increased the number of unit and functional tests. Anyway, we apologize for all the inconvenience they might have caused you and your business.

The issues that can attract your attention most of all are:
T500881 - An exception thrown from a popup dialog unexpectedly terminates the whole application execution when debugging in Visual Studio

T498474 - Filter Editor - Collection properties are missing in the property list when DataAccessMode = Server or InstantFeedback after migrating to v16.2.6

Let me know if you experience any difficulties with this hot fix build.

BTW, consider checking the Known Issues section in our What's New documentation if you encounter an issue with our products, because we always inform our customers of such issues + there you can see reports from other clients. I hope you find this information helpful for the future.

More secure password generation algorithms for built-in security system classes are available in XAF v16.2 and v17.1

We have offered new options for those of you who need to deploy apps to production environments with the FIPS policy enforced (e.g., government desktop computers or highly secured web servers). XAF APIs now support FIPS compliant algorithms for more secure user passwords encryption and images hashing. 

Please refer to the article below for more details and let me know what you think of it:

FIPS-compliance changes to the DevExpress.Persistent.Base.PasswordCryptographer and DevExpress.ExpressApp.Utils.ImageLoader classes