WinForms - How to manage long text in DocumentManager tabs

Please check out the Problem and Solutions sections in the T629226: WinForms - Long text is cut off in DocumentManager tabs ticket.

We are going to improve this in the upcoming v18.1+. Our designer's favorite is #2, but we cannot implement it in a minor version due to a breaking change. BTW, option #1 shown in the screenshot below also looks fine. Take note of solution #3 as well - you can customize this behavior without writing any code.

Please let me know what option you prefer or if you are handling it differently. Thanks.

BTW, have you modernized your XAF WinForms apps using SVG icons and Light Style in v18.1? Click the screenshot below to see the new look & feel. Do you like it?

Quick questions on our change log

Q1: How often do you check the "Resolved Issues", "Known Issues", "Breaking Changes" pages in our What's New documentation? For instance: "never, did not know about this page"; "every minor"; "every major"; "rarely, only when I encounter an issue"; "once 1-2 year when we upgrade"; your option.
Q2: What would you like to improve about these pages to make your work more comfortable?
Q3: Are you missing anything important from the "New Major Features" section like this for v18.1?

This post idea came after looking at the fixed XAF issues for the upcoming v17.2.8:

As you can see, titles have different formatting and it is not easy to find all issues for a certain platform or module, e.g. Mobile.

This is how a bit better formatted list looks now:

This needs a little bit more discipline from our team, but may be more helpful for our customers. I am  still hesitating because this problem may not exist for many, because Google Analytics reports low visits for these pages.

I hope you can help us see whether to focus on more important things by answering my questions above. Your other thoughts and suggestions are welcome too, as always.

See Also: General Information > Installation > Upgrade Notes

Capturing a user's signature in an XAF mobile application - UPDATE for v17.2.8+

Starting with v17.2.8, MobilePropertyEditor supports the Edit ViewEditMode. We updated our How to use a Signature Pad in XAF Mobile example and enabled SignatureAction in the Edit mode accordingly. This improvement saves end-users time not only for this particular scenario (they no longer require to switch views), but also when working with regular image properties.

To see the difference in action, refer to the GIF file below and compare it with the one from my previous post:

Your feedback is needed!
For early testing, we published a daily build. You can download it using the following link: DevExpressNETComponents-17.2.7.18099.exe. We look forward to hearing from you.

Old entries in the XPObjectType table - YOUR FEEDBACK IS NEEDED!

I am reviewing the priority of a quite dated SC item on the subject and wanted to ask the community for help. The problem may occur when old business class libraries exist in the application folder. By default, XPO tries to load them by the XPObjectType info along with the new versions. This may lead to a conflict at runtime or startup performance degradation. In the latter case, assembly type resolution may come at a cost (see the point 3.5 under How to measure and improve the application's performance).

Why are we hesitating to remove old XPObjectType entries by default?

1. Removing old XPObjectType records affects other apps accessing this database and is serious. Outdated service table records may relate to business class records too (inheritance mapping is in use very often). So, deleting them will lead to foreign key constraint violation. Creating a sophisticated generic solution for this is not easy task.

Usability change for SingleChoiceAction with a single visible sub-item - YOUR FEEDBACK IS NEEDED!!!

We have incorporated the usability improvement from my past post in v18.1 by default. It affects SingleChoiceAction with ShowItemsOnlyClick = False and ItemType = ItemIsOperation  and should improve UX for the majority of our users. We also want to enable the same behavior in an upcoming minor update (e.g., v17.2.6 or next). Our team would appreciate your feedback to help us decide on the latter.

Questions/Risks

While this behavior is always desired for the New & Clone Actions, because their meaning is clear from the context, certain custom and built-in Actions like Show In Report, Change State may be affected when they keep only a single sub-item. Examples:

17.2.5 and older versions:

18.1 (and 17.2.6+, if the majority likes it):

Notice that we've replaced a dropdown/triangle glyph with a simple button. We believe that this visual change is still not breaking (and thus is acceptable for a minor version), and it all is more logical than it was before. Before, when ShowItemsOnClick = False, you could still press the SingleChoiceAction's button blindly, i.e., without expanding its items using the triangle glyph. To help you avoid mistakes, the button is now displayed in the ChoiceActionItem's tooltip. You can also control the default Action item behavior using the DefaultItemMode property. If you do not like the new behavior, you can always set ShowItemsOnClick = True in the Model Editor.

Question: Are you OK to have this new behavior as default in v17.2.6+ too? 

Please answer with +1 or -1 with comments in this post. If you need to test your real apps live before making a decision, I can provide you with v17.2 or v18.1 hotfix builds. Thanks for your help in advance.

UPDATE:
Thanks to everyone! With v17.2.6, this behavior is enabled by default.

XAF Customer Satisfaction and Product Usage Survey - YOUR FEEDBACK IS NEEDED!!!

https://www.devexpress.com/go/XAF_Future_Survey_2017_Dec.aspx (~5 min)

Your feedback will help us ensure that the tools we deliver to market meet your expectations better. Thanks for your help in advance!

(special thanks to a small group of users who has already helped to test and refine these questions)

Survey (~1min): Default location of the Reset View Settings Action - YOUR FEEDBACK IS NEEDED!!!

This command is provided by the standard ResetViewSettingsController and resets all the user customizations of the View's model. It may be helpful when your client customized a lot and was stuck getting things to normal. Due to this scenario the command is available in the main menu toolbar or ribbon by default (+additionally duplicated in context menu in WinForms).

However, we wanted to hear the XAF community thoughts on this default design after receiving several user requests in this regard (examples: one, two, three). As of now, we have no easy capability to know real usages and customizations of XAF Actions in end client apps, so we would greatly appreciate it if you participate in this and coming surveys. Thanks for your help in advance.

https://dxsurvey.com/published?id=45965fae-dfc7-48ac-af26-aee17d2c3ec4

In fact, we already asked our user preferences when this feature was in development, but did not receive much feedback back then to hide this command from the main menu by default.

Controller creation performance optimization v17.2 Preview - YOUR FEEDBACK IS NEEDED!

Starting with version 17.2, we've further optimized the process of creating Controllers that should positively affect forms loading performance and thus overall end user experience, especially in very complex detail forms.  In addition to List Property Editors (learn more about v17.1 improvements in this regard), Detail, Object and Lookup Property Editors, DashboardViewItem and popup windows created in a special way were supported. We are publishing this KB article prior to the 17.2 release to collect early user feedback and improve the overall stability:

https://www.devexpress.com/kb=T535119

If you are an active v17.1 subscriber and want to test this feature with your real world applications on a virtual machine (or another suitable test environment) prior to the official release, please leave a comment to this KB article or rather create a separate private ticket, so that we can verify your account and provide you with a v17.2 preview installation privately.

We would appreciate your thoughts and feedback once you've had the opportunity to try this new feature in your upgraded v17.2 project. Please report any issues and suggestions in our Support Center. Thanks for your help in advance!

What happens when the current user is deleted (by himself/herself or another user) while still using the application?

Deletion of the user who is actively using the app is NOT handled by our security module at the moment (e.g., NullReferenceException and other errors may occur). That is mainly because this operation is very rare, and so far we have not received real-life scenarios from our users where this could be useful. Moreover, deleting by accident is already prevented by showing a confirmation message by the standard DeleteObjectsViewController > DeleteAction.

Refer to this Support Center ticket for more considerations and possible custom solutions.

Your feedback is needed!

Even though we do not provide ready solutions for this specific scenario, we will be more than happy to learn more about your experience in this regard to consider improvements to our product for the future. If you needed to handle such scenarios on your own, please elaborate more on your real-life requirements and implemented solutions. Thanks in advance.

Linking XAF security roles and Active Directory Security Groups by name

We have recently created a new help topic devoted to one of the popular scenarios our users described: How to: Assign the Same Permissions for All Users of an Active Directory Group. This topic demonstrates how to map XAF security roles to AD groups. When a user logs on for the first time, existing roles with names matching the user's AD group names are automatically assigned. If the user membership in AD groups was modified, the associated roles collection will be updated accordingly on the next logon. Take special note that the corresponding XAF security roles with required permissions and matching the names of AD groups must be created first!

This article also required for us to avoid confusion with the AuthenticationActiveDirectory component name, because it does not support Active Directory Security Groups out of the box.  What this component does is just allow logging by the currently logged Windows user automatically or without the logon form.  To initialize the created XAF security user record, the AuthenticationActiveDirectory authentication uses the WindowsIdentity.Name property of an object obtained via the static WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent method to get a user name in the DOMAIN\USERNAME format.

I want to point out one implementation aspect that might be unclear: why did we create a AuthenticationActiveDirectory descendant instead of handling the CustomCreateUser event, which looks simpler? The main reason for using the descendant is that with it, the synchronization of XAF security roles is easier to implement when AD groups are updated.

I hope you find this example helpful. Please let us know in comments if you experienced a similar scenario and describe how you are currently handling it. Thanks in advance!

The recommended approach to hiding the 'Protected Content' columns and Property Editors is improved - YOUR FEEDBACK IS NEEDED!

I have recently updated the HideProtectedContentController code in the How to: Hide the 'Protected Content' Columns in a List View and Property Editors in a Detail View topic. The main change is that the HideProtectedContentController now checks if a visibility state for the target UI element is customized by existing Conditional Appearance rules before applying its own customizations.

void appearanceController_CustomApplyAppearance(object sender, ApplyAppearanceEventArgs e) {
    if(e.AppearanceObject.Visibility == null || e.AppearanceObject.Visibility == ViewItemVisibility.Show) {

        // ...
    }
}

This prevents possible conflicts with existing appearance rules.

If you are using the HideProtectedContentController code in your projects, we would greatly appreciate it if you try the updated code and share your feedback here in comments.

Please note that HideProtectedContentController may make a negative impact on the application performance in complex scenarios.

Questions on managing the Application Model settings in the database - YOUR FEEDBACK IS NEEDED!

We are reviewing usability of the mechanism responsible for storing and managing Application Model differences in the database (aka ModelDifferenceDbStore), and hence wanted to ask you to tell us about your practical experience with it.

In order to do this, please consider these questions:

1. Differences for which levels are you currently storing in the database and how well does this work for you (shared, user, or both)?

2. Have you required customizing differences stored in the database for already deployed production apps? If so, clarify the following points:

2.1. Was this customization done for shared or user levels?

2.2. List the exact use-case scenarios that needed such customizations (e.g., a client screwed up a View layout and could not reset it back to normal)?

2.3. Which solutions and how often did you use for this customization (e.g., direct database updates, editing raw XML after enabling the Administrative UI inside the app, etc.)?

2.4. How well did your current solutions for different customizations work for you so far and what could be improved in them and why?

3. Have you considered the opportunity to customize shared or user differences using the Standalone Model Editor, which visualizes the actual differences in XML content as a nodes tree? If so, clarify the following points to help us better understand the behavior you expect from such a feature:

3.1. Do you need to customize differences for shared, user or both levels?

3.2. Taking the severeness and effect of this operation over all application users, do you think that a logon form should be shown before someone can perform this customization for security reasons? Or, how do you plan to prevent a power user from obtaining the Standalone Model Editor tool binaries and running it locally for this or even harmful purposes?

We would greatly appreciate your answering these questions or providing any other information that would help us see how the current feature works for you and what can be improved further. 

Please provide answers here in comments or rather in the Support Center to track them easier: https://www.devexpress.com/support/center/question/create

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.

Faster opening of DetailView with many visible ListPropertyEditors (not in tabs) in complex XAF solutions with lots of Controllers - YOUR FEEDBACK IS NEEDED!

What is behind this optimization? 

With XAF v17.1, we have introduced some optimizations with regard to Controller creation for a Frame inside ListPropertyEditor, which is usually used to represent associated detail collections. That main idea behind this optimization is filtering out certain Controllers by their TargetXXX properties and not creating them at all .On our test machines, which are often multi-core i7 monsters with 16GB ROM, the loading time after this optimization was cut on 0.2-0.3 seconds or on 20% depending on the view configuration (we expect double time on your real client machines with budget i3-i5 or lower CPUs).

Specially for early testing 1-2 months prior to the official release, we have introduced a feature toggle in the current XAF v16.2 and showing this feature there as a preview. 

When should I be interested in this?

You can skip this post if you do not have many custom Controllers in your apps, because the effect of our optimization will unlikely be noticeable in your case.

You must definitely read further if you have hundreds of own Controllers + use third-party modules like Xafari/eXpand with many custom Controllers in them.

Another condition is DetailView layout configuration, which I would rather clarify with a couple screenshots:

If you have the A configuration, you will NOT benefit much from the optimization we introduced, because there is only one visible ListPropertyEditor in the active tab that affect the overall parent DetailView opening. 

If you have the B configuration, you have several visible ListPropertyEditors that require creating Controllers for their nested Frames immediately with the opening of the parent DetailView and thus slow things down a little. You can either turn our optimization on or consider hiding these ListPropertyEditors behind the tabbed group.

How do I test this right now?

Please download the latest  DevExpressComponents-16.2.5.17082.exe build and set the new XafApplication.OptimizedControllersCreation property to True in the constructor of your XafApplication descendant located in the YourSolutionName.Wxx/WxxApplication.xx file (or in the YourSolutionName.Win/Program.xx or YourSolutionName.Web/Global.asax.xx files), e.g. as follows:

namespace MainDemo.Win {

public partial class MainDemoWinApplication : WinApplication {

public MainDemoWinApplication() {

InitializeComponent();

                        this.OptimizedControllersCreation = true;

}

More enhancements to the High DPI support in WinForms XAF applications - YOUR FEEDBACK IS NEEDED!

A month ago, I announced the High DPI support in WinForms XAF applications. 

XAF team continues making improvements in this area based on your great feedback in Support Center. We would like to share our progress with you and would greatly appreciate your leaving a comment here.

New ways to customize the New Action's items list in XAF v16.2.5 - YOUR FEEDBACK IS NEEDED!!!

Changing the way how the New Action's items list is populated is quite an often task. The default behavior when the current types and all its descendants are added may be inappropriate in large XAF applications with a complex business objects inheritance hierarchy.

That is why we have decided to provide more built-in modes of populating this list. The available modes are listed in the DevExpress.ExpressApp.SystemModule.NewObjectActionItemListMode enumeration.

Value	Description
Default	The current type and all of its descendant types are added.
ExcludeBaseType	All descendants of the current type are added. The current type itself is excluded.
LastDescendantsOnly	Only the last types in the inheritance hierarchy of the current type are added.

Preview of toast notifications using a platform-agnostic method in XAF v16.2.5 - YOUR FEEDBACK IS NEEDED!!!

I am still forcing myself to go to sleep after watching an unreal football drama in Barcelona, so I am writing this short blog post at night.
Besides Visual Studio 2017 official support, XAF v16.2.5 delivers a small gem, which I cannot hide from you too long. Remember that this is an early preview of the functionality we hope to officially release by v17.1 and which is have polished in the coming 2-3 months. So, your feedback is welcome, as always!

Typical usage

Let's modify the platform-agnostic Controller from our demo (C:\Users\Public\Documents\DevExpress Demos 16.2\Components\eXpressApp Framework\SimpleProjectManager\CS\SimpleProjectManager.Module\Controllers\ProjectTaskController.cs) by adding the Application.ShowViewStrategy.ShowMessage call at the end of the Execute event handler:
...
            markCompletedAction.Execute += (s, e) => {
                IObjectSpace viewDataContext = View.ObjectSpace;
                foreach(ProjectTask task in e.SelectedObjects) {
                    task.EndDate = DateTime.Now;
                    task.Status = ProjectTaskStatus.Completed;
                    viewDataContext.SetModified(task); // Mark the changed object as 'dirty' (only required if data properties do not provide change notifications).
                }
                viewDataContext.CommitChanges();
                //viewDataContext.Refresh(); // Optionally update the UI in accordance with the latest data changes.
                Application.ShowViewStrategy.ShowMessage(string.Format("{0} task(s) have been completed!", e.SelectedObjects.Count), InformationType.Success, 4000, InformationPosition.Top);
            };
...
Now, let's start the Windows and Web apps, select a few uncompleted tasks in the ProjectTask ListView and execute the Done! command from the menu.

Result in the UI for various platforms

Web

A nice notification window is managed using the dxToast widget (invoked via the  DevExpress.ui.notify method) from our DevExtreme HTML5/JavaScript library:

Opening a navigation item in a separate web browser tab (shipping in v16.2.5)

This is another follow-up on the EnableMultipleBrowserTabsSupport feature after receiving great user feedback in this blog and via other channels (see my previous post in this regard for more details).

With the recently released XAF v16.2.5, you can open a View in a separate browser tab directly from navigation. To enable this mode, set the static NavigationActionContainer.UseLinks static property in the YourSolutionName.Web/Global.asax.xx file:

        protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) {

            WebApplication.EnableMultipleBrowserTabsSupport = true;

            DevExpress.ExpressApp.Web.Templates.ActionContainers.NavigationActionContainer.UseLinks = true;

When this mode is enabled, an Anchor element is added into nodes of the ASPxTreeView control and into items of the ASPxNavBar control. 

This feature allows you to use generic browser techniques to work with links such as a right mouse button click for context a menu, a Control key press or a mouse wheel click (currently, the approach described in the http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/170731/how-to-open-link-in-a-new-tab-via-shortcut-in-chrome-on-mac article will not work for Macs).

ASPxGridView/ASPxGridListEditor + Server Mode + Select All = ?

I want to pay your attention to this Support Center ticket describing a recent fix for our ASPxGridListEditor, which is a wrapper over the ASPxGridView component as you know.

It is a known and pretty logical Server Mode limitation that the selection of ALL grid rows using the built-in SelectAll check box is NOT supported in this mode. That is because this particular operation defeats all server mode benefits = causes loading the whole data source into the web server memory...

Our ASPxGridListEditor did not manage the "Select All" header cell visibility prior to v16.2.4. We have corrected this mistake and now this button is hidden in server mode by default (SelectAllCheckboxMode = None). The "Select All" button is still available in Client and DataView modes only (SelectAllCheckboxMode = AllPages), though.

If you want, you can implement a custom Controller from the ticket to enable selection of all records on the currently active page only when DataAccessMode = Server (we did not follow this route in the XAF code, because it would be more confusing and even damaging for users who got used to this command). Alternatively, you can set DataAccessMode = Client/DataView  for a required ListView node using the Model Editor (of course, it you do not have many data records).

If these solutions do not help, please describe your real life use-case scenario where this SelectAll feature is needed when grid is operating in server mode. It is possible that we have an alternative and even better technical solution for you, e.g. like we did for Reinhold and his reporting scenario.

Enhanced High DPI support in WinForms XAF applications - YOUR FEEDBACK IS NEEDED!

UPDATED:
Refer to the More enhancements to the High DPI support in WinForms XAF applications - YOUR FEEDBACK IS NEEDED! post for the most recent improvements in this regard.
====

In this post, I will describe how to make your WinForms XAF application look much better if your Windows 7, 8 or 10 is configured to show text and other items larger (150-200% or more which is a usual setting on High DPI (4K) display devices).

The following animation demonstrates the difference between the default and DPI-Aware scaling: http://i.imgur.com/Kgv4geP.gif

This functionality is already available in the most recent XAF update (16.2.4). However, there are several High DPI related bugs that we have fixed after this release. That is why I recommend you to download this hotfix before trying High DPI: DevExpressComponents-16.2.4.17046.exe

In this hotfix, the DPI-aware scaling is already enabled in XAF demos and design-time tools.

Proceed to see how to enable it in your applications.