Actipro UIStudio Control Suite

Actipro UIStudio contains our next generation of bar and docking controls, which provides all the latest docking toolbar, menu, tool window, and document window functionality found in VS.NET 2005 and Office 2003. UIStudio also contains great TabStrip and NavigationBar controls. Check out this suite of high-quality user interface controls that will grow over time.

By combining UIStudio with our other products, such as SyntaxEditor, you'll have a complete solution for adding rich UI functionality to your application. UIStudio is based off of the same WinUICore framework that SyntaxEditor and Wizard use. This enables completely customizable renderering and an improved licensing model.

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Detailed Product Description

Next-generation dockable toolbars, menus, statusbars, dockable windows, tabstrips, and navigationbar controls. All controls in UIStudio have multiple rendering styles that are completely customizable and have designer support.

Bar Controls features:

• Powerful command / command link design model in which commands each define an operation and command links represent one or more instances of the command within the user interface.
• Command types include normal buttons, popup buttons, expander buttons, split buttons, labels, textboxes, and comboboxes.
• Normal and split buttons can be checkable, which can be placed in check groups.
• Options for automatically toggling the checked state of checkable buttons when they are clicked, and unchecking any other checkable buttons in the same check group.
• Command links can be placed on menubars, toolbars or menus.
• Tooltips for command links.
• Dockable toolbars and menubars support docking on all sides of their host container, as well as floating mode.
• Instance properties and global overrides such as CanDockHostLeft, CanClose, etc. give precise over dockable toolbar capabilities.
• Ability for dockable toolbars to auto-show/hide based on what application mode is set.
• Overflow and flow dockable toolbar layout modes.
• Reset dockable toolbar functionality and Add/Remove Buttons functionality.
• Tear-off menus.
• Toolbar display style for popup menus.
• Save/load command and command link configurations to XML layout files.
• Bar control merge and revert merge makes supporting MDI situations easier.
• Stand-alone toolbars.
• Statusbar control that supports panels with links, animated images, progressbars, and more.
• Extremely advanced keyboard shortcut processing that supports application modes, chords (two-key sequences), and more.
• Multiple keyboard shortcuts may be assigned for each command.
• Popup menus with a design-time popup menu designer.
• Command / command link design model allows for total run-time UI customization, just like in Office or VS.NET.
• Quick customize mode of menubar and toolbar command links (via holding down of Alt key).
• Much more.

Dock Controls features:

• Dock tool windows on all sides of a central client area, in nested hierarchies.
• Multiple styles of Whidbey-style docking guides and drop-target hints.
• Attach several tool windows in one container, displayed with tabs.
• Tear off tool windows into floating windows.
• Place tool windows in collapsible auto-hide mode to preserve client area real estate.
• Tool window inner-fill mode.
• Global defaults for tool window capability control (CanDockLeft, CanAutoHide, CanClose, etc.) with tool window instance overrides.
• Load and save tool window layouts directly to XML data files or persist layout data in some other media, such as a database.
• Dynamically read and write custom XML data to layout data.
• Option to turn off MDI so that a single control can be used to fill the client area.
• Two styles of MDI - standard and tabbed.
• Standard MDI allows for normal MDI windows that can be tiled and cascaded.
• Tabbed MDI has tabstrips that allow for selection of the current document.
• Tabbed MDI tabs can be dragged to create new horizontal or vertical tab groups.
• Tabbed MDI containers can display a drop-down list of active documents and/or use scroll buttons to smoothly scroll through tabs that are out of view.
• Document windows track modified states and reflect them in the user interface.
• Ctrl+Tab tool and document switching with the optional Next Window Navigation dialog.
• Ability to cancel the closing of tool and document windows.
• Programmatically dock all tool windows anywhere in the layout and move/resize floating tool windows at run-time.
• Dynamically create new tool windows and document windows.
• Built-in default context menus that may be cancelled to provide custom menus.
• Detailed event model.
• Tool Windows dialog available in designer to aid in locating and manipulating tool windows.

TabStrip features:

• Align tabs to the left, top, right, or bottom.
• Optional display of close and options buttons.
• Three modes of tab overflow handling (normal, shrink-to-fit, and scroll buttons).
• Scroll buttons overflow mode provides smooth scrolling of tabs.
• Set images and text for tabs.
• Control minimum and maximum tab sizes.
• Handle an event to provide tooltip text for tabs on-the-fly.
• Ability to handle automatic drag/drop reordering of tabs.
• Option to hide tabs if only one tab is open
• Ability to cancel selected tab changes.

NavigationBar features:

• Complete implementation of Navigation Bar functionality found in Outlook 2003.
• Buttons can be collapsed to an overflow area, allowing for more client area real estate.
• Overflow chevron button provides access to customization features and hidden buttons.
• Built-in Navigation Bar Options dialog for reordering buttons and controlling which buttons are visible.
• Support for large and small image sizes.
• Ability to disable specific buttons.
• Ability to cancel selected pane changes.
• A separate NavigationBarPanel control that can act as a container and renders in three modes (normal, header, and sub-header modes).