Take the world’s most mature, most powerful, and fastest WPF datagrid around, add Xceed’s Cardflow™ 3D view (also known as Xceed 3D Views for WPF), then add Xceed Editors for WPF, and you have a powerful, multi-talented 3-in-1 WPF datagrid solution, a veritable suite of datagrid-related products in its own right.

Xceed DataGrid for WPF Professional Edition, a rock-solid, time-tested grid control for Windows Presentation Foundation, has more features than any other offering and a flexible, extensible object model. The datagrid is also the fastest, providing unbeatable performance, handling millions of rows and thousands of columns while delivering an exceptional user experience. It’s easy to understand why it’s the most-adopted WPF datagrid available: the users of Xceed DataGrid for WPF—which number in the tens of thousands—know they have the best and regularly say so on one of the most active WPF forums around!

Featuring rich in-place editing and the 12 flexible, themed, and themable editor controls that are also usable outside the grid (including a datepicker and a masked textbox—two important editor controls that Windows Presentation Foundation lacks) that Xceed Editors for WPF provides, Xceed DataGrid for WPF Professional Edition delivers hierarchical master-detail and many other advanced features.

Developed entirely for WPF and built for .NET 3.5, it also features high-quality, pixel-perfect themes such as Glass, Office 2007, and Windows Media Player 11, as well as Classic, Luna, Aero, Royale, and Zune. The datagrid’s rich printing support allows for easy report creation, while its statistical rows and functions can be used both inside and outside of a grid in any element. Column stretching and column widths supporting star values are also supported. Automatic Excel-like filtering lets end-users better manage the data they see, as do the fixed-column and the custom sorting functionalities. Finally, UI virtualization reduces load time and memory usage.

Xceed DataGrid for WPF Professional Edition is available in cost-effective team and site licenses. Standard e-mail support is provided with the Professional Edition, but adding a Vanguard subscription gives you upgrades and priority support for an entire year. Full C# and XAML source code is available in the Blueprint Edition.

Version 3.0 of the Professional Edition of Xceed DataGrid for WPF features the addition of stunning, flexible 3D views, starting with the Cardflow™ 3D view. This view gives developers and end-users complete control over aspects such as card offsets, spacing, and angles; camera position and angle; and field of view. Its multiple card layouts and transitions give total flexibility in the way that title, image, and data regions are displayed. End-users can even switch between any 2D and 3D view on the fly, while the datagrid retains its state. The product’s Cardflow™ 3D view can be seen online in the Xceed DataGrid for WPF Live Explorer (click on Displaying Data, then 3D Views). Additional views are being developed and will be added to the Professional Edition as they become available.

A choice of four multi-surface themes is provided for use with this new view: Three Office themes (Blue, Black, Silver), and Chameleon, which lets you choose the gradient colors. Several new backgrounds usable with all views are also provided, as are textures for the 3D and 2D cards.

Also new to version 3.0 of the Professional Edition are column virtualization, column stretching and column widths supporting star values, and custom sorting, as well as substantial performance increases, the ability to handle millions of rows and thousands of columns, improved validation architecture, support for IDataErrorInfo, easy binding to XML data sources, and inserting records into non-IBindingList sources.

Version 3.0 is only the latest in a series of upgrades and updates that have made Xceed DataGrid for WPF Professional Edition the most mature, most powerful, and the fastest WPF datagrid on the market. Indeed, in under two years, we’ve constantly been improving this product, with three major upgrades (two of which were in 2008!), four minor upgrades, and 11 service releases, all of which are available to Vanguard subscribers. And we have no intention of stopping: we already working on the next upgrade!

For details on the upcoming release of version 3.0 of the Express Edition of Xceed DataGrid for WPF, see below.

Entering its fifteenth year of operation, Xceed Software Inc. has built an enviable reputation providing developers with solid, feature-rich, fast components and controls that are easy to use, and ardently promoting component-oriented programming. Xceed has a long history of supporting Microsoft’s platforms and technologies, most recently with WPF and Silverlight in 2007 and 2008.

By always being among the first to adopt the latest technological advancements at Microsoft, Xceed has remained at the forefront of the software component industry, dating back to the early 1990s, when Xceed started out with VBX controls, moved on to OCX and ActiveX controls soon after, and then embraced the .NET Framework. With the November 2000 beta of Zip for .NET, Xceed was the first company to provide a component entirely rewritten and rearchitectured for the Microsoft .NET Framework.

The last two years, of course, have seen the release of two commercial firsts: the first UI control for WPF and the first component for Silverlight 2, namely, Xceed DataGrid for WPF and Xceed Upload for Silverlight, respectively. Thanks to Xceed’s software components, over 50,000 developers throughout the world have been able to drastically cut the development time of their software—saving money and liberating precious resources—and also adopt new technologies sooner and more easily.

With the May 2008 launch of Xceed Upload for Silverlight, Xceed reaffirmed its commitment to Microsoft’s technologies and became the first to provide a commercial offering for Silverlight 2.

Xceed Upload for Silverlight lets you add upload capabilities to any Silverlight 2 Beta 2 application quickly and easily. All of the product’s upload operations are asynchronous, which means that the Web page hosting your application remains perfectly responsive and usable throughout the transfer. Multiple files can be uploaded in a single transaction, solving a problem inherent in the current version of Microsoft’s Silverlight technology by gathering field contents in a Silverlight form, then formatting it into a standard request that any modern Web server can understand for subsequent processing.

Xceed Upload for Silverlight also features a rich set of events that lets your application monitor and control every step of an upload operation, as well as options for GZip and Deflate compression, customizing the HTTP request it will send, and Base64 encoding to support Web browsers that do not upload non-ASCII data.

Of course, because it’s based on Microsoft’s Silverlight technology, Xceed Upload for Silverlight allows you to seamlessly integrate the product’s upload capabilities into the beautiful and compelling end-user experience that Silverlight-enabled rich Internet applications are all about, which will run in multiple browser types on multiple OS types.

Also included is Xceed Http Server Tools for ASP.NET, which gives you classes that make handling compressed/encoded files as easy as working with regular files, decompressing/decoding them automatically. Working with uploaded strings is similarly simplified. But if you choose not to use compression/encoding in your Silverlight application, the component then provides 100% client-side execution.

Xceed Upload for Silverlight comes with comprehensive documentation that fully integrates into Visual Studio, in addition to a variety of C#, VB.NET, and JavaScript sample applications. A Blueprint Edition is available, which gives you the full source code of the product’s assemblies. Finally, a Vanguard subscription provides a full year of priority support and upgrades.

The product supports Windows Vista, Windows XP SP2, Windows 2000, and Windows Server 2003 (except IA-64), and runs in Internet Explorer 7 and 6, Firefox 2 and 1.5, and Safari (Mac OS 10.4.8+ only). Note: Some OS/browser combinations are not supported by Silverlight.

And Xceed’s support for Silverlight doesn’t stop there. We’re currently working on our next Silverlight 2 product, Xceed Real-Time Zip for Silverlight, planned for a Q4 2008 release.

Version 3.0 of the Express Edition of Xceed DataGrid for WPF is slated for release during the final quarter of 2008. This version will feature general performance increases, easy binding to XML data sources, improved validation architecture, and more.

For those unfamiliar with the Xceed DataGrid for WPF Express Edition, this free yet fully functional version offers all the basic features developers need from a datagrid, and ten times more. It provides full distribution rights, bugfixes, updates, and an unlimited number of licenses per company. Simply register to start using it. Support is available in Xceed’s community forums. Comprehensive documentation that fully integrates into Visual Studio is included, as are C# and VB.NET sample applications.

Xceed 3D Views for WPF delivers the kind of compelling and stunning 3D interactivity that end-users have come to expect in today’s modern software. Although the 2D table view available in Xceed DataGrid for WPF Professional Edition is the trusted powerhouse when it comes to presenting and editing data, many applications that don’t need the advanced features it offers can benefit greatly from a 3D approach. Consequently, Xceed 3D Views for WPF offers only a subset of the features found in Xceed DataGrid for WPF Professional Edition, focusing on 3D views. Applications created using Xceed’s Cardflow™ 3D view give developers and end-users complete control over aspects such as card offsets, spacing, and angles; camera position and angle; and field of view. Additional views are being developed and will be added as they become available. A choice of four themes is provided: Three Office 2007 themes (Blue, Black, and Silver), and Chameleon, which lets you choose the gradient colors. The product’s 3D views can be seen online in the Xceed DataGrid for WPF Live Explorer (click on Displaying Data, then 3D Views).

And because it’s powered by the same engine that drives Xceed DataGrid for WPF—the most powerful one on the market—end-users will have a snappy, responsive experience when working with data. Developed entirely for WPF and built with .NET 3.5, Xceed 3D Views for WPF is provided with comprehensive documentation that fully integrates into Visual Studio, and includes C# and VB.NET sample applications.

For developers who need it all, Xceed DataGrid for WPF Professional Edition provides all of the 3D views included in Xceed 3D Views for WPF and much more: Xceed’s industry-defining 2D table view and card view; 12 editors usable outside the datagrid; hierarchical master/detail, and grouping with UI virtualization; custom detail relations; 18 themes (including Glass, Office 2007, and Windows Media Player 11, as well as Classic, Luna, Aero, Royale, and Zune); rich printing support; statistical rows and functions that can be used both inside and outside of a grid in any element; column stretching and column widths supporting star values; automatic Excel-like filtering; fixed columns; and custom sorting. Adding a Vanguard subscription gives you upgrades and priority support for an entire year.

Want to meet some of the people behind Xceed DataGrid for WPF, including its head developers? Stop by our exhibitor booths at PDC 2008 this October and ask any questions you might have, make suggestions for future releases, or just introduce yourself and tell us how you use our datagrid. We will be demonstrating version 3.0 of Xceed DataGrid for WPF, as well as some new prototypes.

If you would like to set up a private meeting with our team, please contact Charles Duncan to schedule a time and place. He can be reached by phone at 450-442-2626, ext. 228, or by e-mail at duncanc@xceed.com.