Our thanks to everyone who reviewed our preliminary ASP.NET Core 2020 Roadmap last year. Your feedback helped us refine our development plans and to finalize our 2020 Roadmap.
Should you have any questions about our 2020 Roadmap or if you’d like to discuss your development needs further, please post a comment below. We’ll be happy to follow up.
Visual Studio Integration (v20.1-v20.2)
Our new scaffolding wizard will help you generate API Controllers from eXpress Persistent Objects (XPO) models.
We will release existing DevExtreme-based project templates with a new unified wizard. This new wizard will allow you to select.NET Core version, View type (MVC or Razor Pages), project layout (Material or Bootstrap), and a few more options.
Official Product Release Schedule
In 2019, we introduced and released community tech previews (CTPs) of several major components. In 2020, we expect to officially ship the following products:
Gantt
We will officially release ASP.NET Core Gantt in our first major release of 2020 (v20.1) with the following new features:
- Localization support
- New toolbar with commands to edit default items and add custom items
- New Current Time Marker to indicate current date and time
- Data validation support
- Custom task color support
- Touch device support
In our second major release of 2020 (v20.2), we plan to add the following enhancements to our ASP.NET Core Gantt control:
- Export the Gantt content to PDF, PNG, etc.
- Template support (Gantt chart tasks)
- Context menu customization
- Task Detail dialog customization.
Diagram
The Diagram for ASP.NET Core will be available in the v20.1 release and include the following features:
- Performance enhancements
- Custom shape templates
- New UI that offers additional workspace for a document. This should improve user experiences on mobile and tablet devices.
- Dash, dot, and other types of lines for shapes and connectors
- Support for touch devices
v20.2 will introduce the following new features:
- Toolbar and context menu customization
- New API to refresh Diagram document when a data model is changed outside the component
- Text validation in shapes and connectors
- Automatically resize shapes based on text content
- New API to restrict end-user operations such as shape resizing, dragging, adding or removing shapes, dragging shapes out of container, etc.
- Shape rotation support
File Manager
Our first release of 2020 (v20.1), will include a production version of the ASP.NET Core File Manager. It will include the following new features:
- Upload and download files via our ArrayFileProvider
- Declarative column customization using component options
- New API to manage file and directory selection and control end-user actions on UI elements
- Intuitive file management error handling support
- Notification and Progress panel UX enhancements
- Item hover and selection within the thumbnail view
- Touch device support enhancements
Improved Responsiveness/Adaptivity (v20.2 or later)
To help you leverage the responsive capabilities of many of our ASP.NET Core controls, we're working on creating a fully responsive real-world application. We're building it from scratch with modern approaches to responsive and adaptive design. Our goal is to have it look and work perfectly on any screen - from wide desktops and tablets to mobile phones. Adaptability enhancements are supported by many of our components from Toolbars and Menus to our Scheduler and DataGrid for ASP.NET Core.
DataGrid/TreeList
New Export to Excel API (v20.1)
We plan to enhance the Export to Excel feature by leveraging the ExcelJS library which provides more flexibility and robustness.
The new export capabilities will give you granular control when exporting Excel files. To make the migration process smooth between versions, we'll offer both options (old and new) side-by-side for a limited time.
We expect to deliver the following features prior to official release:
- Introduce transparent (WYSIWYG) export of our DataGrid’s column format.
- Export the DataGrid’s filter configuration as Excel worksheet column filters.
- Fully document our new export to Excel API.
- Demonstrate popular usage scenarios via technical demos.
Remote Validation Support
We will extend the support for Asynchronous Validation Rule in DataGrid/TreeList cells for the row and batch editing modes.
API Enhancements
We plan to improve the design-time experience of both our DataGrid and TreeList when using MVVM-like reactive frameworks such as React, Vue, and Angular. You’ll be able to work with the component state via bindings/properties rather than via instance methods. For instance, you’ll be able to bind expanded detail row IDs in the markup instead of calling the ‘expandRow’ and ’collapseRow’ methods.
We will allow you to track and control the following DataGrid and TreeList states:
- Expanded group rows
- Expanded master-detail rows
- Expanded adaptive rows
- DataSource properties (items, totalCount, summary)
- Load panel visibility
- Validation state (invalid cells, error text and position)
In addition, we plan to introduce the following API enhancements:
- Add new editing-related ‘saving’ and ‘cancel’ events
- Allow you to manipulate DataGrid/TreeList data without using a CustomStore
PivotGrid
New Export to Excel API (v20.2)
We received a lot of positive feedback about the new Export to Excel API mentioned above in the DataGrid section and expect to extend it to PivotGrid in 2020.
UI Components
Editors & Form Layout
Label Animations (v20.1)
According to Material Design Guidelines, editor placeholder text can turn into a label once the editor obtains focus. We will add this feature to our editor controls.
HTML/Markdown Editor
Table Support (v20.2 or later)
ASP.NET Core HTML/Markdown Editor (CTP) core is based on the open-source implementation known as Quill. Quill 2.0 was expected to ship in 2019 with a new API and with table support. Unfortunately, Quill 2.0 has not been released.
Support for tables is an important feature and therefore, we cannot release a final version of our HTML/Markdown Editor until we find a way to implement tables. If Quill 2.0 is not released or we can’t deliver this capability with Quill 1.x, this feature may not be released in 2020.
Upload Images via a Form, Drag-and-Drop, and Copy/Paste (v20.2 or later)
Though we were unable to deliver this feature in 2019, we have prepared a custom solution you can use today. We expect to integrate this feature once we resolve the table support issue mentioned earlier.
Scheduler
Hour Values within the Recurrence Form (v20.1)
Your end-users will be able to specify the ‘hour’ portion of a recurring appointment:
Sticky Group/Resource Names (v20.1)
When scrolling a wide or high group, names can exceed visible boundaries. We'll enhance this with our new implementation where sticky names will remain visible during scroll operations.
Virtual Scrolling (v20.2)
To help improve overall performance and usability, we will add a new virtual scrolling mode to our Scheduler component. When enabled, only visible appointments will be rendered.
Data Visualization
Annotations in Maps, Pie and Polar Charts
We plan to introduce the recent chart annotations feature for Maps, Pie, and Polar Charts.
Custom Position of Chart Axes
Chart axes are always rendered on the edges of a chart which impairs its readability. To solve this, we are going to give the chart axes the capability to intersect at any value. Please, refer to our discussion page for more information.
Additional Customization Options
We're adding templates to help you render images (or other custom content) within chart axis labels.
The information contained within this blog post details our current/projected development plans. Please note that this information is being shared for INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY and does not represent a binding commitment on the part of Developer Express Inc. This roadmap and the features/products listed within it are subject to change. You should not rely on or use this information to help make a purchase decision about Developer Express Inc products.