WPF — Early Access Preview (v24.2)

.NET 9 Support

To simplify filtering, our WPF Grid control now automatically rounds TimeOnly values to the nearest minute. If your data contains TimeOnly values that only differ in seconds or milliseconds, these values will be combined into a single filtering entity. On the UI side, we’ve simplified interval-based criteria (to improve usability) within both the Filter Panel and AutoFilter Row. 

PropertyGrid – DateOnly & TimeOnly Support

Our WPF Property Grid can now automatically generate an editor (with appropriate settings) when an edited object uses DateOnly or TimeOnly properties.

New TimeOnly Functions

Keyboard Navigation & Screen Reader Enhancements

ButtonEdit – Focus Editor Buttons

You can now focus buttons within ButtonEdit descendants and trigger associated actions. To enable this option, set ButtonEdit.AllowFocusEditorButtons to true. 

RatingEdit – Changing Values With Arrows 

RatingEdit allows you to modify the current value with arrow keys. Once a value is modified, it will be pronounced by a screen reader.  

Card View – Expand & Collapse Shortcuts

We added  Ctrl + Plus & Ctrl + Minus shortcuts to expand/collapse cards within our WPF Card View.

Column Chooser – Keyboard Navigation

Our Data Grid Column Chooser now supports keyboard navigation, allowing you to select/deselect columns with the Space key.

ImageEdit – Toolbox Button Navigation

Users can now navigate through toolbar buttons within the ImageEdit and trigger associated actions using the keyboard. 

HyperLinkEdit – Visible Focus State

Previously, HyperLinkEdit did not display a visual change when focused. Users can now see when the control is focused and activate the associated action with the Space key

Data Grid – Screen Reader Enhancements

The DevExpress WPF Data Grid ships with enhanced assistive technologies support (such as screen readers). Our EAP build supports the following new capabilities: 

• Update buttons in Edit Entire Row mode are now detectable and readable by screen readers (you can display these buttons by enabling the TableView.ShowUpdateRowButtons option).
• Alt text for images exported to Excel. As you know, in our previous update, we added in-place image Excel export support. This EAP extends the XlsExportOptionsEx.CustomizeCell event, allowing you to set alt text for exported images.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Integration

DevExpress AI-powered APIs allow you to integrate the following AI services into your DevExpress-powered WPF application:

• OpenAI
• Azure OpenAI
• Ollama

AI services and DevExpress AI extensions (behaviors) follow a "bring your own key" approach. DevExpress does not provide a REST API or include built-in LLMs/SLMs. To use AI services, you need an active Azure/OpenAI subscription to obtain the necessary REST API endpoint, key, and model deployment name. This information must be provided at application startup to register AI clients and enable DevExpress AI-powered features in your WPF application.

The following code snippet registers an Azure OpenAI client:

public partial class App : Application {
    public App() {
        //..
        AIExtensionsContainerDesktop.Default.RegisterChatClientOpenAIService(
            new AzureOpenAIClient(
                        new Uri("AZURE ENDPOINT"),
                        new System.ClientModel.ApiKeyCredential("YOUR API KEY")),
                        "DEPLOYMENT NAME");
    }
}

AI-driven Text Processing

NLP-powered text transform extensions (behaviors) allow you to enhance the way users interact with and manage text content. These extensions leverage advanced natural language processing (NLP) technologies to provide automated, intelligent text manipulation capabilities directly within your DevExpress-powered WPF application.

AI-powered text transform extensions include:

• Expand
• Explain
• Explain Formular (in the Spreadsheet control)
• Shorten
• Summarize
• Adjust Tone
• Proofread
• Rewrite
• Translate
• Ask AI (Custom Prompt)

AI-powered text transform extensions can be used in the following DevExpress WPF controls:

• MemoEdit
• Rich Text Editor
• Spreadsheet

xmlns:dxmvvm="http://schemas.devexpress.com/winfx/2008/xaml/mvvm"
xmlns:dxre="http://schemas.devexpress.com/winfx/2008/xaml/richedit"
xmlns:wpfo="clr-namespace:DevExpress.AIIntegration.Wpf.Office;assembly=DevExpress.AIIntegration.Wpf.v24.2"
xmlns:desktop="clr-namespace:DevExpress.AIIntegration.Desktop;assembly=DevExpress.AIIntegration.Desktop.v24.2"

<dxre:RichEditControl>
   <dxmvvm:Interaction.Behaviors>
      <wpfo:RichEditExpandBehavior />
      <wpfo:RichEditShortenBehavior />
      <wpfo:RichEditSummarizeBehavior />
      <wpfo:RichEditExplainBehavior />
      <wpfo:RichEditToneStyleBehavior />
      <wpfo:RichEditProofreadBehavior />
      <wpfo:RichEditRewriteStyleBehavior />
      <wpfo:RichEditTranslateBehavior >
          <desktop:LanguageInfo Culture="de-DE"/>
      </wpfo:RichEditTranslateBehavior>
      <wpfo:RichEditCustomRequestBehavior />
      <wpfo:RichEditGenerateDescriptionBehavior/>
   </dxmvvm:Interaction.Behaviors>
</dxre:RichEditControl>

Rich Text Editor & Spreadsheet – Alt Text dialogs

We've added new AI-Powered Alt Text dialogs for our WPF Rich Text Editor and Spreadsheet Control.

The Alt Text dialog allows you to set accessible descriptions for shape objects used within Word and Excel documents or mark non-informative document graphics as Decorative (this setting allows screen readers to ignore decorative graphics when scanning documents).

In addition, you can use the Alt Text dialog to generate the meaningful descriptions for document images using the power of the AI behavior.

To activate this capability in the DevExpresss WPF Rich Edit Control, add RichEditGenerateDescriptionBehavior to the Behaviors collection. For the DevExpress WPF Spreadsheet Control, use SpreadsheetGenerateDescriptionBehavior.

<dxre:RichEditControl>
    <dxmvvm:Interaction.Behaviors>
        <wpfo:RichEditGenerateDescriptionBehavior/>
    </dxmvvm:Interaction.Behaviors>
</dxre:RichEditControl>

Data Grid – Batch Editing

As you may know, Microsoft Excel allows you to select multiple cells and apply text changes by pressing Ctrl + Enter (instead of Enter). We added a similar feature to our WPF Grid control, allowing users to apply identical values to multiple cells simultaneously. To enable this functionality, set GridControl.SelectionMode to  Cell  and GridControl.BachEditMode to FocusedColumn/AllColumns.

Environment Policy

We added a new Environment Policy that allows you to apply global environment access restrictions, track app-initiated requests (initiated by a DevExpress UI control) and execute custom actions in response.

You can apply global restrictions using various methods like SuppressAll() to block all environment access or more specific options such as preventing DevExpress UI controls from reading or writing environment variables, exiting processes, altering the current directory, or reading paths to system special folders.

Event handlers allow you to track and manage environment-related operations. For example, you can detect when DevExpress UI controls attempt to read or modify environment variables, process data, or system directories and enable conditional responses based on specific conditions.

Documentation

Registry Access Policy

DevExpress UI controls can save, read, and modify configuration settings and options in the system registry. These requests can be initiated in code or through the internal control engine. The Registry Access Policy allows you to apply global registry access restrictions, track user/app-initiated requests, and execute custom actions in response.

Documentation

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