As we recently announced to our newsletter subscribers, the most recent .NET update – v15.2.9 – includes the Community Technology Preview version of the new ASP.NET Dashboard Designer. This new control combines both Viewer and Editor functionality, with the ability to switch between the two modes on the client side.
You can use the new designer to create a dashboard from scratch or load your existing layout as the new control is fully compatible with XML definitions created in the WinForms or Visual Studio editors.
The design surface will let you select individual elements, re-arrange them using drag-and-drop operations, add more elements from the toolbox, and adjust their settings via context toolbars. The editor keeps track of all the operations which allows for Undo and Redo actions. It also lets you load, save or create a new dashboard from scratch. Take a look at the following animation to see all these key capabilities in action.
By introducing this new control, we complete the dashboard management stack for the Web, making the entire lifecycle available within the browser – from dashboard creation to interactive data analysis. As I mentioned above, the control also features a Viewer mode that gives you an alternative to the existing ASPxDashboardViewer control. Let's dive into details of that functionality and discuss the benefits of both controls.
Dashboard Viewer Improvements
While planning the Dashboard Designer for the Web, we saw an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. The team leveraged the new control's architecture to introduce an enhanced Viewer that works on the client side and uses the RESTful pattern resulting in the following benefits:
- Stateless architecture and scalability.
- Support for GET and POST requests allowing proxy server caching.
- Request processing via HTTP Handlers thus bypassing the complete ASP.NET page lifecycle and reducing server workload.
If you're developing for ASP.NET WebForms, these enhancements will come with a price: the API is not in line with platform guidelines. That's why the current ASPxDashboardViewer control also stays in our product line and you can continue using it if it makes more sense in your projects.
If you're working on ASP.NET MVC projects, this new control's architecture and API will fit perfectly. So stay tuned - the MVC version is coming soon along with other features listed in the next section.
What’s Missing in This Version
Our next milestone is the v16.1 release where we expect to introduce an MVC extension in addition to the WebForms control. The team also keeps working on features missing from the current CTP version, including data export, OLAP hierarchies, Data Source Wizard and Query Builder. Both WebForms and MVC controls will be available in Beta version during the 16.1 release cycle. The exact feature set for that release will partly depend on your feedback, so give the new control a try and let us know what you think.
Get Started with the New Dashboard Designer
Here are the technical resources you'll need to get started with the new control:
We've also prepared a tutorial video that shows how to create a simple web application with the dashboard designer:
To try these features in your projects, make sure to download the latest v15.2.9 update from our website. If you are an active Universal subscriber, navigate to the Download Manager page and locate the latest version. If you don't have a license to the latest version, you can download the trial version.
Join the Private Forum and Talk Directly to the Team
We invite all current Universal Subscribers to write to us at beta@devexpress.com to get login information for the private discussion forum dedicated to the new Dashboard Designer for the Web. Use this forum to get in touch with the team, report issues, provide your feedback and share your opinion with the community.