Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Website: www.devexpress.com
Price: $1,999.99

Even though many third-party ASP.NET controls exist, developers still demand advanced and improved features, including robust controls. Developer Express (DevExpress) has introduced several such features in its latest product suite, DXperience Universal v2011 vol 1. In this review, I will examine only these new features; for information about the overall product, see my DevProConnections review of the previous version of DXperience Universal.

New Features and ASP.NET Controls Enhancements

A key feature of DXperience v2011 vol 1 is support for HTML5 and Extensible HTML (XHTML) 1.0 Strict. The introduction of this support gives you the ability to customize the appearance of the ASP.NET File Manager control with new themes, as Figure 1 shows.

Figure 1: Modifying the ASP.NET File Manager theme

The ASP.NET File Manager control has been modified so that it can use any data source component, such as SQLDataSource, to connect to a database back end. The control also ships with the ability to generate the file system UI, including the creation of custom file system providers and the ability to control role-based security access through rules.

To work with the ASP.NET File Manager control, you simply need to double-click the control from the Visual Studio 2010 Toolbox. The control also includes a facility to download files directly from File Manager (as Figure 2 shows), as well as support for server-side file validation.

Figure 2: ASP.NET File Manager in action

The control also ships with a new event named FileClick and provides the ability to upload files directly from File Manager. These new features should be useful for developers who need to build Control Panel for web-hosting providers.

A majority of developers use the DevExpress GridView control. The feature now includes support for multirow headers and bands. Moreover, the MVC GridView extension provides the ability to add or remove columns by using drag-and-drop functionality, including support for the master detail grid layout. The control comes with new edit modes such as Inline, Popup, EditFormAndDisplayRow, and EditForm, with support for error management if the provided values don't match.