Rapid application development can be greatly enhanced by using third-party toolsets. These toolsets let a developer add controls or classes whose capabilities represent months of development time in a matter of seconds. Infragistics, a market leader in user interface tools, enhances its toolset three times a year. It recently released NetAdvantage 2005 Volume 1, a comprehensive toolset compatible with all Microsoft environments including Windows Forms, ASP.NET, Tablet PC and COM that offers a host of new capabilities such as new chart types, customizable GroupBoxes and an easy way to create a Microsoft Office task pane. These new features, coupled with the existing elements in NetAdvantage, make it possible to create a user interface much like Outlook 2003 in an extremely short period of time. This article will examine the new features founding 2005 Volume 1 and demonstrate how easy it is to create an awesome user interface design that mimics Outlook 2003.

Windows Forms
For smart client developers, Infragistics has a set of tools to create a robust user interface and user experience quickly and effectively. The first item to note is the new printing elements shipping with 2005 Volume 1. They let a developer customize a print preview dialog that gives the end user a robust printing experience. The added functionality has two main thrusts - print preview and print preview thumbnail. The result lets the developer add a document (a non-visual control) to a form that manages printing on tools such as grids and schedules. That document is then used to feed the display for the print preview control, which, in turn, lists all of the page's information, out to the thumbnail control.

With this new functionality, developer productivity is greatly enhanced and the end product's customizability vastly improved.

Styling Your GroupBox
In user interface design, an effective way to group common tasks or elements together is using the GroupBox. The Visual Studio GroupBox provides a simple border and a heading for each set of items. With Infragistics' new GroupBox element, the developer can make the GroupBox mimic styles seen in Office 2003 and Visual Studio 2005. Additional functionality is provided by the UltraExpandableGroupBox, which creates elegant user interfaces much like Web parts found in portal technologies.

TaskPanel
One of the remarkable things Infragistics has always done is give the developer the ability to mimic Microsoft's look-and-feel. In keeping with that tradition, there's a custom toolbar in Volume 1 that's designed to display a group of controls or content for every item in a list of items. For example, one can build the familiar TaskPane help used in Office products. And navigation tools are provided that move between the items in the list and dispense toolbar functionality such as: docking, floating and closing.

Cool new happenings in WinGrid
Infragistics' WinGrid is already the most advanced grid element on the market, but that doesn't stop its R&D team from continually adding new features. The grid already supports hierarchy, sorting, grouping, filtering and styling - with only a couple of quick clicks. The grid in NetAdvantage 2005 Volume 1, however, supports some really awesome new features like merged cell and implementing the IDataErrorInfo. Merged cell groups consecutive cells of identical data so that they appear as one cell, improving the end user's ability to view data. For instance, rows can be grouped by state or by region. IdataErrorInfo, on the other hand, is a .NET databinding interface that provides error information to data-bound controls. It ties the grid directly into the error provider shipped with .NET, showing the familiar flashing red icon next to an inputted error at both the cell level and row level.

Enhanced UltraDropDownControl
The UltraDropDownControl that Infragistics currently ships puts a multi-column data-bound grid directly inside the dropdown portion, a productivity enhancement over the single-column ComboBox that ships with Visual Studio. The 2005 Volume 1 version will be able to sort and filter data, implement the IDataErrorInfo Interface and merge cells.

Building the Outlook Navigation Panel
The first thing to do to create an Outlook-style navigation pane using NetAdvantage is to drag the ExplorerBar onto the form and set its dock property to "left." Then add groups to the ExplorerBar by right-clicking the ExplorerBar and selecting "add group." There should be a correlation between the number of groups and the number of items in the navigation pane. And the text property should be set appropriately with header's text such as "Mail," "Calendar," "Contacts," "Tasks."

After setting these properties, the developer should set the style property to "OutlookNavigationPane." Then add the custom images used in Outlook to the groups. To do this, the group's Settings.AppearancesLarge.HeaderAppearance.Image must be set to the appropriate image.

Then set group "0" or the mail group's Settings.Style property to "ControlContainer" so we can modify the group by embedding additional items in it.

The next step is to add two GroupBoxes to the ExplorerBar (Group 0) and set their "ViewStyle" property to "Office2003." Next, set the top GroupBox's dock property to "top" and the second GroupBox's dock property to "fill."

After that step, set the text property of each GroupBox to match Outlook's text: "Favorite Folders" and "All Mail Folders."

Then drag a Windows Forms Tree element into each of the GroupBoxes and set the tree's dock property to "fill". In the "Favorite Folders" GroupBox add five root nodes, set the appropriate image in the LeftImages collection editor (which is found under the Nodes Collection), set the text property appropriately (Inbox, Unread Mail, For Follow Up, Deleted Items, Sent Items), and set the NodeConnectorStyle to "none."

Repeat these steps for the "All Mail Folders" (honoring the appropriate hierarchy).

This build sample indicates how developer productivity is increased. A key takeaway is to notice that it was done without coding. However, it can all be implemented in code to increase the runtime potential.

ASP.NET
A developer can create commercial-grade applications with Infragistics out-of-the-box, but the company is always trying for greater flexibility over the in-box elements like the enhancements and new features its Web Forms (ASP.NET) team has released.

The Ideal Button
The new image button released in NetAdvantage 2005 Volume 1 is designed to replace the in-box button (System.Web.UI.WebControls.Button). The advantage is extensive UI customization. It can, for instance, round corners, completely changing the UI, and add images. This Infragistics element can quickly skin a button and then save that configuration as an XML preset that a developer can use to create a group of standard buttons. With presets a developer can give the end user the ability of skinning his own application; the developer just has to load the XML preset file.

Grouping comes to the Web
A GroupBox on the Web would usually be done with a table with a border, but that doesn't give the developer the ability to create smart client UIs on the Web. However, the concept of ExpandableGroupBoxes on the Windows Forms side of the latest NetAdvantage release has made its debut on the Web.

Charting
Developers familiar with the raw power of Infragistics' charting package will notice a usability addition that cuts development time. It consolidates eight assemblies down to four, making it a more elegant package to deploy. The assemblies are a shared or core assembly, a design assembly and one specific to either the Web or Windows.

Chart Effects
Adding custom effects to the charting package has never been easier since the Chart Effects collection editor was introduced. Simply open the Effects collection editor and click "add."

The effect chosen can be 3D, Gradient, Shadow or Texture. A 3D effect takes a 2D chart and draws the frame of a 3D chart on it. The gradient effect lightens or darkens the color and the impact can be forward diagonal, say, or horizontal.

The gradient effect can create some stunning charts when combined with the PaintElement Collection Editor, which define how the chart should paint itself.

The shadow effect throws a shadow over a 2D chart and the angle of the shadow, its color and size can be altered.

Finally, the texture effect applies an image or texture to a 2D chart. NetAdvantage ships a number of textures, but the developer can add his own custom image like a watermark. The texture can be background only, chart only or both.

Annotations
Annotations are visual effects that give the user visual cues that highlight certain data. The chart team at Infragistics added a new collections editor so developers can add annotations through the code or not through the code. There are a number of different annotations styles including: Line, Ellipse, Callout, Box and LineImage.

New Chart Types
The charting team at Infragistics thrives on feedback from its customer base. When a new chart type is requested, the team will either implement a sample on how to extend the current chart engine to create that type or release it in a later NetAdvantage release. Two new chart types make a debut in NetAdvantage 2005 volume 1: the Gantt chart for project management and the Polar chart to map out information such as signal strength in radial space.

Conclusion
The NetAdvantage toolset offers a host of new features in its latest release, NetAdvantage 2005 Volume 1. The developer can create a commercial-grade user interface without writing a single line of code. Infragistics' value-add is in its frequent NetAdvantage updates. Its new features and efficient use of time facilitate rapid application development. In the world of development, tools that cut development time and increase productivity are important not only to the work-at-home consultant but the large enterprise. Time is money and toolsets such as NetAdvantage help developers bring projects in ahead of schedule and under budget.

For more information on Infragistics and NetAdvantage, see www.infragistics.com.