RadControls for Windows Phone Q3 2012 comes with a new DataForm control

With the last couple of releases RadControls for Windows Phone suite has become a mature toolset for developing native Windows Phone applications. We've been polishing and extending the product based on your feedback and the expertise we gathered while developing applications like Tasks, Design Templates and Picture Gallery. Thus, we shaped up the product to be exactly what each of you (developers) needs. 

So here's what's inside our latest and greatest Q3 2012 release:

DataForm

A brand new control that makes it easier for you to create input and editor pages for your business entities. Providing flexible validation mechanism and extensive possibilities for customization RadDataForm is a really powerful tool to speed up your development process.

PasswordBox

Based on our TextBox control, RadPasswordBox can be used to gather/obtain user passwords and provides some nice out-of-the-box features like support for custom action-buttons and "show password" functionality. 

TimeSpanPicker

A new, Date/Time Picker inspired control that can be used to select TimeSpan values (durations). The control provides you with similar APIs as seen on the Date/Time Pickers thus allowing for easier customization. For example, the TimeSpanPicker control can be extremely useful in a fitness app, where the user needs to set the duration of his exercise.

InputPrompt

An extended Message Box component that can be used to gather user input like log-in information.

ExpanderControl

The ExpanderControl enables you to create more interactive apps while letting you add more content to your apps and save space at the same time. If you are working on chat/social app you can use the ExpanderControl to enable users expand or collapse conversations, thus more easily following the entire communication. The ExpanderControl can be easily integrated with the DataBoundListBox.

With this release we're also extending our Design Templates with 25 brand new templates, some of which incorporating the new controls mentioned above. The image below shows a design template using the new ExpanderControl:

You can check the Design Templates sample application that is available in the store for more details. The templates are also available as part of the RadControls for Windows Phone installation.

We recently started series of blog posts on How to Build a Picture Gallery app for Windows Phone pt1, pt2, pt3. Besides the source code of the application that is available under your accounts you can also check the app in the store.