Request For RadDock Element Events...

[RoadWarrior]

To enable the creating a very customized docking workspace, it seems necessary for Telerik to expose more lifecyle-type events for the Docking Elements.  Specifically, it would be useful to have life cycle events for the RadPane, RadPaneGroup, and RadSplitContainer to be able to wire up events to these objects.  For example adding the following events to the RadDocking could accomplish this:

• DockElementAdded

• DockElementRemoved

Why is this necessary?  Suppose I want to add a MouseOver state to the RadPaneGroup.  For this to work, I need to attach a handler for MouseEnter, MouseLeave to call the VSM.  The problem is that the RadDocking object doesn't currently expose a convenient spot to detect the creation of a new RadPaneGroups. 

This would make your developers lives much easier.  Please let me know if/when this can be added.  Thanks.

[Miroslav Nedyalkov]

Hi Rick,

 Thank you for your suggestion!

We've added a property called GeneratedItemsFactory to the Docking control that is of type IGeneratedItemsFactory that has 3 methods: CreatePaneGroup, CreateSplitContainer and CreateToolWindow. These methods should provide new instances of these classes when auto-generated instances are needed. In this point you will be able to hook-up and add your logic. This feature will be included in the Q1 2010 release (and in the upcoming beta as well).

Hope this is good for you.

Kind regards,
Miroslav Nedyalkov
the Telerik team

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[RoadWarrior]

While I am not against you providing this for generated items, it falls a bit short of what is needed.  It is necessary to have all these types of Docking Elements trackable whether they are generated or not.  Otherwise, you are putting the onus on the developer to wire up events to each and every non-generated Group and Pane.  That would be a pain! 

Additionally, your suggested approach only covers created items.  If I am wiring up events, I also need to know when items are removed.  Even if you simply expose these objects as an ObservableCollection would be better than what you've suggested so far.

[Miroslav Nedyalkov]

Hello Rick,

 We will consider improving this. You Thank you for your feedback!

Regards,
Miroslav Nedyalkov
the Telerik team

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[RoadWarrior]

Now that I've seen the GeneratedItemsFactory in your Q1 realease, I do not think it addresses the problem. 

Given that Telerik has the ability (and does) to create RadPaneGroups/RadSplitContainers dynamically, there needs to be some event to notify RadDocking users when this occurs so that we can gain reference to the newly created object, wire up events, ect.  The GeneratedItemsFactory has no such event.  Am I missing something?

[Miroslav Nedyalkov]

Hello Rick,

 If you override the methods of the factory and just return the base implementations you will be able to track the generated items. I know it doesn't look very comfortable to it this way, but we are trying to figure out a better way. Thank you for your feedback!

Regards,
Miroslav Nedyalkov
the Telerik team

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[RoadWarrior]

Simply providing the events that were requested is a better way

• DockElementAdded

• DockElementRemoved

[Miroslav Nedyalkov]

Hi Rick,

 We will consider adding these events. Thank you for the suggestion! I added the feature as PITS item. Here is the title: "Add events for Adding and Removing of auto-generated items to the Docking control.".

Regards,
Miroslav Nedyalkov
the Telerik team

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