Presentation Framework for WinForms

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Overview

The Telerik Presentation Framework (TPF) is the underlying architecture of all controls in the RadControls suite, and provides a completely customizable architecture for the controls in the suite by following WPF best practices. Supports animations, transparency, rotation and scaling

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Features

Stunning WPF-like User Interface - Scaling, Rotation, Animations, Transparency

Because of the underlying architecture of the Telerik Presentation Framework (TPF), RadControls for WinForms support transparency effects, impressive animations, and smooth transitions, previously impossible in standard Windows Forms. The framework is so powerful, it showcases the magnitude that can be achieved with GDI+ and Telerik Windows Forms controls.

The transformations can be applied to any graphical element, supported by the framework. RadElements can be rotated, zoomed, and scaled depending on their state, giving you rich WPF-like user interface and even 3D appearance.

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Flash-like Animations

With RadControls for WinForms you can achieve the latest user interfaces, because any numeric property value can be animated, giving you the ultimate user experience.

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Superior Performance

The Telerik Presentation Framework has been crafted for high performance by minimizing the amount of drawing and layout rearrangement required on the screen. The framework controls the way control states are applied, and makes sure there is no unnecessary repainting. Super fast theming mechanism positively impacts application loading times and RadForm creation, as well as the time needed to switch between themes. A Property Value Retrieval engine significantly improves the property value’s execution speed, meaning faster UI operations. Excellent loading and disposing times of the controls’ element trees mean outstanding application/form launching and closing times. Memory management is also tightly integrated in the TPF to ensure minimal memory footprint and excellent memory disposal.

All these features mean outstanding performance even when working with animations, transparency, and complex nested controls.

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Unique Architecture, Inspired by WPF

One of the primary architectural philosophies used in building WPF was a preference for properties over methods or events. The same idea was used when crafting the Telerik Presentation Framework - properties are declarative and allow you to more easily specify intent instead of action. The result is a system which defines a tree of visual objects (primitives), which make up a component, and is extremely lightweight and flexible.

The Framework and its tools supply attractive and functional defaults for the Telerik RadControls, while simultaneously allowing developers to exercise very fine-grained control over every aspect of their appearance and behavior. The TPF defines a wide variety of useful abstractions and services that provide the rich functionality Telerik RadControls offer.

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Rich Text Formatting through HTML
RadControls for WinForms offers HTML-like text formatting capabilities on a framework level. All Telerik WinForms controls that contain a TextPrimitive are capable of displaying rich text formatting by using standard HTML tags, such as , , and . The implementation is very simple and intuitive especially if you are familiar with HTML.
The rich formatting behavior is turned on by adding an <html> tag in front the text, or by using the RadMarkupEditor.

RadMarkupEditor is a WYSIWYG editor which has been added on a framework level to simplify the way users and developers edit text properties and labels. The editor provides an intuitive and easy to use Ribbon interface and can be used both in design-time and at runtime. The Markup Editor is not a standalone control; rather, the HTML-like text formatting is available only for formatting the text elements in our controls.
The supported HTML tags are:
- <html>
- <font=Family> to set the font family;
- <size=[+|-]value> to set the font size. Relative font sizes are also supported;
- , 
- and support for the following CSS properties: font-family, font-size, color, and background-color;
- , , , and to bold, underline and italic text styles.
- <ol>, <ul>, <li> for numbered and bulleted lists;
- <strike>
- <a>
- <img> which lets you add local or resource images;
- All respective closing tags.
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Unlimited Nesting of UI Elements

The uniform nature of the control architecture makes it possible to nest controls within each other for more flexible and modern user interfaces. This unique feature of the Telerik Presentation Framework allows you to provide the solution you have been searching for, without writing code or worrying about things going bad.

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Granular Customization of All Elements

Telerik RadControls for WinForms provides designers and developers with the ability to alter, at design- or run-time, any property of any control. Because all Telerik controls are composed of primitives, this customization can be applied at a very fine level of detail. Changes in response to events can be animated, so that a property moves smoothly through a range of values in response to a mouse movement, or any other event. Property values (such as colors or fonts) can be inherited from parent to child elements, or overridden at the child element level.

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Custom Controls

With the Telerik Presentation Framework, you can easily build custom controls and take advantage of the animation effects and visual appearance options of the Visual Style Builder. All TPF-based components can also be configured through the RadControl Spy tool for complete control over their properties.

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Theme Support

All RadControls for WinForms come with full Theme support which can be used from the very start of your project. You can use any of the pre-defined themes, or build new ones from scratch to fit your exact scenario. Themes can be applied across all controls built on the Telerik Presentation Framework.

All themes (except the built-in ControlDefault) are extracted as standalone components and are available in the Visual Studio toolbox for easy drag-and-drop control skinning. RadThemeManager keeps track of the loaded theme files to avoid theme loading redundancy. Not only does this make application development easier, it also improves the loading time of the application, especially if it uses only one or a small subset of the provided themes.
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Productivity Tools

The Telerik Presentation Framework works in unison with five powerful productivity tools, included in the Telerik WinForms suite: a Visual Style Builder that allows you to codelessly customize component appearance, a Control Spy that helps you examine and change properties at run time, a Shape Editor you can use to define free-form UI elements for advanced interfaces, Project Update Utility that assists you in upgrading your current RadControls based applications to newly released versions, and the Element Hierarchy Editor which lets you work with complex control types, to navigate the class and element hierarchy, and to set properties directly in Visual Studio design time.

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