In this release of Telerik® UI for WinForms we once again concentrated on providing an even better suite, and we addressed over 100 feedback items, most of which were in our most used component—RadGridView. Besides making the suite better, we also invested our efforts into creating the first VirtualGrid component on the market with support for hierarchy, filtering and sorting—RadVirtualGrid. Let me tell you more about it.

RadVirtualGrid Beta

The component aims to handle scenarios which require displaying millions of records from a data source. This is achieved by triggering an event every time a cell needs a value, and allows the developer to query a data source and provide values for the cells.

Even though the component is released as beta, we believe it is pretty stable for use and very soon we are planning on making it official. Here are highlights of RadVirtualGrid features.

Performance

The following gif demonstrates the control performance, which was of upmost importance for us, when building the control. Here is how fast the grid loads one billion cells of data.

Fast, huh?

Another thing worth mentioning in regards to the performance, is that in the above grid, during loading we have also resized 100,000 rows and 500 columns. That’s the definition of speed :)

Hierarchy

The most wanted feature in such a component according to our user’s requests is hierarchy. That’s probably because there is no component on the market (or at least we haven’t found one) that supports such a functionality in a virtual grid. This feature gap added to our motivation, and now we are happy to announce the very first virtual grid component on the market with support for hierarchy.

Sorting and Filtering

Filtering and Sorting is achieved using the FilterChanged and SortChanged events, which will get triggered when such an operation occurs via UI or programmatically. Once notified for the operation, you can use the filtering and/or sorting expressions to fetch the correct data.

Paging

Paging functionality is also supported, and the user can navigate through pages with the built-in paging panel.

Async Data Loading

Thanks to the built-in waiting indicators of both the control and the rows in it, users can be notified for a pending loading operation while your data is being loaded in a background thread.

Editing

RadVirtualGrid features nine types of editors out of the box that can be used for editing the most common data types and to handle the most common scenarios. An event is provided where the desired editor can be specified. Here is a list of the predefined editors:

• VirtualGridCalcualtorEditor
• VirtualGridDateTimeEditor
• VirtualGridDropDownListEditor
• VirtualGridMaskedEditBoxEditor
• VirtualGridTextBoxControlEditor
• VirtualGridTextBoxEditor
• VirtualGridTimePickerEditor
• VirtualGridColorPickerEditor
• VirtualGridBrowseEditor

On top of that, support for custom editors is also provided. Here is for example a track bar editor incorporated in a grid cell.

Pinned Rows and Columns

RadVirtualGrid also supports pinned rows and columns, so the users can see their most important information at a glance. BestFit is also there for you.

Support for CRUD Operations

All CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) operations are also supported and respective events are triggered for each of them to notify you of the operation taken, so the changes can be pushed to your data source.

Misc Features

Other features supported to further enhance the UX experience are:

• Context menus and tooltips
• Localization
• Cut/Copy/Paste operations
• Alternating row colors
• Fine grain UI customization with theme or programmatically with respective events
• Support for custom rows and cells

Coded UI for Visual Studio 2015

I am pleased to announce that as of Q1 2016, we're introducing support of Coded UI tests in Visual Studio 2015. It is important to note is that Update 1 has to be installed in Visual Studio 2015 in order to take advantage of this functionality, due to an issue which exists in the official version of Visual Studio 2015, which Microsoft has resolved in Update 1.

Help Button in RadTitleBar

Another useful feature we're introducing is the built-in help button in RadTitleBar. The button is placed next to the Minimize, Maximize and Close buttons and when clicked, the mouse cursor changes to a question mark. The next click over any control will trigger its HelpRequested event, where you can provide useful information regarding the control usage.

UI for WinForms Videos

Our videos channel has a new page.  A playlist with our videos is also available in our YouTube channel.

New Documentation Website

I am glad to announce our new documentation website as well, which has a modern look and feel and better navigation support. The structure is kept as it was, so it will be easy for you to navigate to your favorite sections/articles. Soon, we will be redirecting our previous documentation links to our new website. Take a look at our new documentation site here.

We hope you enjoy the latest upgrades in this Q1 release. As always, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to us or visit our support pages.

To learn more, you can also register for the upcoming Telerik DevCraft Release Webinar here.