WPF RadDocking Overview
Posted by: the telerik blogs,
on 11 Dec 2009 |
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Its been a while since the Q3 2009 release. Lots
of controls have been added in our toolbox for WPF. One of them is considered
as a final official release of RadDocking control for WPF. We have made a lot
of improvements since the last release of the controls. For example each of the
six themes included in the bundle now has different type of appearance when
applied to a control. RadDocking is a fully customizable and skinnable control
that enhances the power of a layout system. It is providing you with a docking
system like the one in Microsoft Visual Studio. You are getting the dockable
ToolWindows, a hidden DockingManager control, and a designer to easily create
attractive layouts. It is good to mention that the WPF RadDocking code is absolutely
compatible with its
Silverlight counterpart.
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RadDocking key features
list:
Save/Load Layout - When
building complex layouts with RadDocking the users will often expect
to persist the layout from one session to another. It can be easily achieved
with the advanced Save\Load layout mechanism of the RadDocking control. It provides a
method that stores the entire layout in a stream containing XML. After the
storing you can simply restore the layout from its previous state. In addition,
you can choose to save the stream elsewhere, in a text box, or directly in the
isolated storage
Split Containers
The RadSplitContainer allows you to use movable bars to
divide the displayed area into resizable parts. With the RadDocking'sRadSplitContainers you can build complex layouts that can
even include nested split areas. Some immediate examples of such layouts are
Explorer-like and outlook-like interfaces. The RadDocking's RadSplitContainers allows you to define the Orientation and the InitialPosition of the container.
Tabbed Documents -
RadDocking supports tabbed documents for document -oriented
applications. It allows you to see documents by splitting them into multiple
panes
Pin/Unpin and
Hide Panes - To display content on demand, a docked window can be pinned,
unpinned or hidden. The pane is in an unpinned state by default. When unpinned
the pane collapses down to a tab.
Dockable Windows - RadDocking has a full drag-and-drop support including the docking
compass and the docking hints for visual feedback. You are free to drag the
dockable windows anywhere in the container to create customized layouts.
Floating Windows -
Once
you start dragging Pane or Group it moves to Floating
Window almost immediately. The hints of the RadDocking for visual feedback are showing the user where the object
will be placed.
WPF/Silverlight
Code Compatibility - The WPF RadDocking shares a common code-base and API with
its Silverlight counterpart. That means that you can
achieve close to 100% code reuse for your grid logic if you have parallel
Silverlight/WPF development.