The Windows Forms team have published some screenshots of some of the new controls coming to the next edition of Windows Forms.
At a glance:
1. WebBrowser: We finally get a managed wrapper for the IE ActiveX control!
2. Active Document Host: Allows the hosting of OLE documents. This means you can drop in any in-place editing application, like Word, Excel or Photoshop. Neat!
3. SoundPlayer. I got initially excited about this, thinking it was a drop in Windows Media control. But, no, it simply plays a WAV file. Humpft :(
4. DataGridView. A much refined DataGrid, the DataGridView has far better design-time previewing, better styling, and richer cell types. Looks good.
5. SplitContainer. A neater version of the traditional Splitter control. Think of it as a panel split into two panels with a splitter inbetween. Or just look at the pretty picture ;)
6. MaskedTextBox. About time .NET got a native masked text box. Very similar to MaskEd in VB6, or MaskedEdit in Delphi.
7. ToolStrip. At last, decent UI components with Office 2003 styling. Status bars, menus, toolbars, context menus, all customisable and drag and drop. Excellent.
Philip MiseldinePhilip is a Computer Science PhD student at Liverpool John Moores University. He's still not mastered guitar tabs, never finished Mario, and needs a haircut.
