What's New in Ignite 16.2

Ignite UI 16.2 is here! We’ve added great new features for modern application development in HTML and JavaScript for desktop, tablets and mobile:

• ASP.NET Core support and Tag Helpers
• Faster, easier to user data visualizations
• Collapsible grid columns

We’ve also significantly enhanced our grid control, added a completely re-vamped charting library and solidified our support for Angular 2. So, let’s take a look at all we’ve added:

• We’ve improved the GroupBy functionality in the grid control to work better with other features like paging and virtualization
• We’ve given developers the ability to change grid column definitions at runtime
• Our new charting library renders faster than before—and yet it’s smaller
• Our grid sorting feature performance is better by a factor of ten

ASP.NET Core and Tag Helpers

The release of ASP.NET Core and ASP.NET MVC 6 created some exciting opportunities for developers on the Microsoft .NET stack. Our ASP.NET MVC Helper Classes are fully compatible with the new Microsoft .NET Core stack. We’ve also created a set of Tag Helpers for our components, which will make it easier for developers to control how Ignite UI controls are initialized without Razor syntax in views. For ASP.NET MVC 6 developers, our controls have never been easier to use.

igGrid

The 16.2 release introduces many additions and improvements to our grid control. We’ve improved our GroupBy feature to make it work more smoothly with other grid features. Combining GroupBy with features like Virtualization and Paging now results in a smoother user experience and significantly increased sorting speed.

In previous versions of our grid, you were required to define your columns at initialization time. Once the grid was initialized, you couldn’t change the column setup of your grid. In 16.2 we’ve added the ability to change the columns of your grid dynamically at runtime. With this new feature, you have the ability to give your users the exact data you want them to see at any time. No need to refresh the page, just change the columns!

A great grid is easy for your users to interact with. To help create a better experience, we’ve made the igGridModalDialogs, which is used for advanced filtering, editing, and multiple sorting. It’s customizable, extensible, and it enables you to create the specific user experience you are looking for.

Another new grid feature is the ability to create collapsible column groups, which is especially handy if you need to show a lot of fields. Your users have the ability to hide sections that they are not concerned with at the moment, and then drill into them when they need to see more detailed information. These groups are nestable, which provides you with a lot of flexibility in how you provide data to your users and how they choose to use it.

Most grids are designed around the idea that data is displayed on a single row. But that’s not always the best way to show and edit data. For those situations, we’ve added the ability to create multi-row layouts in our grids. This feature is great in situations where you have more data than can fit on the screen, but where horizontal scrolling isn’t really a good option. You have the ability to edit and create new records in this layout, and you even have control over keyboard navigation. With 16.2 we’re added inline editing to the Multi-Row Layout, so users are no longer limited to editing these rows through the modal dialog.

Another great feature is the ability to bind the igGrid to real-time data. This ability enables your grid to be updated automatically with data pushed down from a server. This requires no user action or page refresh--simply setup the data source, bind it to your grid and Ignite UI takes care of the rest. This feature makes our igGrid control a great choice for dashboard style web applications. We have added new samples displaying how grid bound to real-time data can be easily achieved in order to simplify the developer experience.

Charts

For the 16.2 release, we’ve completely revamped our charting and data visualization library. You’ll find our charts to be faster and easier to use. Our new charting API gets you up and running faster with default options designed to cover the most common use cases. In most situations, you simply need to bind your data source to a chart control and that’s it.

The new library is smarter about determining the best way to display your data, and you still have all the flexibility you would expect to make your data appear however you like. We’ve increased the rendering speed of our charts, making them up to twice as fast, even with large data sets, making one of fastest charts on the market even faster. We’ve also decreased the size of the library, so your page spends less time downloading and more time making your users happy. This is especially useful for mobile web applications, where bandwidth is often a premium.

Open Source

JavaScript has come a long way. It’s always been the “language of the web” but over that past several years it has seen a transition from being a just a scripting language for simple user interactions in the browser to a serious language for serious software development. JavaScript doesn’t just run in the browser anymore; it’s expanded to the server and to devices with the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT).

In that spirit, we have released the Ignite UI core controls to Open Source. We believe that developers are only now scratching the surface of what’s possible in modern web development. We, like you, are excited to see what’s next. We believe JavaScript has a bright future, and we’re committed to providing the best tools to developers who push the boundaries of JavaScript.

With Ignite UI core, you get a complete collection of high-performance, touch-first, responsive and highly extensible controls. We invite you to use these to build the best, most user-friendly JavaScript applications possible. And when your needs grow to include high-performance grids or data visualizations, you can easily upgrade to Infragistics Professional or Ultimate. You can get Ignite UI today via GitHub, NPM, or Bower.

Angular 2 Components

Ignite UI’s Angular 2 components enable you to use all of our Ignite UI controls in your Angular 2 applications quickly and easily. Unlike our competition’s controls, these are the same full-featured controls that are part of Ignite UI right now. This means you can build highly functioning Angular 2 application with no compromises. Anything you can do with our controls today in jQuery you can do today with our controls in Angular 2. The components are available now via GitHub or NPM.

Ignite UI JS Blocks

Ignite UI JS Blocks is a set of native, mobile-first, touch-first controls for Angular 2. Build amazing mobile web applications quickly and easily. Because they are native controls, your application will load and run quickly, even over a cellular connection. Ignite UI JS Blocks are in Preview right now and are available on GitHub as open source.

Other Updates

In addition to the new features I’ve already mentioned, we’ve added a several other features that developers have asked for.

igValidator - Our igValidator control now validates credit card numbers. To do this, the control uses the Luhn algorithm that can validate all active issuers and allows users to input numbers of any length with spaces or dashes.

igCombo - User input can sometimes be a challenge on these devices due to the space need by the on-screen keyboard. To help make this experience better we’ve updated our igCombo control. In 16.2, when this control receives focus you will be able to decide if you want to display the keyboard by default or keep it hidden.

igScroll - This new control enables you to define scrollable containers on your pages. These containers can contain any control or a collection of controls, and you can configure this new scrollbar to scroll multiple containers.

igZoombar - If you’ve worked with our charts in the past, you’ve no doubt seen the zoom-bar control and how it allows you to zoom in on and work with specific ranges in a chart. In 16.2, we’ve now enabled you to use that same zoom-bar for any zoom-able JavaScript component.

IgniteUI.com - The IgniteUI.com website features improved overall usability, getting you to the information you need quickly and easily. We’ve also updated our page layout and created a new visual theme that enhances readability and shows you the most important information first.

AMD Support - Modern JavaScript relies heavily on the idea of modules, for good reason: modularized code is easy to support, maintain and work with. Ignite UI supports popular JavaScript module frameworks such as RequireJS, SystemJS, Webpack, and Browserify.

API Documentation - We’ve updated our online documentation, ensuring that each control has a clear, complete and correct documentation page that lists all the details for the control’s methods, options and events. We’ve added detailed descriptions of all the parameter types, return types and option types.

What's Next?

We’re always looking for new ways to improve our products, and some of our best ideas come from our users. If you have ideas for new features, important issues we need to address or brand new controls you’d like to see, please let us know! Post them to our Product Ideas website. Be sure to follow Infragistics and Ignite UI on Twitter for the latest news about our products. Connect with our product teams on our Community Forums where you can interact with Infragistics engineers and other customers. And if you have any questions, comments or feedback, please feel free to drop me an email at JBender@Infragistics.com.