XAF - New Grid List Editor, Survey on the Main Menu Toolbar and End-User Layout Designer in Blazor UI

New DxGridListEditor (CTP) - Try It Out in v21.2.4+

As you may already know, XAF's Blazor UI includes a new UI element - Grid List Editor (DxGridListEditor). This new UI element is built atop the new DevExpress Blazor Grid control. Like the new Blazor Data Grid, DxGridListEditor will be updated with new features every minor release and we plan to deliver much more in our v21.2.5+ minor update in late January 2022. XAF Blazor UI users will especially appreciate Conditional Appearance support, Server Mode support (yes, we may return to DataAccessMode = Server instead of Queryable, because it supports more features like runtime calculated fields), customization form support, and much more.

This post is just a gentle reminder for early adopters/testers to explicitly enable the new DxGridListEditor in their projects (since it is a preview) and share their feedback with our development team via the DevExpress Support Center. 

Main Menu Toolbar - Your Feedback Matters

At present, XAF's Blazor main menu toolbar hides commands based on record selection within the ListView. This behavior was introduced 1.5 years ago and it differs from XAF's WinForms & ASP.NET WebForms UI. We designed this menu in this manner because it is more suitable for smaller screens (on mobile web browsers), which XAF's Blazor UI also supports.

Menu Behavior 1

Menu Behavior 2

Throughout this year, many of you have asked us to restore our WinForms & ASP.NET WebForms UI implementation - menu commands are disabled based on record selection within the ListView. 

Question 1: Which default behavior do you prefer for XAF's Blazor UI (v22.1+)? Please add "Menu Behavior 1 or 2" and, optionally, describe your use-case/reasons in the comments section below.

If we do not have many votes for the new behavior (2), we will simply retain our existing implementation and focus on more important things for the majority of users. Thanks for your feedback in advance.

UPDATE: Good news! We implemented Menu Behavior #2 in XAF's Blazor UI v22.1 (learn more).

Teaser 1: Runtime Form Layout Customization for Your End-Users

For our v22.1 release in May 2022, we are researching the technical possibility to implement layout customizations in XAF's Blazor UI for end-users (just like its WinForms counterpart). You can get a taste of this below - our first spike (please ignore UI design issues - it is just a wireframe to demonstrate the main idea):

If you’ve used XAF's WinForms UI, you already know that rich runtime UI customization for both developers and end-users can be a time saver - your apps can address changing business requirements without the need for redeployment.

Question 2: Would you like us to continue our research and implementation? If so, please add "+1" or "-1" in the comments section below. If you have multiple XAF developers, you can certainly add "+10" or "-5"😀 and describe your other priorities.

This is a very serious and costly undertaking, so we want to be certain that we have sufficient support from registered customers. So - if this feature does not elicit a simple +1 comment, it is a sign that we should not pursue this feature.

Teaser 2: Custom Buttons for XAF's Blazor UI Lookup Editor Are Coming

XAF's Blazor Lookup Editor will display the "New" and "Open Related Record" buttons in v21.2.5 (January 2022).

Visual Studio 2022 Support for XAF and XPO

XPO's ORM Data Model Designer, XAF's Model Editor, and Solution Wizard support Visual Studio 2022 in v21.2.4 - please try these designers and let us know your thoughts.

Note that the Application and Module Designers for .NET Framework apps are not yet supported (track progress). As a workaround, edit the WxxApplication.xxx/WxxApplication.designer.xx and Module.xx/Module.designer.xx files in code (Add a Module in Code).

Dependency Injection Extensions for XAF Module Configuration Are Coming

As you may recall from our roadmap, we will NOT support Module and Application Designers in .NET 5+ apps (.NET Framework apps will be unaffected), because they mostly duplicate Solution Wizard functionality and are rarely used (occasional module or application configurations can be easily addressed with a few lines of code: example). To promote straightforward and consistent configurations for security and application modules across WinForms and Blazor in .NET+, XAF v22.1 will support Dependency Injection (DI) extensions like those found in ASP.NET Core Blazor Server apps.

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