Ext.NET 4.0 Now Available

The Ext.NET team is thrilled to announce the official public release of Ext.NET 4.

The 4.0 release is available on the download page and NuGet.

Ext.NET WebForms

Install-Package Ext.NET

Ext.NET MVC

Install-Package Ext.NET.MVC

Installation into a new or existing project takes just seconds, and should be a near drop in replacement for Ext.NET 3.x applications.

Ext.NET + Ext JS

Our partnership with Sencha began more than eight years ago and Ext.NET has always been the easiest entry point into building rich Ext JS based JavaScript applications for ASP.NET developers.

Bundled within Ext.NET 4, Sencha Ext JS 6 includes a toolkit of 100+ user interface controls including Data Grids, Menus, Trees, Form Elements, Buttons, Panels, Windows and dozens of powerful extensions all integrated and professionally supported by the Ext.NET team. By far the most extensive toolkit of Enterprise quality Controls for ASP.NET in the industry.

Both ASP.NET MVC and Web Forms are fully supported with Ext.NET, including the ASP.NET MVC Razor View Engine. The Ext.NET Examples are a great place to explore what’s possible for both ASP.NET Web Forms and MVC development, now with a combined total of 750+ working samples.

The power of ASP.NET has always been on the server-side, especially for connecting to various data sources and back-end processes. As a web application developer, the challenge is how to unleash that power into a user-friendly client application that your users will actually enjoy using and rave about.

At Ext.NET our philosophy from day one has been to ensure it just works. Out of the box, developers should be able to jump right into building an Ext.NET based application using the .NET skills they’ve already invested heavily into.

The Ext.NET support team is always available to help answer questions and we pride ourselves on the enterprise quality of support provided to the community, and this indeed is the most mentioned advantage from our community.

While hundreds of enhancements and bug fixes have been incorporated across both Ext.NET 4 and Ext JS 6, let’s step through some of the major new highlights.

New Spreadsheet Functionality

A powerful new Spreadsheet Selection Model has been incorporated into Ext.NET and enables selecting data in GridPanels in a spreadsheet-like manner. Converting a GridPanel into a Spreadsheet is as easy as adding SpreadsheetSelectionModel to your GridPanels <SelectionModel>.

<ext:GridPanel runat=”server”>
    <SelectionModel>
        <ext:SpreadsheetSelectionModel runat=”server” />
    </SelectionModel>
</ext:GridPanel> 

The best way to explore the new SpreadsheetSelectionModel functionality is to review the examples. The six new dedicated samples have been added. We intentionally made the samples relatively simple with each focused on a limited set of features. More details about SpreadsheetSelectionModel can be found here.

The Ext JS docs are also a good source of information too.

New Triton Theme

Ext.NET 4 ships bundled with the new Triton Theme.

Triton brings a contemporary user interface design to both Desktop and Tablet based Ext.NET applications.

The speed and power of Ext.NET are well demonstrated by how easily updating the look of your application can be accomplished by setting Theme="Triton" within your ResourceManager or as a global setting within your projects Global.asax.cs file.

<ext:ResourceManager runat=”server” Theme=”Triton” /> 

Advanced Color Picker

With the new Advanced Color Picker components there is a possibility to pick an arbitrary color.

There are actually three components:

• ColorSelector

  Allows the user to pick a color. A ColorSelector can be rendered into any container. See the screenshot below.

• ColorButton

  Is a button that triggers an underlying ColorSelector to be shown for the user. Once a color is picked, a ColorButton is painted in that color.

• ColorField

  Is a form field that triggers ColorSelector and holds the selected color.

3D Pie Charts

Among the many new Chart features and improvements, a big one is the improvements within 3D Pie Charts. It now supports labels, legend, highlighting, tooltips, bevels and has improved shading with configurable level of 3D effect.

Converting an existing chart into a 3D Pie Chart is as easy as adding the Pie3DSeries config.

<Series>
    <ext:Pie3DSeries />
</Series> 

New Look For Examples Explorer

The Examples Explorer and MVC Examples Explorer have been upgraded to Ext.NET 4 with a fresh new look provided by the Triton theme and FontAwesome fonts.

GitHub For Ext.NET Source Code

As of Ext.NET 4, we’ve moved our source code from SVN to Git, hosted on GitHub.

For several years we’ve used GitHub for public Issue tracking, and now we’ve moved all source hosting onto the platform.

All new source code commits for all Ext.NET releases will be made at GitHub, although any commits related to previous releases (Ext.NET 3, 2 & 1) will be automatically mirrored in the legacy SVN server.

Your existing SVN accounts will continue to function without interruption. All new Ext.NET Enterprise purchases will only require access to GitHub.

Unfortunately we cannot provide source code access to non Ext.NET 4 Enterprise members. Upgrading to Ext.NET Enterprise will get you access to the Ext.NET Premium GitHub repository, an Ext.NET 4 Enterprise license for your team, and all minor version upgrades of Ext.NET 4.

GitHub For Examples Explorers

In addition to moving all Ext.NET development and Issue tracking into GitHub, we’ve also released both the WebForms Examples Explorer and MVC Examples Explorer into their own public GitHub repositories.

The source code for both Examples Explorers have been officially released as open source projects with the liberal Apache 2.0 license applied.

• WebForms Examples Explorer source code
• MVC Examples Explorer source code

Getting the Examples Explorers running locally with Visual Studio is very simple.

Steps Required:

1. Clone the repository locally (or use .zip download)
2. Double click the .sln file
3. Click the “Play” button

Visual Studio should take care of the rest. A .zip download of the full source is also available directly from GitHub.

Upgrading

We’ve designed Ext.NET 4 to be a drop-in replacement for Ext.NET 3 applications.

If you’re using NuGet, just run the following command. That’s it.

Update-Package Ext.NET

What’s Not Included?

While Ext JS 6 unified much of the Ext JS 5 and Sencha Touch mobile frameworks, currently Ext.NET 4 does not support the mobile API. The two frameworks (desktop vs mobile) are still very unique and will require a separate release in the future.

Purchase Options

Licensing of Ext.NET 4 is available as an Upgrade for existing Ext.NET 3 Premium Members, or as a New Ext.NET Enterprise purchase. A summary of both options and Q&A regarding Ext.NET 4 licensing are detailed within Ext.NET 4 Purchase Options.

Your Feedback

As always your feedback and comments are greatly appreciated. Please feel free to contact us at hello@ext.net if you have any questions or comments, or join the conversations happening within the Ext.NET Community forums.

Technical support questions are best asked in the forums. The public discussion may help others in the future, and allow the community to participate.

Work has already begun on the Ext.NET 4.1.0 release, which is planned for Q2 2016.

Thanks everyone!