What's New in Spread for ASP.NET
 
I own: version 4 | version 3 | version 2.5 | version 2.0

What's new in v.5 since v.4:
The following lists the new features and enhancements that have been added to Spread for ASP.NET 5:

Visualize your spreadsheet data using charts inside of Spread - View Charts Now!

• Fully integrated charting support with over 85 different chart types and built-in user interface for creating and customizing charts.
  
  
• Present your data in Charts that are integrated in Spread.
  
  
• Present your data in Charts using the FpChart stand-alone Control (outside of Spread).
  
  

Use Chart Designer and integrated menus and dialogs to create and manipulate charts in your Spread dashboards without writing code

• Use the Change Chart Type and Select Data dialogs to create your charts at design time.
  
  
• Use the Chart Designer at design time to modify the formatting of your charts.
  
  

Leverage the enhanced Microsoft Excel®-compatible spreadsheet features

• Document Caching provides lossless editing of Microsoft Excel files containing macros, script code, and other previously unsupported content.
  
  
• New support for Microsoft Excel import and export of charts.
  
  
• New support for importing and exporting Excel 2007 workbooks using ISO-OOXML compliant passwords (new in Excel 2007 SP2).
  
  

Get a fast start with the new Quick Start Wizard and begin designing powerful user interfaces today!

• Data bindings.
  
  
• Rows and Columns.
  
  
• And many more attributes.
  
  

Additional enhancements for these existing features

• UI Virtualization, providing major performance enhancements for large spreadsheets in IE8
  
  
• Support for Azure Development Fabric
  
  
• Support for new 3.5 and 4.0 version of AjaxControlToolkit, including the AJAXControlToolkit editable combobox control
  
  
• Intellisense support for client side scripting files of Spread for use in Visual Studio IDE
  
  
• Ability to move and/or copy SheetViews while in the Spread Designer
  
  
• Support for Visual Studio 2010
  
  
• and many more features all intended to enhance your development and user experience
  
  

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What's new in v.5 since v.3:
The following lists the new features and enhancements that have been added to Spread for ASP.NET 4:

Improvements to the Component

• AJAX Extenders
  
  All controls in the AJAX Control Toolkit can add or attach client behaviors to a target control. The target control is exposed as the Editor property of the extender cell type in FarPoint Spread.
• Print to PDF
  
  Use one of the SavePdf methods or the SavePdfToResponse methods. The former saves the FarPoint Spread to the specified PDF file. The latter saves the FarPoint Spread to the specified PDF response.
• New skins
• Sheet corner customization
• Add client events at design time
• Row template editor
  
  You can allow a row edit template to be displayed so the user can edit the contents of an entire row using a specified template or form. In the example shown here, the entire row of data is presented to the user as a vertical form with an Update and Cancel button at the bottom of the form.
• New default appearance
• Title and SubTitle
• Column footers and group footers
  
  You can show a column footer or a group footer or both for the sheet and put information in the footer such as formulas or text. The column footer is an area at the bottom of the sheet. The group footer is an extra row of footer cells at the bottom of a sheet with grouping, if you are using the grouping feature.
• Quick start wizard
• New improved Spread Designer
  
  You can quickly customize a spreadsheet component using the Spread Designer. Whether you are prototyping a complete spreadsheet component or simply customizing some aspect of your spreadsheet component, the dedicated graphical interface offers many features to save time and effort. It also provides a way for you to add data to and set properties for the component easily, including properties that are not available at design time in Visual Studio. You can set both design-time and run-time properties. In most cases you can preview changes before applying them to the spreadsheet.
• Enhanced color support when saving to xls
• LayoutMode
  
  For a more compressed format of displaying information, you may want to display columns with multiple lines of information. You can create row templates, also called aggregation subtotals or multiple-line columns. You can display multiple lines within a column, such as to display address information together in one column that involves multiple fields of information.

New Cell and Cell Features

• Multi-Column combo cell
• HyperLink cell tooltips
• ForeColor for button cell
• BackColor for button and combo cells
• OnClientClick property for button cells
• OnClientChanged property for combo cells
• Tag cloud

Improvements to the User Interaction

• Texttips for scroll bars (ScrollingContentVisible)
  This feature adds the ability to display scroll tips when the control is scrolled. The scrolling grid content can be displayed in a horizontal direction or vertical direction. By default, the content of the scroll tips is the contents of row header or column header but the developer can also customize this content to display other information.
• Skip cells with tab key (TabStop)
• Move multiple columns

New Events

• FetchGroupText

New Methods

• Open and Save methods for sheets
• Import or Export Open XML (.xlsx) files

New Properties

• SelectionPolicy
• New CursortType enum
• SaveViewStateToSession

New Client Methods

• GetActiveChildSheetView
• HideMessage
• ShowMessage

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What's new in v.5 since v.2.5:

The following lists the new features and enhancements that have been added to Spread for Web Forms 3:

New Performance Features and Improvements

• All of the features listed above plus:
• Optimized page load time due to smaller page size for various cell types
• Tested with ASP.NET AJAX and continued AJAX support
• Load on Demand paging (virtual mode)
  You can allow the Web page to load on demand -- as the user scrolls further down the spreadsheet the FarPoint Spread component on the client loads another page of rows from the server as needed. This is similar to what was called "virtual mode" in the COM version of the product. You can specify the number of rows to load initially and how many are added in subsequent loads. You can specify these properties at the component level (for FpSpread) or at the sheet level.
  
  FpSpread
          AllowLoadOnDemand
          OnLoadOnDemand
          LoadInitRowCount
          LoadRowIncrement
  
  SheetView
          AllowLoadOnDemand
          LoadInitRowCount
          LoadRowIncrement
  

New User Interaction Features and Improvements

• Grouping
  You can set up the display to allow Outlook-style grouping of rows. For large amounts of data, this is helpful to display the data in the order the user needs. The user selects columns by which to sort and the component then organizes and displays the data in a hierarchy with rows organized accordingly. To select a column by which to group and display that data, either double-click on the header of that column or click and drag that column into the grouping bar at the top of the page.
  
  You can provide grouping to allow users to sort the data with multiple levels of groups by dragging additional column headers into the grouping area. You can set up the display so that the items are shown initially all expanded or all collapsed when grouping is performed. You can set the colors and other formatting of both the hierarchy names and the data in the rows when grouping is performed.
  
  SheetView Property Description
  
  GroupBarBackColor
    Set the background color of the grouping bar
  
  GroupBarHeight
    Set the height of the grouping bar
  
  GroupBarVisible
    Set whether to display the grouping bar
  
  GroupInfos
    Set the data model to use in grouping
  
  GroupMaximumLevel
    Set the maximum number of levels of grouping allowed
  
  Grouping API Member Description
  
   IGroupSupport Interface
    Interface that supports grouping
  
  GroupDataModel Class
    Class of grouping data in the underlying models
  
  Group Class
    Class in the underlying models that supports grouping
  
  Grouped and Grouping Event
    Events in FpSpread class
  
  GroupingEventArgs
    Event data for grouping
  
  GroupInfo
    Class that represents grouping information
  
  GroupInfoCollection
    Collection of grouping information
  
  
• Conditional Formatting
  You can set up conditional formats within cells that determine the formatting of the cell based on the outcome of a conditional statement. You can use a named style to specify various formatting options such as borders and colors to apply if the condition statement is valid, that is, if the operation is satisfied.
  
  For example, you may want to change the background color of a cell based on the value of the cell. If the value is below 100 then the background color would be changed to red. The condition statement is “less than 100” and consists of a comparison operator “less than” and a condition, in this case a single constant “100”. The condition can be a constant (expressed as a string) or an expression. Some condition statements have two conditions and an operator: for instance, if the cell value is between 0 and 100, then change the background color. In this case, the comparison operator is “between” and the first condition is 0 and the last condition is 100. For a complete list of operations, refer to the ComparisonOperator enumeration.
  
  GetConditionalFormats methods
  SetConditionalFormat methods
  ClearConditionalFormats method
  IConditionalSupport interface
  ConditionalFormat class
  
  
• Drag and move columns in a sheet
  Moving columns just got easier.You can allow your users to click on the header of a column and drag it to another location on the spreadsheet. You can set this with the AllowColumnMove property in the FpSpread class.
  
  
• Additional operation modes
  Now you have two more options when setting up the amount of interactivity with the spreadsheet. You can now allow users to select multiple contiguous rows in the spreadsheet. To the OperationMode enumeration, we have added these settings:
  
  MultiSelect - Allows the user to select multiple contiguous rows in the spreadsheet (as one would in a multiple-select list box)  
  ExtendedSelect - Allows the user to select multiple discontiguous rows in the spreadsheet (as one would in an extended-select list box) 
  
  
• Expando support (for additional properties)
  We have added an interface that supports the ability to extend objects by adding arbitrary properties (called expando properties).

Additional methods for getting an object based on tags
You can get objects in the spreadsheet based on application tags you have assigned. You can get cells, columns rows. The following methods have been added to the SheetView class:

• GetCellFromTag
• GetColumnFromTag
• GetRowFromTag

New Properties

• Allow Header resize option
  You can allow the user to resize the header. The AllowHeaderResize Property in the FpSpread class determines whether to allow the user to resize the header.
• CSS support for sheet name tabs
  You can customize the appearance of the sheet name tabs using cascading style sheets (CSS).
• UseClipboard

New Combo Box Cell Properties
You can bind a datasource to a combo box cell.

• DataSource
• DataSourceID
• DataMember
• DataTextField
• DataValueField

New Client-side Features

• AddKeyMap
  Adds a key map. This method allows you to map a keyboard key which causes an action, such as moving to the next or previous cell or row, or the first or last column. You can also scroll to a cell.
• MoveToFirstColumn
  Moves the active cell to the first column.
• MoveToLastColumn
  Moves the active cell to the last column.
• MoveToNextCell
  Moves the active cell to the next cell.
• MoveToPrevCell
  Moves the active cell to the previous cell.
• MoveToNextRow
  Moves the active cell to the next row.
• MoveToPrevRow
  Moves the active cell to the previous cell.
• ScrollTo
  Moves the active cell to the specified cell.

New Calculation Engine Features and Improvements

• GoalSeeking capability
• COLUMN function
• ROW function
• VALUE function

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What's new in v.5 since v.2.0:

The following lists the new features and enhancements that have been added to Spread for Web Forms 2.5:

• All of the features listed above plus:
• More Control Features
  • AJAX support  - [View Sample]
  • Fp_Client folder configuration
  • Searching options  - [View Sample]
• More Row and Column Level Features
  • Row filtering added - [View Sample]
  • Frozen rows and columns using Microsoft Internet Explorer  - [View Sample]
• More Browser Support
  • Client script support for Mozilla FireFox
• New Text Cell Properties
  • MaxLength property
  • PasswordChar property
  • TypeEllipses property
• New Printing Features
  • PrintHeader/PrintFooter
  • PrintSheet event
• New Properties
  • AllowUserFormulas property
  • CurrentPage property
• New Formula Functions
  • DAVERAGE formula
  • DCOUNT formula
  • DCOUNTA formula
  • DGET formula
  • DMAX formula
  • DMIN formula
  • DPRODUCT formula
  • DSTDEV formula
  • DSTDEVP formula
  • DSUM formula
  • DVAR formula
  • DVARP formula
  • OFFSET formula

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What's new in v.5 since v.1:

The following lists the new features and enhancements that have been added to Spread for Web Forms 2:

• All of the features listed above plus:
• More Cell-Level Control of Data
  • Cell referencing across sheets (cross-sheet referencing)
  • Allow automatic merging of cells with identical content
  • Over 300 built-in functions for formulas; Date and Time, Engineering, Financial, Information, Logical, Look Up, Math and Trigonometry, Statistical, Text
  • Adding a cell span now supports zero-width anchor cells
• More Cell Type Features
  • Percent cell type for percent values
  • Cell type can have background image
  • Allow postback of combo box and check box cells
• More Sheet-Level Control of Data
  • Save to and load from Excel stream object
  • Printing an entire sheet
  • Hiding an entire sheet
  • Hierarchical view support for collections
• More Customization of the Interface
  • Command bar can be at top or bottom of control
  • Scroll bar colors can be customized
  • Hierarchy expand and collapse image can be customized
  • Sort indicator image can be customized
  • Allow hiding buttons (while not disabling them)
  • Manage ability of user to expand rows in hierarchical display
  • Manage ability of user to use tab key for advancing
• More Client-Side Scripting Features
  • Event notifying scrolling of sheet
  • Event notifying active cell changing
  • ActiveCol and ActiveRow properties are read/write
  • Method to hide a column by setting width to zero
  • Method to set column width
  • Method to put Spread into edit mode