Silverlight Toolkit July 2009: DataForm & controls introduced in previous release

There are many changes in Silverlight Toolkit July 2009 release. Some controls and types have been removed from the Silverlight SDK and  they are now in the toolkit (f.e DataForm). Controls introduced in March release have been refreshed. There are also new controls and extensions. Today I’ll write about new DataForm and some refreshed controls.

DataForm

DataForm provides a flexible way to display a single object of or collection of data in a form and to interact with the object(s).  It allows IEditableObject support, for the committing or cancelling of changes; it allows field- and entity-level validation through the consumption of attributes. For more information see the links below.

• http://blogs.msdn.com/rickyt/archive/2009/07/13/silverlight-3-released-and-introduction-to-dataform.aspx
• http://www.silverlightshow.net/items/Silverlight-3-RTW-overview.aspx
• http://silverlight.codeplex.com/Wiki/View.aspx?title=Silverlight%20Toolkit%20July%202009%20change%20list
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc645049(VS.95).aspx

I’ve build four simple examples (screenshots below) to test some features: single object and collection displaying, validation, autogenerated UI, EditTemplate with grouped DataFields, EditTemplate without DataFields, ReadOnlyTemplate. Grouping fields with standard containers is cool!

Accordion, DomainUpDown, TimePicker, LayoutTransform, TransitioningContentControl

There are not big changes in these controls. However, I have noticed some differences when I updated samples with Accordion, DomainUpDown and TimePicker. For example Accordion bug with HeaderTemplate binding has been fixed.