What's New in the Silverlight DataGrid in Beta 2
Silverlight 2 Beta 2 was released this weekend, see what ScottGu has to say about it here. We've all been pretty busy since releasing Beta 1 at MIX, and there are a lot of great new features across the product as a result. The question that you might be asking is what has changed in the DataGrid? Check out this list of new features and their associated posts to find out.
New Features Overview
- Auto-sizing: Unlike Beta 1 when you had to specify widths and heights yourself, everything in the DataGrid now can be auto-sized. That includes the DataGrid itself, Columns, Rows, Headers, and Row Details.
- Sorting: Now any time you bind the DataGrid to a collection that implements IList such as a List<T> you now get sorting for free. Even better sorting isn't limited to a single column, but end users can sort by multiple columns by holding Ctrl and clicking on additional column headers.
- Column Reordering: In Beta 1 the order of columns could be set programmatically, but now in Beta 2 we have extended this capability to the end user, where column reordering can be performed at runtime just by dragging a column's header.
- Frozen Columns: This is a semi-advanced feature, but once you know about it you'll be surprised at how useful it can be. A frozen column does not scroll horizontally but rather is "frozen" in place. This is the same as the Freeze Column feature in Excel.
- Programmatic Scrolling: Now you can scroll columns and items into view to make sure that an item you want to highlight to your user is visible on screen.
- Performance Enhancements: One of the big points of feedback we got in Beta 1 was vertical scrolling speed needed to be faster. We've made some improvements in this space to speed things up.
- API Improvements: These are changes that we made to existing API's to try to make using the DataGrid easier. Hopefully they are all for the better, and we would love to hear your feedback if you think that something could be easier.
