Almost a year ago, we announced the retirement of our Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 products.  This was in response to the ever-changing Windows platform, and the utter lack of market interest.  Since then, we have been planning and waiting for the right time to make our move.  The time is now!  The Windows Platform has made a number of improvements and the market is starting to gain traction.  We have recognized that now is the perfect time to launch our Infragistics UWP controls to the world.  I am exited to announce that we are making our Infragistics UWP controls available to you today. 

But wait a minute Brian…. the title says “Preview”, what’s up with that?  If you have been following my career here at Infragistics for the last 5 years, you know that I don’t like to keep things from my community.  I want your honest and candid feedback, and the best way to get that is to give you what we have now.  Not tomorrow, not next week, not next month, but now.  I wanted to get these controls in your hands as soon as possible, because waiting sucks.  We have some loose ends to tie up before we can call these controls RTM, but don’t let that “Preview” term fool you.  These controls are ready to be thrown into the fire and pushed to their limits.

Now, I’m not just giving paying customers early access to the Infragistics UWP controls.  I’m giving everyone access to the Infragistics UWP controls for FREE!  That’s right, no purchases necessary.  Anyone from the community can download these great controls and start using them NOW.  All I ask is that you contact support for any issues or bugs you run into, submit any feature requests to the Infragistics Product Ideas website, and you send me your honest feedback directly.  I want to know what you think of these controls and what you need in order to be successful building UWP apps.  So what are you waiting for?

Download the FREE Infragistics UWP Preview

While your Infragistics UWP Preview controls are downloading, let’s take a quick look at what you’ll be getting.

Sample Browser

This first thing I want to point out is that we are providing a very simple Sample Browser to help you become familiar with the controls.  Install it, run it, explore it.  This should do for now, at least until we can ship the official Infragistics UWP Sample Browser.

Data Grid

The first control up, is our brand new UWP Data Grid written from the ground up to allow us to take advantage of everything that UWP has to offer.  Even though this is a preview release of our Data Grid, it has a ton of features that you can start taking advantage of right now.  Everything form the basics of column definitions, to sorting, filtering, responsiveness, and even async data loading.  This Data Grid has some great features that will take your UWP apps to the next level.

Data Chart

Next up is our UWP Data Chart.  This control has been the power house of Infragistics for many years on other platforms.  Now, you can take advantage of the power and massive feature set provided by the Data Chart.  There are literally too many features to even fathom talking about all of them in this post.  So I will simply sum them up and you can go play with the Data Chart yourself.  Make sure you set aside a year or so to really dive in.  That’s just how many features we pack into this mobile data chart.  The UWP Data Chart comes with over 50 chart types including bar, column, line, area, spline, waterfall, point, OHLC, polar, radial, and many many more.  Besides a crazy number of supported chart types, there are an even larger number of features with each chart.  Crosshairs, legends, markers, panning, zooming, and much more.  Basically, the Infragistics Data Chart is the Chuck Norris of charts.  Nothing else needs to be said.

Pie Chart

Who doesn’t like pie?  The main features of the Pie Chart include label configurations, like position and extent, label font properties, controlling pie radius, start angle, sweep direction, exploded slices and distance from center for exploded slices, selected slices, and legend. The ability to prevent the labels from colliding with each other or the slices.

Funnel Chart

A single series chart that displays data in a funnel shape with a variable number of sections each representing the data as different portions of 100% or to weight the height of the slices based on value. The Funnel Chart can be configured to be inverted, to use Bezier Curve for its shape or weighted slices.

Radial Gauge

The Radial Gauge contains a number of visual elements, such as a scale with tick marks and labels, a needle, and a number of ranges. The Radial Gauge has different label configurations, like color, extent, and interval. Radial Gauge has different range properties, like color, start and end value. The needle of the Radial Gauge can be configured by setting its color, needle and pivot shapes and outlines. The transitions between different sets of settings can be animated.

Linear Gauge

The Linear Gauge is useful for showing a single measure on a linear range. It has different label configurations, like color, extent, interval, and position of the first and last labels. The needle of the Linear Gauge can be configured by setting its color, outline, shape, size. The transitions between different sets of settings can be animated.

Bullet Graph

The Bullet Graph displays a single primary measure and compares it to one or more other measures to create a concise data visualization. It supports a variety of configurations, e.g. orientation, scale, tick marks, ranges and colors along with animated transitions between different sets of settings.

128 Barcode

The 128 Barcode can be used in inventory, shipping and distribution applications. The 128 Barcode has different configurations, like label’s color and font, background color, and stretch.

QR Barcode

The QR (Quick Response) Barcode can be used in commercial tracking, entertainment and transport ticketing, product marketing applications.

 

Let’s Wrap this Baby Up!

Seeing this preview probably has you asking yourself, “Brian, these controls are amazing and I can’t wait to use them, but what’s next?  What’s your long term plan for UWP?”.  Well, I’m glad you asked.  As I write this blog, we are researching controls such as a new mobile scheduler, a ribbon control, an Excel experience, a Word experience, and many other controls that really concentrate on line of business scenarios for mobile applications.  We have a long term plan for supporting your UWP application needs, and we are committed to bringing you the markets best, highest performing, and most beautiful mobile controls period.  In order to accomplish this, we need your help. 

If you have ideas about new features we should bring to our controls, important issues we need to fix, or even brand new controls you’d like us to introduce, please let us know by posting them on our Product Ideas website.  Follow and engage with us on Twitter via @infragistics. You can also follow and contact me directly on Twitter at @brianlagunas.  Also make sure to connect with our various teams via our Community Forums where you can interact with Infragistics engineers and other customers.  

Lastly, when you do build something cool with our controls, please make sure to let us know.