Issues on Silverlight Client

[LuisC.Costa]

Hi,

I am evaluating your Reports.Silverlight product as a condidate for use in my own Silverlight application.

I have come up with a few issues/questions that I would apreciate your feedback:
1 - The LoadPackedReport and LoadPackedDocument methods of StiReport do not work on the silverlight client. We get always the error: DeflaterOutputStream Read not supported
2 - The IsModified property of the StiReport object does not get consistently updated to true every time the report is changed on the StiSLDesignerControl. Some examples:
2.1 - Changing the value of any property using the Property Grid will not cause the IsModified flag to be set to true. Example: Changing the Value of the Position-Top property on the Property Grid will not update IsModified to true but dragging the control to change its position on the Page will cause it the IsModified to be updated.
2.2 - All commands on the 'Page' tab of the ribbon will not cause the IsModified to be set to true, but the commands on all other ribbon tabs will.
3 - There seams to be no way to Hide the Main Menu. Also when setting all items on the Main Menu to Disabled, the Menu is available and the last Menu group (e.g New) that was accessed will have its commands available on the page on the right.
4 - It would be helpfull to have a ReadOnly mode on the StiSLDesignerControl, so that users can view but not edit the Design of reports that are on a non-editable state (because of some business rule)
5 - The StiSLViewerControl shown redundant separators on the ToolBar when all buttons of a group are hidden. Example: setting the ShowPageDeleteButton ShowPageNewButton and ShowPageSizeButton flags to false will cause the Toolbar to have 2 Separator lines next to each other.
6 - Do you plan to open the possibility for your customers to develop their own custom Designer applications using the Silverlight Designer controls like it is currently possible with the WinForms version (Reports.Net)? For my specific case it would be enough to be able to hide the ribbon, so that I can integrate its commands on the ribbon of my own application (thus avoiding the application to show 2 ribbons one on top of the other).
7 - I have found the DontAskSaveReport option that prevents some confirmation message boxes to be shown, but this does not hide all of them (e.g. the page delete confirmation message box). Can you tell me how to do that? The proble is that my application has a custom style of message boxes, so when a message box from your designer appears it looks completly different and spoils the all consistent look and feel of my application :biggrin:

Thank you very much in advance for your help on this issues.

[Andrew]

Hello,

Thank you your questions.

1 - The LoadPackedReport and LoadPackedDocument methods of StiReport do not work on the silverlight client. We get always the error: DeflaterOutputStream Read not supported

Due to limitations of Silverlight these methods do not work. Only .mrt files are supported. We will remove these methods in the next prerelease build.

2 - The IsModified property of the StiReport object does not get consistently updated to true every time the report is changed on the StiSLDesignerControl. Some examples:
2.1 - Changing the value of any property using the Property Grid will not cause the IsModified flag to be set to true. Example: Changing the Value of the Position-Top property on the Property Grid will not update IsModified to true but dragging the control to change its position on the Page will cause it the IsModified to be updated.
2.2 - All commands on the 'Page' tab of the ribbon will not cause the IsModified to be set to true, but the commands on all other ribbon tabs will.

We shall fix this issue in the next prerelease build.

3 - There seams to be no way to Hide the Main Menu. Also when setting all items on the Main Menu to Disabled, the Menu is available and the last Menu group (e.g New) that was accessed will have its commands available on the page on the right.

The problem is fixed. The patch is available in prerelease build on 23-November-2010.

4 - It would be helpfull to have a ReadOnly mode on the StiSLDesignerControl, so that users can view but not edit the Design of reports that are on a non-editable state (because of some business rule)

The suggestion is interestin. We shall discuss it with our developers.

5 - The StiSLViewerControl shown redundant separators on the ToolBar when all buttons of a group are hidden. Example: setting the ShowPageDeleteButton ShowPageNewButton and ShowPageSizeButton flags to false will cause the Toolbar to have 2 Separator lines next to each other.

The problem is fixed. The patch is available in prerelease build on 23-November-2010.

6 - Do you plan to open the possibility for your customers to develop their own custom Designer applications using the Silverlight Designer controls like it is currently possible with the WinForms version (Reports.Net)? For my specific case it would be enough to be able to hide the ribbon, so that I can integrate its commands on the ribbon of my own application (thus avoiding the application to show 2 ribbons one on top of the other).

Yes. After the official release in December we will work on this task.

7 - I have found the DontAskSaveReport option that prevents some confirmation message boxes to be shown, but this does not hide all of them (e.g. the page delete confirmation message box). Can you tell me how to do that? The proble is that my application has a custom style of message boxes, so when a message box from your designer appears it looks completly different and spoils the all consistent look and feel of my application Big grin

The DontAskSaveReport property can be used only when saving a report. We have added the StiOptions.Designer.DontAskDeletePage property. Please use it for hiding the dialog box when deleting a page.

Thank you.

[LuisC.Costa]

Hi,

Thank you very much for your feedback.

Just some additonal comments from my side:
1 - It would be really helpfull to have the LoadPacked* methods available on the Silverlight client, as a way to reduce network load (my application will be transfering the Report Layout as well as the Rendered report over the network from the database to the client).
Any chance that this can be implemented with some custom code?
7 - Thank you for the change it is very helpfull. But I am still afraid that other messages may occur in other scenarios. Any change that you can provide an overridable class/method to replace the internal message boxes by a message box provided by my application?

Thank you and keep up the good work.

[Andrew]

Hello,

1 - It would be really helpfull to have the LoadPacked* methods available on the Silverlight client, as a way to reduce network load (my application will be transfering the Report Layout as well as the Rendered report over the network from the database to the client).
Any chance that this can be implemented with some custom code?

The difficulty of adding this method is that silvelight greatly cut in features and there is no necessary code for inclision of these methods. We have some groundwork on this issue, but there are still many difficulties yet. After the release in December, we'll see what can be done with this.

7 - Thank you for the change it is very helpfull. But I am still afraid that other messages may occur in other scenarios. Any change that you can provide an overridable class/method to replace the internal message boxes by a message box provided by my application?

The only thing we can help you is to change our StiMessageBox on the standard MessageBox for not standing out against your application.

Thank you.

[LuisC.Costa]

Hi,

The only thing we can help you is to change our StiMessageBox on the standard MessageBox for not standing out against your application.

Do you mean modifying the existing StiMessageBox class (by purchasing a licence that includes the source code)?
I would prefer not to do that (regardless if I buy the license with the source code included or not), because everytime you modify that class on your side on a new release, I need to re-apply my changes again.

I would prefer, if possible, to derive a new class from StiMessageBox (or another class used internally by StiMessageBox) and register that somehow, as the new class to be used internally in your controls (e.g. StiOptions.Silverlight.MessageBoxType = typeof(MyStiMessageBox))

Thank you.

Best Regards,
Luis

[Anton Lozovskiy]

Hello,

You can use the Stimulsoft.Report.StiOptions.Silverlight.MessageBoxType. Please see the attached sample application. The sample I send you will work in prerelease build from 23.11.2010.

Thank you.

[LuisC.Costa]

Hi,

Great news.
Did not expect to have it so soon. Very impressive. :biggrin:

I will try it out.

Best Regards

[Anton Lozovskiy]

Hello,

Let us know if you need any additional help.

Thank you.