Infragistics recently released their new Silverlight Data Visualization Controls. I saw a couple of samples and had to take a look. I headed over to their website and downloaded the controls. I first noticed the hospital floor-plan demo shown on their site and started thinking of ways that I could use this in my own organization. I emailed them asking if I could give away the Silverlight Data Visualization controls on my site and they said, Yes! They also wanted to throw in the standard Silverlight Line of Business controls. (combined they are worth about $3000 US). I am very thankful they were willing to help the Silverlight community with this giveaway. So some quick rules below:

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Win a FREE developer’s license of Infragistics Silverlight Controls with Data Visualization ($3000 Value)

Random winner will be announced on January 1st, 2011!

To be entered into the contest do the following things:

1. Subscribe to my feed.
2. Leave a comment below with a valid email account (I WILL NOT share this info with anyone.)
3. For extra entries simply: Retweet a link to this page using the following URL [ http://mcrump.me/iscfree ]. It does not matter what the tweet says, just as long as the URL is the same. Unlimited tweets, but please don’t go crazy!
   This URL will allow me to track the users that Tweet this page.

Don’t forget to visit Infragistics because they made this possible.

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Before we get started with the Silverlight Controls, here is a couple of links to bookmark:

• The Silverlight Line of Business Control page is here. You can also check out the live demos here.
• The Data Visualization page is here. You can also check out the live demos here.

Don’t worry about the Samples/Help Documentation. You can install all of that to your local HDD when you are installing it.

I am going to walk you through the Silverlight Controls recently released by Infragistics.

Begin by downloading the trial version and running the executable. If you downloaded the Complete bundle then you will have the following options to pick from.

I like having help documentation and samples on my local HDD in case I do not have access to the internet and want to code.

After it is installed, you may want to take a look at your Toolbox in Visual Studio 2010. Look for NetAdvantage 10.3 Silverlight and you will see that you now have access to all of these controls.

At this point, to use the controls it’s as simple as drag/drop onto your Silverlight container. It will create the proper Namespaces for you.

I wanted to highlight a few of the controls that I liked the most:

Grid – After using the Infragistics grid you will wonder how you ever survived using the grid supplied by Microsoft standard controls.  This grid was designed to get your application up and running very fast. It’s simple to bind, it handles LARGE DataSets, easy to filter and allows endless possibilities of formatting data.

The screenshot below is an example of the grid. For a real-time updating demo click here.

SpellChecker- If your users are creating emails or performing any other function that requires Spell Checking then this control is great. Check out the screenshots below:

In this first screen, I have a word that is not in the dictionary [DotNet]. The Spell Checker finds the word and allows the user to correct it.

What is so great about Infragistics controls is that it only takes a few lines of code to have a full-featured Spell Checker in your application.

TagCloud – This is a control that I haven’t seen anywhere else. It allows you to create keywords for popular search terms. This is very similar to TagCloud seen all over the internet. 

Below is a screenshot that shows “Facebook” being a very popular item in the cloud. You can link these items to a hyperlink if you wanted.

Importing/Exporting from Excel – I work with data a majority of the time. We all know the importance of Excel in our organizations, its used a lot. With Infragistics controls it make importing and exporting data from a Grid into Excel a snap. One of the things that I liked most about this control was the option to choose the Excel format (2003 or 2007). I haven’t seen this feature in other controls.

Creating/Saving/Extracting/Uploading Zip Files – This is another control that I haven’t seen many others making. It allows you to basically manipulate a zip file in any way you like. You can even create a password on the zip file.

Schedule – The Schedule that Infragistics provides resembles Outlook’s calendar. I think that it’s important for a user to see your app for the first time and immediately be able to start using because they are already familiar with the UI. The Schedule control accomplishes that in my opinion.

I have just barely scratched the surface with the Infragistics Silverlight Line of Business controls. To check all of them then click here.

A quick thing to note is that this giveaway also comes with the following Silverlight Data Visualization Controls. Below is a screenshot that list all of them:

I wanted to highlight 2 of the controls that I liked the most:

xamBarcode– The xamBarcode supports the following Symbologies:

Below is an example of the barcode generated by Infragistics controls. This is a high resolution barcode that you will not have to wonder if your scanner can read it. As long as you have ink in your printer your barcode will read it. I used a Symbol barcode reader to test this barcode.

xamTreemap– I’ve never seen a way of displaying data like this before, but I like it. You can style this anyway that you like of course and it also comes with an Office 2010 Theme.

Thanks to Infragistics for providing the controls to one lucky reader. I hope that you enjoyed this post and good luck to those that entered the contest.