ActiveReports - What's New

• Crystal Reports-to-ActiveReports converter

  You have been able to convert all of your old 2005 and 2008 version Crystal Reports into ActiveReports 6 reports using shortcuts in the Start menu under All Programs, GrapeCity, ActiveReports 6, Tools: Crystal Reports to ActiveReports Converter. New features are as follows.

  • Now supports converting datasources from Crystal Reports when converting to RPX format.
  • Now supports conversion of Crystal Reports 2010 templates to RPX format.

  Learn More | Converting Crystal Reports

• End User Report Designer

  A new public API allows you to update properties on reports, sections and controls at run time in your End User Designer applications.

  Learn More | Update properties on reports, sections and controls at run time in the End User Designer

• Exports and Report Properties

  We continually enhance ActiveReports by adding properties based on your feedback. New properties in this hot fix include the following.

  • The OnlyForPrint property of the PDFDocumentOptions class in PDFExport has been made public.
  • Added DpiX and DpiY properties to set resolution for the TiffExport.
  • Added a new DateTime category to the AxisType enumeration in the Chart control.
  • Added the ability to change the PageMargin property in the PageStart event of a report.

  Learn More | OnlyForPrint Property | DpiX Property | DpiY Property | AxisType Enumeration | PageMargin Property

• Licensing

  We have added the Silverlight Class Library License Generator to the ActiveReports installation so that you can license compiled assemblies containing the Silverlight Viewer.

  • The DLL or EXE of an application can now be passed as a parameter in the ApplicationLicenseGenerator.
  • The Silverlight Viewer hosted in a Silverlight Class Library project can now be licensed.

  Learn More | License Your ActiveReports

The latest ActiveReports service pack includes major new features and a number of enhancements and fixes. Highlights include:

• ActiveReports Silverlight Report Viewer

  Designed for reporting in Microsoft Silverlight 4 and higher, the Silverlight Report Viewer is simple, lightweight, flexible, localizable, and easy to customize for quick end user deployment. It includes these features:
  • Preview reports loaded from a file, document stream, ASPX page, RPX Handler, or WCF service.
  • End-user toolbar with Table of Contents (TOC), Thumbnails, Print, Search, Zoom, and Navigation buttons, plus you can add your own custom buttons.
  • Printing support with an extra print-to-PDF option.
  • Full UI customization with Themes and Localization support.
    • Use Silverlight Viewer XAML template to customize the look of the UI. We provide pre-customized templates in six useful themes.
    • Use resource files (*.resx) to create custom localizations of all text in the UI. We provide pre-localized satellite assemblies for Chinese, Japanese, and Russian.
  • Out-of-browser support (see included OOB sample).
  • Samples: Two new samples in CSharp and VB.
    • Silverlight Viewer sample.
    • Silverlight Viewer Out-Of-Browser sample application.

  The ActiveReports Silverlight Report Viewer is licensed for use in the ActiveReports 6 Professional Edition. Existing ActiveReports 6 Professional Edition customers can download the latest service pack and use the Silverlight Report Viewer control at no additional charge. ActiveReports Standard Edition customers need to upgrade to the ActiveReports 6 Professional edition to use the Silverlight Report Viewer.

  Learn More | Silverlight Viewer Walkthrough | Localize | Customize | Print to PDF

• Enhanced Windows Azure Reporting

  The latest release improves on the ActiveReports support for Windows Azure reporting. New enhancements include:
  • Export your reports to Microsoft Excel from within Azure in full trust mode.
  • PDF digital signatures are now supported in Azure full trust mode.
  • ActiveReports is supported in Azure under partial trust with standard platform limitations.
  See Windows Azure Support for information on what is compliant with Windows Azure partial trust in ActiveReports 6.

• Web Key Generator

  This release includes a Web Key Generator utility that you can use on a licensed machine to create a Web key for your ActiveReports project.

  Learn More (see the Web Key section)

For a full list of features, enhancements and fixes in ActiveReports 6 Service Pack 2, please visit the download page.

• Convert from Crystal Reports to ActiveReports 6

  The latest ActiveReports 6 release now comes with the ability to convert Crystal Reports (version 2005 and 2008) to ActiveReports 6 reports. The installation creates two shortcuts in the "All Programs" Start Menu item for "GrapeCity/ActiveReports 6".
  1. Use the "CrystalToAR2005" program to convert from Crystal Reports 2005.
  2. Use the "CrystalToAR2008" program to convert from Crystal Reports 2008.

  Learn More

  Read the complete list of changes

• Support for Visual Studio 2010

  ActiveReports 6 now supports Visual Studio 2010, as well as Visual Studio 2005 and 2008.

• Support for .NET Framework 4.0 Client profile

  By supporting the .NET Framework 4.0 Client profile, ActiveReports 6 now provides its users with lightweight and fast installation packages, thus expanding the large range of great features in ActiveReports 6. For more information on what is compliant with the .NET Framework 4.0 Client Profile in ActiveReports 6.

  Learn More

• Support for Windows Azure (Full Trust)

  ActiveReports 6 now includes support for Microsoft Windows Azure cloud services in full trust mode, granting access to the benefits of using this platform. See Windows Azure Support for information on what is compliant with Azure in ActiveReports 6.
  

  Learn more about Windows Azure Platform

• Support for ASP.NET Medium Trust

  ActiveReports 6 can now generate ASP.NET reports in a medium trust environment. Understanding that many web hosting environments do not grant full trust, we have done our best to improve your ASP.NET reporting experience.

  Learn More | Also see MSDN's article on ASP.NET Medium Trust

• Advanced PDF Character Support for PDF Reporting

  The PDF reporting feature in the ActiveReports Professional Edition now allows the export of End-User Defined Characters (EUDC) in East Asian languages. For example, old Chinese characters that are used for names in Japanese may require custom characters that users must create themselves, or must purchase in a third-party font package. Now you can link fonts to one or sometimes more EUDC fonts in the Professional Edition.

  Learn More

• Flash Report Viewer Customization Using JavaScript Client API

  Now you can customize the look and feel of the Flash Viewer using client-side JavaScript API functions. You can change the viewer appearance, load and print documents, as well as handle errors and various events. Here is a quick listing of things you can do with the JavaScript API:
  • Load and Navigate a document (RDF format)
  • Specify MultiPage settings and set a theme and hyperlink colors
  • Specify settings for the Table of Contents panel
  • Customize the FlashViewer toolbar
  • Use event handlers to create custom commands
  • Display error messages or warnings to users
  • Control printing options and page settings

  Learn More

• Reporting without Language or Culture Dependence

  With the new public Culture property on certain items, ActiveReports makes it possible to do reporting without language or culture dependence, with no run-time dependency on the language and culture settings of the application or of the underlying operating system.

  Learn More

ActiveReports 6 Standard Edition includes the following new features.

Also see What's new in the Professional Edition.

• World-Class Performance and Even Better Quality

  If you admired ActiveReports for its world-class quality and speed with over 50,000 users worldwide, you will love version 6 even more. The new version contains a number of improvements to enhance the performance and quality of the reporting engine, making it better, faster and smarter than ever before.

• Visual Studio 2008 Support

  ActiveReports 6 is fully supported in Microsoft Visual Studio 2008.

• 64 bit support

  ActiveReports 6 is fully functional in an x64 computing environment. Any application using ActiveReports 6 can run on 64-bit machines to render their reports. Support for x64 processing is available both at run time and in Microsoft Visual Studio at design time.

• The RPX Format Is Back!

  RPX, the Report XML format that was available prior to ActiveReports for .NET 3.0, is back, and it is better than ever. We now offer design-time support for the format, and you can access controls directly in script with no need to typecast them. In the new implementation, the improved script editor even allows you to use "Me" or "this" in addition of "rpt" to access the report, sections and controls in script. Script editor used for editing RPX now has intellisense support along with better error handling for compile time and run time errors. RPX is an XML report layout format that allows you to change reports in an application without recompiling it. Instead of VB or C# code, you use VB or C# script with this format.

  Screenshot | Learn More

• New Reduced Space Symbology (RSS) Bar Codes

  ActiveReports has always had excellent integrated bar code functionality that saved you time and effort. The new version supports six new barcode symbologies. You can use the new Reduced Space Symbology (RSS) styles to encode Composite Component (CC) extended EAN and UPC information in less space. The new styles are RSS14, RSS14Truncated, RSS14Stacked, RSS14StackedOmnidirectional, RSSExpanded, and RSSExpandedStacked.

  Screenshot | Learn More

• External Style Sheets for a Consistent Look

  You asked for it and now you have it! ActiveReports has a new external style sheet feature so that you can now easily share the look of your favorite report with other reports. Styles selected for text and labels can now be exported to an XML-based style sheet and imported and applied to another report at run time or at design time. Styles are applied by the Reporting engine before reports are run.

  Screenshot | Learn More

• New Report Designer Enhancements

  The ActiveReports Designer makes creating great looking reports even easier with the new design tools introduced in this version.

• New Cross Section Controls

  You can now design great looking reports in ActiveReports using the new cross section controls. Drop one of the cross section controls into any header section, and it automatically grows dynamically and stretches across any intervening sections to its related footer section. The CrossSectionLine control renders a dynamically growing vertical line and the CrossSectionBox control renders a rectangular outline with corners that can be rounded by setting the radius property.

  Screenshot | Learn More

• New Snap Lines

  The ActiveReports designer uses the new snap lines by default. Snap lines allow you to glide your controls freely instead of snapping to a grid (which is still available in Report Settings). They assist with alignment via blue horizontal and vertical lines that appear when your control comes into alignment with other controls or section edges. In other words, you get the best of both — easily move controls on the design space, plus align perfectly with other controls should you decide to do so.

  Screenshot | Learn More

• Direct Input in Text, Label and Check-Box Controls

  Double-click inside the ActiveReports TextBox control or select it and press the F2 key to edit text directly in the control instead of using the Properties window. If you do use the Properties window, the Text property now supports multi-line text input.

  Screenshot | Learn More

• Text Justify Feature in Text Controls

  Text justification in ActiveReports TextBox and Label controls now also supports single character justification. When you set the Alignment property to Justify, the new TextJustify property extends your justification options to include Auto (default), Distribute and DistributeAllLines.

  Screenshot | Learn More

• Text Padding for Labels and TextBox Controls

  The ActiveReports TextBox control now has a Padding property with five settings at design time: All, Left, Top, Right, and Bottom. More settings, like Vertical and Horizontal, are available in code. The All property has a default value of -1, which means that all of the Padding values are not equal. Change this value to 10, and a space ten pixels wide is left around the text on all sides. The Left, Top, Right, and Bottom properties are 0, 0, 0, 0 by default.

  Screenshot | Learn More

• Patterns to Fill Empty Spaces

  In the ActiveReports designer, the new RepeatToFill property allows your green bar or other formatting to fill the page even if your data doesn't. For the simplest example, if you have a report with a PageHeader, Detail, and PageFooter section, and the detail section has a background color set, the background color on the last page would normally end with the data, and then the PageFooter section would render at the bottom of that page, leaving a white gap between the two sections. With the RepeatToFill property set to True however, the last page of the report would have the background color extending down to just above the PageFooter, leaving no white space.

  Screenshot | Learn More

• Image Annotations

  Now you can add images to your annotations on reports in the ActiveReports viewer. The Annotations feature was first introduced with ActiveReports version 3.0. Annotations allow you to pass on special comments and instructions for the end users viewing your reports.

  Screenshot | Learn More

ActiveReports 6 Professional includes all of the new features from the Standard Edition.

See What's new in the Standard Edition.

In addition, it contains the following new features.

• 64 bit support

  The Professional Edition provides the same level of x64 support as the Standard Edition and adds x64 support in the End User Report Designer for Windows Forms.

• Flash Report Viewer for ASP.NET

  ActiveReports 6 Professional Edition now includes a Flash-based report viewer that you can use to provide a seamless, interactive report viewing experience and no-touch printing using the widely-adopted Adobe Flash Player already installed on end user desktops. Choose from pre-defined themes (including Office, Windows XP, Vista and Windows Classic) and enhance the viewer experience by controlling the printing, paging, table of contents, thumbnail views and other options. This feature requires Adobe Flash version 10 or higher.

  Screenshot | Learn More

• PDF Report Signatures and Timestamps

  The well known PDF reporting features of ActiveReports just got even better in the Professional Edition. While exporting .NET reports to PDF, you can now digitally sign your reports with a hidden signature or with visible text and graphics. Personalize your signature using sixteen attributes. Use the signature to validate the report author, and a Certification Level attribute to control user access. Use the new Time Stamp feature to create third-party authorized versions of your documents. These features are fully compatible with Adobe's new security guidelines.

  Screenshot | Learn More

• PDF reporting now supports exporting Chinese, Japanese and Korean

  The Professional Edition's PDF reporting feature now allows exporting text in East Asian languages (Chinese, Japanese, and Korean). With our new international capabilities in the PDF Export feature, you need never worry about whether the selected font supports all of the characters in your reports.

• ToolStrips Instead of Toolbars

  The ActiveReports End User Report Designer now offers a better Toolbar by leveraging the latest Visual Studio ToolStrip control instead of the old CommandBar control.

  Screenshot | Learn More

• Redistributable Help for the End User Report Designer

  You asked for a help file for the End User Report Designer that you could distribute to your end users, and now you've got it. ActiveReports Professional Edition developers can deploy the compiled CHM file and PDF file out of the box or use the included Innovasys HelpStudio 3 User Guide project to customize it and compile your own CHM or PDF file. (Requires HelpStudio version 3.) This feature is only available in the Professional Edition of ActiveReports.

  Screenshot | Learn More