This NEW VERSION of VSFlex contains two custom controls designed to save you from writing tedious, repetitive, error-prone code. The controls are innovative and efficient. They are distributed as a single VBX or ActiveX/OCX (16/32Bit) to make installation easier.
FlexArray - a new way to display and operate on tabular data. FlexArray gives you total flexibility to display, sort, merge, and format tables containing strings and pictures. NOW DATA BOUND grid control.
FlexString - a powerful regular expression engine. With FlexString, you can find and replace patterns in strings. Use it to provide regular expression search-and-replace capabilities or to parse input strings.
The items below outline the new features in VSFlex V2.0
This is something a lot of people were waiting for. FlexArray is data bound, so you can read in entire tables very quickly, and then manipulate them at will. For details, check the following items in the reference section: DataSource, VirtualData, and AutoResize.
FlexArray is now fully editable. You can implement data entry with text boxes or drop-down lists just by setting a couple of properties, and you can validate the data by responding to events. For details, check the following items in the reference section: Editable, ComboList, EditCell, BeforeEdit, AfterEdit, and Validate.
Think of this as a cross between the Excel outliner and the Explorer. You can dynamically add subtotals to summarize data, then expand and collapse entire groups with a click of the mouse, and no code. It's fast, easy, and extremely powerful. For details, check the following items in the reference section: Subtotal, Outline, OutlineBar , IsSubtotal, and IsCollapsed.
You can tell FlexArray to adjust the width of each column to fit the widest entry. For details, check the AutoSize method. This also works with data binding: just set the AutoResize property to True and all your data will fit comfortably within their columns.
╖ Formatted, International Sorting - FlexArray now recognizes numbers with embedded formatting characters such as thousand separators and currency signs, and it can also extract their values for you. (This works with international formats as well.) For details, check the following items in the reference section: Sort, Value, ValueMatrix.
╖ More Compatibility with MSGrid - We have added six new properties to make FlexArray more compatible with Microsoft's basic grid control: you can now use RowIsVisible and ColIsVisible, RowPosand ColPos, GridLineWidth, and FixedAlignment. Porting code is easier than ever.
╖ More Control - You now have more control over the appearance of your FlexArray controls, with lots of new settings for the GridLines property, and more control over row and column resizing, with the UserResized event.
╖ Printing - vsFlex2 knows how to communicate with vsView2. This means you can print and preview your FlexArray with a single command, even if it spans multiple pages. Plus, you can embed FlexArray controls into vsView2 reports. Assuming you have a vsPrinter control named vp, all it takes to print a FlexArray control named fa is this single line of code: vp.RenderControl = fa.hWnd.
Most of these enhancements were added in response to user requests, and we are grateful for their input.
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