Stimulsoft Reports.Fx Product Line Version 2012.1 Released.

We are happy to announce the release the Stimulsoft Reports.Fx product line version 2012.1. Stimulsoft Reports.Fx product line includes the products Stimulsoft Reports.Fx for Flex, Stimulsoft Reports.Fx for PHP, Stimulsoft Reports.Fx for Java. The latest version of products includes several improvements and performance enhancements that make it easier to use all of the innovative features in Stimulsoft Reports.Fx. Among them are new chart types, new data adapter Firebird, compression of requests/responses for client-server application and many more.

Report Themes

The new version of our product has a unique opportunity to create report themes. The report theme provides an opportunity to format the entire report with one click. In addition, there were added some special tools to create and work with the report themes in the styles editor. We have added a set of styles ready to be applied. Created report themes can also be used in report wizards.

Hiding Headers of Bands

This new option provides the ability to hide the headers of page bands. This option is useful if a page space is not enough and bands are needed to be arranged compactly. Also, it allows more accurately see the report page layout. A new option is available in the View tab of the toolbar.

Displaying Order of Components

This new option provides the ability to display the order of components located in the report page. If there are lots of components, this will facilitate the process of report designing. In addition to displaying the index number of the component, all nesting levels, and their order is displayed. The numbers are separated with dots.

Clipboard and Report Checker

Now you can copy the error message to the clipboard. It can be applied using the special button on the Report Checker toolbar. Now you do not have to remember or manually rewrite the message of the report generator, just press the button and the message will be copied to the clipboard.

Function Save a Copy

We have added new feature to save a copy of any item in the data dictionary. The button to save a copy is available in the editing item dialog. This feature will significantly speed up the process of creating new items in the data dictionary, based on existing ones.

New Types of Charts

We have expanded the list of supported charts with Radar and Bubble. Now you have even more opportunities to design reports with diagrams.

Supporting for HTML tags

You can now use basic HTML tags in the text displaying mode Wysiwyg. The reporting tools support such tags as bold and italics font style, color and text background, font type and size, as well as some other HTML tags.

Our software products successfully tested under VS 2011 Beta and .NET 4.5.

We have made an intensive test of our reporting tools of the Stimulsoft Reports product line version 2011.3 under Visual Studio 2011 Beta (it was released on February 29, 2012.) and .NET 4.5. Now we can announce support of the above mentioned environment with our software products.

Why Stimulsoft Reports? Part 3.

One of the main demands of the modern world is ability to choose! Yes, yes, you are hearing it right, it is choice. It is very good when you have wide a range of products to be chosen, when it is possible to pick up an object or area in which you will be most comfortable with... read more

WCF Samples Updated Again.

We have updated the WCF Samples. Please see the changes below:

1. We have added support for the tab Code in the report designer.

2. We have made some changes in the Stimulsoft.Report.StiOptions.Silverlight.WCFService.WCFExportDocument event. The EventHandlers type was changed and a new Filter property was added in it. This property passes the type of an exported file for a task into the SaveFileDialog.

Please download the updated samples here.
These new samples will work in the prerelease build of Stimulsoft Reports.Silverlight. The prerelease build will be available on November, 10. It can be downloaded here.

Silverlight 5 support in Stimulsoft Reports.Silverlight.

Our company is pleased to announce support for Silverlight 5 in the reporting tool Stimulsoft Reports.Silverlight. It should be noted that for the convenience of users, our developers have divided it into 2 editions: with support for Silverlight 4 and with support for Silverlight 5. The reason of it is very simple - we want to preserve the ability of users to run the report generator under Silverlight 4, as well as under Silverlight 5.

Start using Stimulsoft Reports.Silverlight under Silverlight 5 right now! This feature was added in a weekly prerelease build of January, 27 2012. To download product builds, please visit the webpage Download on our website, the section Prerelease Builds.

Among the most requested enhancements was the possibility of printing Postscript vector printing in Silverlight 5, which reduces the size of print jobs, and improve the quality of text rendering. We would like to go into detail on it and give some recommendations in this regard.

In Silverlight 5 a new very important feature became available. This is vector printing. For working with this you need to have a printer that supports PostScript and drivers installed that support this PostScript.

We have tested a new vector printing in Silverlight 5. For testing we used various printers but in the example below we wrote about the printer HP LaserJet M1522nf.

Download the driver HP Universal Print Driver for Windows PostScript, the printer appeared in the list (see an image below)

After reading articles from Microsoft, it became clear that if, after installing, the printer name does not end at the "PS" it does not support PostScript, so you should look for another driver .

The first test we conducted opening the report SimpleList.mrt (3 pages. This report can be found in the standard delivery of the product Stimulsoft Reports.SIlverlight). See an image below.

The result shows that when printing this report in the standard mode (not vector printing) the file size was about ~129 MB, which is pretty much for three pages.

When printing the report in the vector mode the file size was 10MB, which is ~13 times less than if we use the previous method (standard printing).

The second test was with the report Anchors.mrt (71 pages. This report can be found in the standard delivery of the product Stimulsoft Reports.SIlverlight). See an image below.

From test results we see that in the vector printing mode the file size was 239MB, which is certainly too much, but, nevertheless, using the standard printing mode the file size reached ~3.86 GB in 62 pages. When it reached that amount the error occurred due to lack of memory and printing process failed. Respectively, according to results, the size of the result file was approximately about 16 times less.

Summarizing this information we can say that now, using Silverlight 5, it became possible to print big reports.

If you are using our Silverlight 5 assembly and the viewer does not print report applying PostScript please do the following:

1. Check if your printer does support PostScript. 2. Is the proper driver installed for your printer (the default driver is always without support for PostScript).

It is very easy to check whether you have the correct driver is installed: the printer name ends in "PS" (for example: HP Universal Printing PS).

Perhaps, there are other specific printer settings. Contact the manufacturer of your printer for getting help.

Applying Feng Shui.

What is the labor productivity? Labor productivity is equal to the ratio between a volume measure of output and a measure or input use. This will tell you any economics textbook. You'll even find a smart formula. But this is the naked assertion, indicating absolutely nothing. The main element of the productivity is entirely different - it is harmony. Yes, this is harmony! And it makes no difference what you and your organization is occupied with... read more

Why Stimulsoft Reports? Part 2.

Stimulsoft Company not only produces report generators, it really understands them. The thing is that the company is not engaged in the development of many products and not trying to earn money for everything that is possible - only reporting and what is everything connected with it. Of course, for many years in this area, the developers of the company are real experts. We know everything about reports. These are not mere buzzwords - it's a global experience. At this moment, the company knows all the pitfalls of this turbulent flow! And it's really turbulent, because many companies have already sunk, like a decrepit boat. The fact speaks for itself; Stimulsoft Reports is not just keeping its head above water but is one of the leaders the regatta... read more