Developer Product Briefs
May's New Apps & Upgrades for Your Toolkit
Kinook Software's Visual Build Pro 6.0; Actipro Software's Actipro Ribbon 1.0; HTMLCaptcha; TallComponentsBV's PDFKit.NET 2.0; and IdeaBlade's DevForce 3.5.
Kinook Software Inc.
Visual Build Pro 6.0
Kinook Software Inc. has added a revamped, customizable GUI front-end and other features and bug fixes to the 6.0 release of its Visual Build Pro automated software construction and deployment tool.
Visual Build is designed to help enterprise and ISV developers manage products and speed up their builds by automating "menial, repetitive tasks," according to the company. The latest version of the build tool supports Visual Studio 2005, Visual Studio Team System and other IDEs.
Other new features include unlimited steps back and forth through edits with the undo and redo buttons, instant navigation to identified errors and a code-completing script editor, the company says. The cost of two to 10 licenses is $275 each for new customers and $139 each for upgrades.
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| Kinook Software Inc.'s Visual Build Pro 6.0 automated software construction and development tool now has a customizable GUI front-end. |
Actipro Software LLC
Actipro Ribbon 1.0
This control suite mimics Microsoft's new ribbon interfaces, which replace standard menus and toolbars in Office 2007. Actipro Ribbon implements all core Microsoft ribbon user interface requirements, allowing developers to tap a host of built-in control types, including checkable buttons, menu buttons, split buttons, checkboxes and radio buttons, the company says.
The product allows custom controls to be added to standard ribbons, menus or the application menu. Actipro Ribbon comes with two standard color schemes and tools to create custom looks, according to the company.
Actipro Ribbon is written in C# and is based on the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) framework. It requires the .NET 3.0 run-time, and the company "strongly recommends" Visual Studio 2005 with Orcas extensions. A single developer license costs $150.
HTMLCaptcha
This tool allows ASP.NET developers trying to foil auto-registration spambots to ditch "captchas" -- the wavy text registering users are required to enter to prove they're humans -- in favor of an HTML-based picture-recognition test, the company says.
Text-based captchas (short for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) can be difficult for some people to read. HTMLCaptcha takes a different approach by displaying a small, random image created in HTML/CSS and a corresponding list of descriptions. Users gain entry to a site by choosing the appropriate description, the company says.
Developers can create their own captcha images using the tool. A single-server license costs $179.
TallComponentsBV
PDFKit.NET 2.0
The 2.0 version of PDFKit.NET has several new features, including support for PDF form fields and additional color and grayscale options, the company says.
The latest release of TallComponents' tool for creating and manipulating PDF forms and documents within an application also supports Vista, but isn't backward-compatible with the 1.0 version due to consistency improvements in the object model, the company says.
PDFKit.NET can be deployed within an ASP.NET and WinForms application as well as in a .NET Web service, the company says. PDFKit.NET's improved object model consists of new, more consistent classes such as PageCollection, Page, Overlay, Underlay, Shape, Bookmark and Field, according to TallComponents. A server license costs $899.
IdeaBlade Inc.
DevForce 3.5
This frequently updated enterprise Web application tool has added a business rules validation engine in the 3.5 version to help .NET developers ensure consistency and data integrity throughout an application, the company says.
IdeaBlade says the new validation mechanism allows corporate developers building Web services apps on top of Microsoft's platform to validate any type of object, employ pre-defined rules or write their own custom rules -- including complex ones spanning multiple objects or comparing multiple fields.
Each rule returns what the company calls "a rich, extensible object so the developer can deliver a custom response to a successful, errant or suspicious result." DevForce Professional costs $2,500 per developer