Component and controls company Syncfusion has spruced up its immodestly named Essential Studio Enterprise Edition for its volume 4 release. This .NET component compendium comes in a UI, a "reporting", and a Business Intelligence Edition; the UI edition is offered with grid, docking and menu frameworks, data binding controls, schedulers, data visualization charts, and gauges.
Syncfusion says that the new controls included in this release give developers the ability to target all mobile platforms (Android, iOS, Windows Phone, BlackBerry) with a single code base. It provides a cross-platform ASP.NET MVC chart control that leverages HTML5 and adds a PDF Viewer to the MVC suite.
Analyst firm Forrester Research predicts corporations will spend up to $17 billion creating mobile applications for their products and working with third-party services and companies that manage these applications. As some kind of answer to this challenge, Syncfusion suggests that its "write once, run anywhere" proposition will lead to easier, widespread development of applications at the mobile level. This release contains mobile controls written using the ASP.NET MVC runtime, which Syncfusion refers to as Mobile MVC. As a result, ASP.NET MVC web developers can now create cross-platform mobile applications without having to learn a new programming language.
"To meet the needs of today's mobile enterprise — companies must have a multi-device mobile strategy. However, this can quickly drain internal resources," said Daniel Jebaraj, vice president, Syncfusion. "With this release, Syncfusion saves developers time and broadens deployment options by enabling one code base to be used across mobile platforms."
Key Volume 4 features include:
- HTML5-based ASP.NET MVC Chart for mobile devices with touchscreen support
- PDF Viewer for ASP.NET MVC
- Essential BI Grid for ASP.NET MVC
- Project I/O library (similar to XlsIO and DocIO, allows users to create, edit, and save Microsoft Project files without any dependence on Microsoft Project)
