Visual Studio 2022 and .NET 5, 6 and 7 (Preview) Support and Strategy

TX Text Control 30.0 already supports .NET 5 and 6, but is missing Visual Studio designer and toolbox support for Windows Forms and WPF. For Windows Forms and WPF, Microsoft decided to change the Visual Studio design-time experience and other features such as third-party licensing.

The upcoming version 31.0 is in the works and for ASP.NET, Windows Forms and WPF, we are working on enhancements to fully support .NET 5, 6 and 7 (Preview) features including:

• NuGet packages
• Visual Studio design-time support (Windows Forms)
• .NET 5, 6 and 7 compatible licensing
• Easy deployment

The following illustration shows the supported .NET versions for the current version 30.0 and the upcoming version 31.0:

NuGet Packages

All compiled dependencies are bundled into packages that contain all DLLs together with other content needed in the projects that consume TX Text Control components.

After TX Text Control has been installed using the developer kit setup, the new NuGet package source "Text Control Offline Packages" is added to NuGet and contains all available NuGet packages for Text Control components:

After adding the NuGet package to the project, all available toolbox entries are added automatically:

Visual Studio Design-Time Support

In Windows Forms, after creating a TextControl on a form, you have full access to the designer functionality to add more components such as the ribbon bar, ruler bars and to connect and arrange controls automatically.

.NET 6 Compatible Licensing

With version 30.0, it was required to enable the obsolete .NET BinaryFormatter while compiling the license into the assembly. We removed this requirement in version 31.0, so that no additional settings are required to use TX Text Control in .NET Core applications. This change is valid for all versions including Windows Forms, WPF and ASP.NET.

Easy Deployment

When deploying the application, TX Text Control 31.0 fully supports the Publish functionality of Visual Studio. For example, in the following screenshot the application is published to a folder.

After selecting the folder, you can choose the Target runtime and the Deployment mode:

When the application is published, all required files (including the binaries of TX Text Control) are copied into the right location automatically:

.NET 7 Compatibility: ASP.NET, Windows Forms and WPF

We tested version 31.0 with Visual Studio 17.4.0 Preview 1.0 and .NET 7 and all Text Control related features including toolbox and design-time support, deployment and licensing work as expected. We have been testing our components against all preview builds including the latest version and we don't expect any showstoppers prior to Microsoft's official release of .NET 7 later this year.

ASP.NET Core NuGet Package

With version 31.0, we will also provide a NuGet package to use the ServerTextControl ╰ TX Text Control .NET Server for ASP.NET
╰ TXTextControl Namespace
╰ ServerTextControl Class
The ServerTextControl class implements a component that provide high-level text processing features for server-based applications. and MailMerge ╰ TX Text Control .NET Server for ASP.NET
╰ DocumentServer Namespace
╰ MailMerge Class
The MailMerge class is a .NET component that can be used to effortlessly merge template documents with database content in .NET projects, such as ASP.NET web applications, web services or Windows services. classes in ASP.NET Core Web Apps.

The NuGet package TXTextControl.TextControl.ASP.SDK is automatically adding all required assemblies, dependencies and licenses.licx entries to the project, so that can use these classes right away without adding any references and licenses entries manually:

As always, your feedback is welcome! Let us know, if you are already using .NET 6 (or 7?) in production or plan to do so in the near future.