What’s New?

For the (mostly) complete change log, see here.

May 2016 - Version 2.9.1

• Added ObjectListView.CellRendererGetter property. Install a delegate here to choose which renderer a particular cell will use.
• Obsolete properties are no longer code-gen’ed.
• Small bug fixes

November 2015 - Version 2.9.0

New features

• Buttons! [More info]
• Added ObjectListView.CellEditUsesWholeCell and OLVColumn.CellEditUsesWholeCell properties. If these are set to true, ObjectListView will use the whole width of a cell when editing a cell’s value. Setting the property on a OLVColumn impacts just that column, setting it on the ObjectListView impacts all columns.
• TreeListViews can now draw triangles as expansion glyphs, complete with hot behaviour. Set TreeListView.TreeRenderer.UseTriangles to true. It can also not draw any expansion glyph by setting IsShowGlyphs to false.
• Added ObjectListView.FocusedObject, ObjectListView.DefaultHotItemStyle, and ObjectListView.HeaderMinimumHeight properties. Each is completely predictable.

Large-ish Improvements

• Regularized the interaction of the various formatting options, in particular FormatRow, FormatCell and hyperlinks.
• Completely rewrote the demo. Each tab is now its own UserControl, and there are lots more comments and explanations.
• DescribedTaskRenderer left experimental state and became a first class part of the project. See “Pretty Tasks” tab in the demo.
• Lists are now owner drawn by default. About one-quarter of all complaints I receive are from someone trying to use a feature that only works when OwnerDraw is true. This allows all the great features of ObjectListView to work correctly at the slight cost of more processing at render time. It also avoids the annoying “hot item background ignored in column 0” behaviour that the native ListView has. You can still set it back to false if you wish.

Small improvments

• The normal DefaultRenderer is now a HighlightTextRenderer, since that seems more generally useful.
• Allow ImageGetter to return an Image (which I can’t believe didn’t work from the beginning!)
• Added SimpleDropSink.EnableFeedback to allow all the pretty and helpful user feedback during drag operations to be turned off.
• OLVColumn.HeaderTextAlign became nullable so that it can be “not set”, in which case the alignment of the header will follow the alignment of the column (this was always the intent)
• Made Unfreezing on data bound lists more efficient by removing a redundant BuildList() call
• When auto generating column, columns that do not have a [OLVColumn] attribute will auto size

Bug fixes

• Yet another attempt to disable ListView’s “shift click toggles checkboxes” behaviour. The last attempt had nasty side effects – I received the full set of “Hey! I got a right mouse click event when I left clicked the control” emails, expressed in varying degrees of politeness. The new strategy is (hopefully) more invisible.
• FastObjectListView now fires a Filter event when applying filters
• SelectionChanged event is now triggered when the filter is changed
• Setting View to LargeIcon in the designer is now persisted
• Check more rigourously for a dead control when performing animations
• Corrected small UI glitch in TreeListView when focus was lost and HideSelection was false.

November 2014 - Version 2.8.1

New features

• Allow string comparisons to be replaced via static properties ModelObjectComparer.StringComparer and ColumnComparer.StringComparer

Bug fixes

• Fixed issue that prevented single click editing from working
• Added ClickOnceAlways edit mode
• Trigger Filter events properly
• Fixed a couple of issues related to data-bound lists and CurrencyManager.Position
• Fixed some bugs in TreeListView where RefreshObject() or collapsing a branch could corrupt the internal state of the control.

October 2014 - Version 2.8

New features

• Added the ability to disable rows. [More info] [Implementation details]
• Added checkboxes in column headers. [More info]

Other changes

• Added CollapsedGroups property
• Extended hit test information to include header components (header, divider, checkbox)
• CellOver events are now raised when the mouse moves over the header. Set TriggerCellOverEventsWhenOverHeader to false to disable this behaviour
• Freeze/Unfreeze now use BeginUpdate()/EndUpdate() to disable Window level drawing while frozen
• Changed default value of ObjectListView.HeaderUsesThemes from true to false. Too many people were being confused, trying to make something interesting appear in the header and nothing showing up
• Final attempt to fix the issue with multiple hyperlink events being raised. This involves turning a NM_CLICK notification into a NM_RCLICK. Thanks to aaron for the initial report and investigation.
• TreeListView.CollapseAll() now actually, you know, collapses all branches
• The pre-build ObjectListView.dll in the ObjectListView download is now built against .NET 4.0. This will make it able to be used directly in VS 2010 and later. For VS 2008 and 2005, the DLL will have to build from the included source.
• Added NuGet support. ObjectListView is now available as ObjectListView.Official.

Bug fixes

• Fixed various issues where calling TreeListView.RefreshObject() could throw an exception
• Fixed various issues regarding checkboxes on virtual lists
• Fixed issue where virtual lists containing a single row didn’t update hyperlinks on MouseOver
• Fixed issue where calling TreeListView.CollapseAll() when a filter was installed could throw an exception
• Fixed some subtle bugs resulting from misuse of TryGetValue()
• Several minor Resharper complaints quiesced.

March 2014 - Version 2.7

After a long break, the next release of ObjectListView is available.

New features

• Added HierarchicalCheckBoxes to TreeListView (so quick to say, but so much work to do)
• Added TreeListView.Reveal() to show deeply nested model objects, by expanding all its ancestors

Other changes

• Added CellEditEventArgs.AutoDispose to allow cell editors to be disposed after use. Defaults to true. This allows heavy controls to be cached for reuse, and light controls to be disposed without leaks.
• ShowHeaderInAllViews now works on virtual lists
• Added TreeListView.TreeFactory to allow the underlying Tree to be replaced by another implementation.
• CollapseAll() and ExpandAll() now trigger cancellable events
• Added static property ObjectListView.GroupTitleDefault to allow the default group title to be localised
• Added Visual Studio 2012 support
• Clicking on a non-groupable column header when showing groups will now sort the group contents by that column.
• TreeListView now honours SecondarySortColumn and SecondarySortOrder

Bugs fixed

• ClearObjects() now actually, you know, clears objects :)
• Fixed some more issues/bugs/annoyances with ShowHeaderInAllViews.
• Fixed various bugs related to filters and list modifications.
• Fixed some bugs so that tree expansion events are always triggered, but only once per action.
• RebuildChildren() no longer checks if CanExpand is true before rebuilding.
• Fixed long standing bug in RefreshObject() would sometimes not work on objects which overrode Equals()

July 2012 - Version 2.6

New features

• Added DataTreeListView – a data bindable TreeListView. [More info].
• Added UseNotifyPropertyChanged property to allow ObjectListViews to listen for INotifyPropertyChanged events on models. [More info].
• Generator can now work on plain model objects without requiring properties to be marked with [OLVColumn] attribute. [More info].
• Added FlagClusteringStrategy – a new clustering strategy based off bit-xor’ed integer fields.
• Added CellPadding, CellHorizontalAlignment and CellVerticalAlignment properties to ObjectListView and OLVColumn. On owner drawn controls, these control the placement of cell contents within the cell.
• Added OLVExporter – a utility to export data from ObjectListView.

Other changes

• Added Reset() method, which definitively removes all rows and columns from all flavours of ObjectListView.
• Renamed GetItemIndexInDisplayOrder() to GetDisplayOrderOfItemIndex() to better reflect its function.
• Changed the way column filtering works so that the same model object can now be in multiple clusters. This is useful for filtering on xor’ed flag fields or multi-value strings (e.g. hobbies that are stored as comma separated values).
• Added SimpleDropSink.UseDefaultCursors property. Set this to false to use custom cursors in drop operations.
• Added more efficient version of FilteredObjects property to FastObjectListView.
• Added ObjectListView.EditModel() convenience method
• Added ObjectListView.AutoSizeColumns() to resize all columns according to their content or header
• Added static property ObjectListView.IgnoreMissingAspects. If this is set to true, all ObjectListViews will silently ignore missing aspect errors. Read the remarks to see why this would be useful.
• Don’t trigger selection changed events during sorting/grouping, add/removing columns, or expanding branches.
• Clipboard and drag-drop now includes CSV format.
• Reimplemented Generator to be subclassable. Added IGenerator to allow column generation to be be completely replaced.

Bugs fixed

• Hit detection will no longer report check box hits on columns without checkboxes.
• Circumvent annoying bug in ListView control where changing selection would leave artefacts on the control.
• Renderers only create Timer when animating GIFs.
• Fixed bug with single click cell editing where the cell editing didn’t start until the first mouse move. This fixed a number of related bugs concerning cell editing and mouse moves.
• Fixed bug where removing a column from a LargeIcon or SmallIcon view would crash the control.
• Fixed bug where search-by-typing would not work correctly on a FastObjectListView when showing groups
• Fixed several bugs related to groups on virtual lists.
• Overlays now remember all the ObjectListView’s parents so that we can explicitly unbind all those parents when disposing. This protects us against unexpected changes in the visual hierarchy (e.g. moving a parent UserControl from one tab to another)
• TreeListView.RebuildAll() will now preserve scroll position.

May 2012 - Version 2.5.1

New features

• Added better support for groups. This includes hit detection, cancellable group expand/collapse event (GroupExpandingCollapsing) and group state changed event (unsurprisingly GroupStateChanged). See this blog for more details.
• Added UsePersistentCheckboxes property to allow ObjectListView to correctly remember checkbox values across list rebuilds. Without this, applying a filter to plain ObjectListView would always make the checkboxes lose their values. This is true by default. Set to false to return to v2.5 and earlier behaviour.
• Added AdditionalFilter property. Any IModelFilter installed through the AdditionalFilter property will be combined with any column based filter that the user specifies at runtime. This is different from the ModelFilter property, since setting that will replace any user given column filtering and vice versa.
• Added CanUseApplicationIdle property to cover cases where Application.Idle events are not triggered. In some contexts – specifically VisualStudio and Office extensions – the Application.Idle events are never triggered. If you set CanUseApplicationIdle to false, ObjectListView will correctly handle these situations.
• Support for native background images.

Other Changes

• Vastly improved the runtime designer, based off information in ‘Inheriting’ from an Internal WinForms Designer on CodeProject.

• Improved TreeListView dragging example. Now also shows how to handle accepting drops from external sources.

Bugs fixed

• Avoid bug/feature in .NET’s ListView.VirtualListSize setter that causes flickering when the size of the list changes (read this for the full details).
• Fixed a bug that forced groups to always have 20 or so pixels of extra space between them. This is now correctly controlled by the SpaceBetweenGroups property.
• Fixed a bug that caused decorations to not be drawn when the first group (olny) of a list was collapsed.
• Fixed bug that occurred when adding/removing items to a VirtualObjectListView (including FastObjectListView and TreeListView) while the view was grouped.
• Fixed bug where, on a ObjectListView with only a single editable column, tabbing to change rows would edit the cell above rather than the cell below the cell being edited.
• Fixed bug in TreeListView.CheckedObjects where it would return model objects that had been filtered out.
• Clicking the separator on the Column Select menu no longer crashes.
• Fixed rare bug that could occur when trying to group/clustering an empty list.
• Handle case where a model object has both an Item property and an Item[] accessor.
• Fixed filters to correctly handle searching for empty strings.
• Handle cases where a second tool tip is installed onto the ObjectListView.
• Correctly recolour rows after an Insert or Move.
• Removed m.LParam cast which could cause overflow issues on Win7/64 bit.

Supported systems

Another hard drive crash and my last remaining XP machine is no more. I no longer have access to XP or even Vista – only Windows 7.

I may try to purchase a cheap laptop simply to run XP, but for the moment, I cannot test ObjectListView on anything other than Windows 7.

May 2011 - Version 2.5

New features

• Excel like filtering. Right clicking on a header will show a “Filter” menu, which will allow you to select the values that will survive the filtering.
• FastDataListView. Just like a normal DataListView, only faster. On my laptop, it comfortably handles datasets of 100,000 rows without trouble. NOTE: This does not virtualize the data access part – only the UI portion. So, if you have a query that returns one million rows, all the rows will still be loaded from the database. Once loaded, however, they will be managed by a virtual list.
• Fully customizable character map during cell edit mode. This was an overkill solution for the various flavours of “tab wraps to new line” requests. As convinence wrappers, CellEditTabChangesRows and CellEditEnterChangesRows properties have been added.
• Support for VS 2010. The target framework must be a “full” version of .Net. It will not work with a “Client Profile” (which is unfortunately the default for new projects in VS 2010).
• Columns can now disable sorting, grouping, searching and “hide-ability” (Sortable, Groupable Searchable and Hideable properties respectively).

Breaking changes

• [Medium]: On VirtualObjectListView, DataSource was renamed to VirtualListDataSource. This was necessary to allow FastDataListView which is both a DataListView AND a VirtualListView – which both used a ‘DataSource’ property :(
• [Small]: GetNextItem() and GetPreviousItem() now accept and return OLVListView rather than ListViewItems.
• [Small]: Renderer for tree column must now be a subclass of TreeRenderer, not just a general IRenderer
• [Small]: SelectObject() and SelectObjects() no longer deselect all other rows. This gives an much easier way to add objects to the selection. The properties SelectedObject and SelectedObjects do still deselect all other rows.

Minor features

• TextMatchFilter was seriously reworked. One text filter can now match on multiple strings. TextMatchFilter has new factory methods (which make TextMatchFilter.MatchKind redundant).
• Revived support for VS 2005 after being provided with a new copy of VS 2005 Express.
• Column selection mechanism can be customised, through the SelectColumnsOnRightClickBehaviour. The default is InlineMenu, which behaves like previous versions. Other options are SubMenu and ModalDialog. This required moving the ColumnSelectionForm from the demo project into the ObjectListView project.
• Added OLVColumn.AutoCompleteEditorMode in preference to AutoCompleteEditor (which is now just a wrapper). Thanks to Clive Haskins
• Added ObjectListView.IncludeColumnHeadersInCopy
• Added ObjectListView.Freezing event
• Added TreeListView.ExpandedObjects property.
• Added Expanding, Expanded, Collapsing and Collapsed events to TreeListView.
• Added ObjectListView.SubItemChecking event, which is triggered when a checkbox on subitem is checked/unchecked.
• Allow a delegate to owner draw the header
• All model object comparisons now use Equals() rather than == (thanks to vulkanino)
• Tweaked UseTranslucentSelection and UseTranslucentHotItem to look (a little) more like Vista/Win7.
• Added ability to have a gradient background on BorderDecoration
• Ctrl-C copying is now able to use the DragSource to create the data transfer object (controlled via CopySelectionOnControlCUsesDragSource property).
• While editing a cell, Alt-[arrow] will try to edit the cell in that direction (showing off what the cell edit character mapping can achieve)
• Added long, tutorial-like walk-through of how to make a TreeListView rearrangeable.
• Reorganized files into folders

Bug fixes (not a complete list)

• Fixed (once and for all) DisplayIndex problem with Generator
• Virtual lists can (finally) set CheckBoxes back to false if it has been set to true. (This was a little hacky and may not work reliably).
• Preserve word wrap settings on TreeListView
• Resize last group to keep it on screen
• Changed the serializer used in SaveState()/RestoreState() so that it resolves classes on name alone
• When grouping, group comparer, collapsible groups and GroupByOrder being None are now all honoured correctly
• Trying to use animated gifs in a virtual list no longer crashes. It still doesn’t work, but it doesn’t crash.
• GetNextItem() and GetPreviousItem() now work on grouped virtual lists.
• Fixed bug in GroupWithItemCountSingularFormatOrDefault
• Fixed strange flickering in grouped, owner drawn OLV’s using RefreshObject()
• Alternate colours are now only applied in Details view (as they always should have been)
• Alternate colours are now correctly recalculated after removing objects
• CheckedObjects on virtual lists now only returns objects that are currently in the list.
• ClearObjects() on a virtual list now resets all check state info.
• Filtering on grouped virtual lists no longer behaves strangely
• ModelDropEventArgs.RefreshObjects() now works correctly on TreeListViews.
• Dragging a column divider in the IDE Form Designer now correctly resizes the column.
• Removing objects from filtered or sorted FastObjectListView now works without clearing the filter or sorting.

14 September 2010 - Version 2.4.1

New features

• Column header improvements: they can be rendered vertically; they can show an image; they can be aligned differently to the cell’s contents (use OLVColumn.HeaderTextAlign property).
• Group sorting can now be completely customised, as can item ordering within. See this recipe.
• Improved text filtering to allow for prefix matching and full regex expressions.
• Subitem checkboxes improvements: check boxes now obey IsEditable setting on column, can be hot, can be disabled.
• Added EditingCellBorderDecoration to make it clearer which cell is being edited.
• Added OLVColumn.Wrap to easily word wrap a columns cells.

Small tweaks

• No more flickering of selection when tabbing between cells.
• Added ObjectListView.SmoothingMode to control the smoothing of all graphics operations.
• Dll’s are now signed.
• Invalidate the control before and after cell editing to make sure it looks right.
• BuildList(true) now maintains vertical scroll position even when showing groups.
• CellEdit validation and finish events now have NewValue property.
• Moved AllowExternal from RearrangableDropSink up the hierarchy to SimpleDropSink since it could be generally useful.
• Added ObjectListView.HeaderMaximumHeight to limit how tall the header section can become

Bug fixes

• Avoid bug in standard ListView where virtual lists would send invalid item indicies for tool tip messages when in non-Details views.
• Fixed bug where FastObjectListView would throw an exception when showing hyperlinks in any view except Details.
• Fixed bug in ChangeToFilteredColumns() that resulted in column display order being lost when a column was hidden.
• Fixed long standing bug where having 0 columns caused an InvalidCast exception.
• Columns now cache their group item format strings so that they still work as grouping columns after they have been removed from the listview. This cached value is only used when the column is not part of the listview.
• Correctly trigger a Click event when the mouse is clicked.
• Right mouse clicks on checkboxes no longer confuses them
• Fixed bugs in FastObjectListView and TreeListView that prevented objects from being removed (or at least appeared to).
• Avoid checkbox munging bug in standard ListView when shift clicking on non-primary columns when FullRowSelect is true.
• OLVColumn.ValueToString() now always returns a String (as it always should have)

10 April 2010 - Version 2.4

New features

• Filtering.
• Animations on cells, rows, or the whole list.
• Header styles. This makes HeaderFont and HeaderForeColor properties unnecessary. They will be marked obsolete in the next version and removed after that.
• [Minor] Ctrl-A now selects all rows (no surprises there). Set SelectAllOnControlA to false to disable.
• [Minor] Ctrl-C copies all selected rows to the clipboard (as it always did), but this can now be disabled by setting CopySelectionOnControlC to false.

Bug fixes

• Changed object checking so that objects can be pre-checked before they are added to the list. Normal ObjectListViews managed “checkedness” in the ListViewItem, so this won’t work for them, unless check state getters and putters have been installed. It will work on on virtual lists (thus fast lists and tree views) since they manage their own check state.
• Overlays can be turned off (set UseOverlays to false). They also only draw themselves on 32-bit displays.
• ObjectListViews’ overlays now play nicer with MDI, but it’s still not great. When an ObjectListView overlay is used within an MDI application, it doesn’t crash any more, but it still doesn’t handle overlapping windows. Overlays from one ObjectListView are drawn over other controls too. Current advice: don’t use overlays within MDI applications.
• F2 key presses are no longer silently swallowed.
• ShowHeaderInAllViews is better but not perfect. Setting it before the control is created or setting it to true work perfectly. However, if it is set to false, the primary checkboxes disappear! I could just ignore changes once the control is created, but it’s probably better to let people change it on the fly and just document the idiosyncracies.
• Fixed bug in group sorting so that it actually uses GroupByOrder as it should always have done (thank to Michael Ehrt).
• Destroying the ObjectListView during an mouse event (for example, closing a form in a double click handler) no longer throws a “disposed object” exception.

12 October 2009 - Version 2.3

This release focused on formatting – giving programmers more opportunity to play with the appearance of the ObjectListView.

Decorations

Decorations allow you to put pretty images, text and effects over the top of your ObjectListView. Here the love heart and the “Missing!” are decorations.

See this recipe 20. How can I put an image (or some text) over the top of a row or cell? for more details.

Group header formatting

Groups have been overhauled for this release. Groups under XP remain unchanged, but under Vista and Windows 7, many more formatting options are now available.

See 27. How do I put an image next to a group heading? for how to make pretty groups like this.

Hyperlinks

ObjectListViews can now have cells that are hyperlinks.

See 26. How do I show a hyperlink in a cell?.

Header formatting

The font and text color of the ObjectListView header can now be changed. You can also word wrap the header text.

See 25. How do I change the font or color of the column headers?.

FormatRow and FormatCell events

In previous version, RowFormatter was the approved way to change the formatting (font/text color/background color) of a row or cell. But it had some limitations:

1. It did not play well with AlternateBackgroundColors property
2. It was called before the OLVListItem had been added to the ObjectListView, so many of its properties were not yet initialized.
3. It was painful to use it to format only one cell.
4. Perhaps most importantly, the programmer did not know where in the ObjectListView the row was going to appear so they could not implement more sophisticated versions of the row alternate background colors scheme.

To get around all these problems, there is now a FormatRow event. This is called after the OLVListItem has been added to the control. Plus it has a DisplayIndex property specifying exactly where the row appears in the list (this is correct even when showing groups).

There is also a FormatCell event. This allows the programmer to easily format just one cell.

See 8. How can I change the colours of a row or just a cell?.

Generator

By using compiler attributes, ObjectListViews can now be generated directly from model classes. See 29. Can I generate the whole ObjectListView directly from my model? for details and provisos.

[Thanks to John Kohler for this idea and the original implementation]

Groups on virtual lists

When running on Vista and later, virtual lists can now be grouped!

FastObjectListView supports grouping out of the box. For your own VirtualObjectListView you must do some more work yourself.

See 31. Can I show groups on a virtual list? for details.

[This was more of a technical challenge for myself than something I thought would be wildly useful. If you do actually use groups on virtual lists, please let me know]

Small changes

• Added UseTranslucentSelection property which mimics the selection highlighting scheme used in Vista. This works fine on Vista and on XP when the list is OwnerDrawn, but only moderately well when non-OwnerDrawn, since the native control insists on drawing its normal selection scheme, in addition to the translucent selection.
• Added ShowHeaderInAllViews property. When this is true, the header is visible in all views, not just Details, and can be used to control the sorting of items.
• Added UseTranslucentHotItem property which draws a translucent area over the top of the current hot item.
• Added ShowCommandMenuOnRightClick property which is true shows extra commands when a header is right clicked. This is false by default.
• Added ImageAspectName which the name of a property that will be invoked to get the image that should be shown on a column. This allows the image for a column to be retrieved from the model without having to install an ImageGetter delegate.
• Added HotItemChanged event and Hot* properties to allow programmers to perform actions when the mouse moves to a different row or cell.
• Added UseExplorerTheme property, which when true forces the ObjectListView to use the same visual style as the explorer. On XP, this does nothing, but on Vista it changes the hot item and selection mechanisms. Be warned: setting this messes up several other properties. See 30. Can the ObjectListView use a selection scheme like Vista?.
• Added OLVColumn.AutoCompleteEditor which allows you to turn off auto-completion on cell editors.
• OlvHitTest() now works correctly even when FullRowSelect is false. There is a bug in the .NET ListView where HitTest() for a point that is in column 0 but not over the text or icon will fail (i.e. fail to recognize that it is over column 0). OlvHitTest() does not have that failure.
• Added OLVListItem.GetSubItemBounds() which correctly calculates the bounds of cell even for column 0. In .NET ListView the bounds of any subitem 0 are always the bounds of the whole row.
• Column 0 now follows its TextAlign setting, but only when OwnerDrawn. On a plain ListView, column 0 is always left aligned. ** This feature is experimental. Use it if you want. Don’t complain if it doesn’t work :) **
• Renamed LastSortColumn to be PrimarySortColumn, which better indicates its use. Similar LastSortOrder became PrimarySortOrder.
• Cell editors are no longer forcibly disposed after being used to edit a cell. This allows them to be cached and reused.
• Reimplemented OLVListItem.Bounds since the base version throws an exception if the given item is part of a collapsed group.
• Removed even token support for Mono.
• Removed IncrementalUpdate() method, which was marked as obsolete in February 2008.

4 August 2009 - Version 2.2.1

This is primarily a bug fix release.

New features

• Added cell events (CellClicked, CellOver, CellRightClicked).
• Made BuildList(), AddObject() and RemoveObject() thread-safe.

Bug fixes

• Avoided bug in .NET framework involving column 0 of owner drawn listviews not being redrawn when the listview was scrolled horizontally (this was a lot of work to track down and fix!)
• Subitem edit rectangles always allowed for an image in the cell, even if there was none. Now they only allow for an image when there actually is one.
• The cell edit rectangle is now correctly calculated when the listview is scrolled horizontally.
• If the user clicks/double clicks on a tree list cell, an edit operation will no longer begin if the click was to the left of the expander. This is implemented in such a way that other renderers can have similar “dead” zones.
• CalculateCellBounds() messed with the FullRowSelect property, which confused the tooltip handling on the underlying control. It no longer does this.
• The cell edit rectangle is now correctly calculated for owner-drawn, non-Details views.
• Space bar now properly toggles checkedness of selected rows.
• Fixed bug with tooltips when the underlying Windows control was destroyed.
• CellToolTipShowing events are now triggered in all views.

May 2009 - Version 2.2

The two big features in this version are overlays and drag and drop support.

Drag and drop support

ObjectListViews now have sophisticated support for drag and drop operations.

An ObjectListView can be made a source for drag operations by setting the DragSource property. Similarly, it can be made a sink for drop actions by setting the DropSink property. These properties accept an IDragSource interface and an IDropSink interface respectively. SimpleDragSource and SimpleDropSink provide reasonable default implementations for these interfaces.

Since the whole goal of ObjectListView is to encourage slothfulness, for most simple cases, you can ignore these details and just set the IsSimpleDragSource and IsSimpleDropSink properties to true, and then listen for CanDrop and Dropped events.

See ObjectListView and Drag & Drop for more details.

The RearrangeableDropSink class gives an ObjectListView the ability to be rearranged by dragging. See Rearranging rows by dragging.

Image and text overlays

ObjectListView now have the ability to draw translucent images and text over the top over the ObjectListView contents. These overlays do not scroll when the list contents scroll. These overlays works in all Views. You can set an overlays within the IDE using the OverlayImage and OverlayText properties.

The overlay design is extensible, and you can add arbitrary overlays through the AddOverlay() method.

See 19. How can I put an image (or some text) over the top of the ListView? for more details.

The “list is empty” message is now implemented as an overlay, and as such is heavily customisable. See 12. How do I change the message that’s shown when the ObjectListView is empty? for details.

Other new features

• The most requested feature ever – collapsible groups – is now available. But it is for Vista only. Thanks to Crustyapplesniffer for his implementation of this feature. Set the HasCollapsibleGroups to false if you don’t want this on your ObjectListView (it is true by default).
• Added SelectedColumn property, which puts a slight tint over that column. When combined with the TintSortColumn and SelectedColumnTint properties, the sorted column will automatically be tinted with whatever colour you want.
• Added Scroll event (thanks to Christophe Hosten who implemented this)
• Made several properties localizable.
• The project no longer uses unsafe code, and can therefore be used in a limited trust environment.
• TreeListView now has GetParent() and GetChildren() methods to allow tree traversal. It also has a DiscardAllState() method to collapse all branches and forget everything about all model objects.

Bug fixes (not a complete list)

• Fix a long standing problem with flickering on owner drawn virtual lists. Apart from now being flicker-free, this means that grid lines no longer get confused, and drag-select no longer flickers. This means that TreeListView now has noticeably less flicker (it is always an owner drawn virtual list).
• Double-clicking on a row no longer toggles the checkbox (Why did MS ever include that?).
• Double-clicking on a checkbox no longer confuses the checkbox.
• Correctly renderer checkboxes when RowHeight is non-standard.
• Checkboxes are now visible even when the ObjectListView does not have a SmallImageList.
• AlwaysGroupByColumn and SortGroupItemsByPrimaryColumn now work correctly (without messing up the column header sort indicators).
• Several Vista-only bugs were fixed

3 February 2009 - Version 2.1

Complete overhaul of owner drawing

In the same way that 2.0 overhauled the virtual list processing, this version completely reworks the owner drawn rendering process. However, this overhaul was done to be transparently backwards compatible.

The only breaking change is for owner drawn non-details views (which I doubt that anyone except me ever used). Previously, the renderer on column 0 was double tasked for both rendering cell 0 and for rendering the entire item in non-detail view. This second responsibility now belongs explicitly to the ItemRenderer property.

• Renderers are now based on IRenderer interface.
• Renderers are now Components and can be created, configured, and assigned within the IDE.
• Renderers can now also do hit testing.
• Owner draw text now looks like native ListView
• The text AND bitmaps now follow the alignment of the column. Previously only the text was aligned.
• Added ItemRenderer to handle non-details owner drawing
• Images are now drawn directly from the image list if possible. 30% faster than previous versions.

Other significant changes

• Added hot tracking
• Added checkboxes to subitems
• AspectNames can now be used as indexes onto the model objects – effectively something like this: modelObject[this.AspectName]. This is particularly helpful for DataListView since DataRows and DataRowViews support this type of indexing.
• Added EditorRegistry to make it easier to change or add cell editors

Minor Changes

• Added TriStateCheckBoxes, UseCustomSelectionColors and UseHotItem properties
• Added TreeListView.RevealAfterExpand property
• Enums are now edited by a ComboBox that shows all the possible values.
• Changed model comparisons to use Equals() rather than ==. This allows the model objects to implement their own idea of equality.
• ImageRenderer can now handle multiple images. This makes ImagesRenderer defunct.
• FlagsRenderer<T> is no longer generic. It is simply FlagsRenderer.
• Virtual ObjectListViews now trigger ItemCheck and ItemChecked events

Bug fixes

• RefreshItem() now correctly recalculates the background color
• Fixed bug with simple checkboxes which meant that CheckedObjects always returned empty.
• TreeListView now works when visual styles are disabled
• DataListView now handles boolean types better. It also now longer crashes when the data source is reseated.
• Fixed bug with AlwaysGroupByColumn where column header clicks would not resort groups.

10 January 2009 - Version 2.0.1

This version adds some small features and fixes some bugs in 2.0 release.

New or changed features

• Added ObjectListView.EnsureGroupVisible()
• Added TreeView.UseWaitCursorWhenExpanding property
• Made all public and protected methods virtual so they can be overridden in subclasses. Within TreeListView, some classes were changed from internal to protected so that they can be accessed by subclasses
• Made TreeRenderer public so that it can be subclassed
• ObjectListView.FinishCellEditing(), ObjectListView.PossibleFinishCellEditing() and ObjectListView.CancelCellEditing() are now public
• Added TreeRenderer.LinePen property to allow the connection drawing pen to be changed

Bug fixes

• Fixed long-standing “multiple columns generated” problem. Thanks to pinkjones for his help with solving this one!
• Fixed connection line problem when there is only a single root on a TreeListView
• Owner drawn text is now rendered correctly when HideSelection is true.
• Fixed some rendering issues where the text highlight rect was miscalculated
• Fixed bug with group comparisons when a group key was null
• Fixed bug with space filling columns and layout events
• Fixed RowHeight so that it only changes the row height, not the width of the images.
• TreeListView now works even when it doesn’t have a SmallImageList

30 November 2008 - Version 2.0

Version 2.0 is a major change to ObjectListView.

Major changes

• Added TreeListView which combines a tree structure with the columns on a ListView.
• Added TypedObjectListView which is a type-safe wrapper around an ObjectListView.
• Major overhaul of VirtualObjectListView to now use IVirtualListDataSource. The new version of FastObjectListView and the new TreeListView both make use of this new structure.
• ObjectListView builds to a DLL, which can then be incorporated into your .NET project. This makes it much easier to use from other .NET languages (including VB).
• Large improvement in ListViewPrinter’s interaction with the IDE. All Pens and Brushes can now be specified through the IDE.
• Support for tri-state checkboxes, even for virtual lists.
• Support for dynamic tool tips for cells and column headers, via the CellToolTipGetter and HeaderToolTipGetter delegates respectively.
• Fissioned ObjectListView.cs into several files, which will hopefully makes the code easier to approach.
• Added many new events, including BeforeSorting and AfterSorting.
• Generate dynamic methods from AspectNames using TypedObjectListView.GenerateAspectGetters(). The speed of hand-written AspectGetters without the hand-written-ness. This is the most experimental part of the release. Thanks to Craig Neuwirt for his initial implementation.

Minor changes

• Added CheckedAspectName to allow check boxes to be gotten and set without requiring any code.
• Typing into a list now searches values in the sort column by default, even on plain vanilla ObjectListViews. The behavior was previously on available on virtual lists, and was turned off by default. Set IsSearchOnSortColumn to false to revert to v1.x behavior.
• Owner drawn primary columns now render checkboxes correctly (previously checkboxes were not drawn, even when CheckBoxes property was true).

Breaking changes

• CheckStateGetter and CheckStatePutter now use only CheckState, rather than using both CheckState and booleans. Use BooleanCheckStateGetter and BooleanCheckStatePutter for behavior that is compatible with v1.x.
• FastObjectListViews can no longer have a CustomSorter. In v1.x it was possible, if tricky, to get a CustomSorter to work with a FastObjectListView, but that is no longer possible in v2.0 In v2.0, if you want to custom sort a FastObjectListView, you will have to subclass FastObjectListDataSource and override the SortObjects() method. See here for an example.

24 July 2008 - Version 1.13

Major changes

• Allow check boxes on FastObjectListViews. .NET’s ListView cannot support checkboxes on virtual lists. We cannot get around this limit for plain VirtualObjectListViews, but we can for FastObjectListViews. This is a significant piece of work and there may well be bugs that I have missed. This implementation does not modify the traditional CheckedIndicies/CheckedItems properties, which will still fail. It uses the new CheckedObjects property as the way to access the checked rows. Once CheckBoxes is set on a FastObjectListView, trying to turn it off again will throw an exception.
• There is now a CellEditValidating event, which allows a cell editor to be validated before it loses focus. If validation fails, the cell editor will remain. Previous versions could not prevent the cell editor from losing focus. Thanks to Artiom Chilaru for the idea and the initial implementation.
• Allow selection foreground and background colors to be changed. Windows does not allow these colours to be customised, so we can only do these when the ObjectListView is owner drawn. To see this in action, set the HighlightForegroundColor and HighlightBackgroundColor properties and then set UseCustomSelectionColors to true.
• Added AlwaysGroupByColumn and AlwaysGroupBySortOrder properties, which force the list view to always be grouped by a particular column.

Minor improvements

• Added CheckObject() and all its friends, as well as CheckedObject and CheckedObjects properties
• Added LastSortColumn and LastSortOrder properties.
• Made SORT_INDICATOR_UP_KEY and SORT_INDICATOR_DOWN_KEY public so they can be used to specify the image used on column headers when sorting.
• Broke the more generally useful CopyObjectsToClipboard() method out of CopySelectionToClipboard(). CopyObjectsToClipboard() could now be used, for example, to copy all checked objects to the clipboard.
• Similarly, building the column selection context menu was separated from showing that context menu. This is so external code can use the menu building method, and then make any modification desired before showing the menu. The building of the context menu is now handled by MakeColumnSelectMenu().
• Added RefreshItem() to VirtualObjectListView so that refreshing an object actually does something.
• Consistently use copy-on-write semantics with AddObject(s)/RemoveObject(s) methods. Previously, if SetObjects() was given an ArrayList that list was modified directly by the Add/RemoveObject(s) methods. Now, a copy is always taken and modifying, leaving the original collection intact.

Bug fixes (not a complete list)

• Fixed a bug with GetItem() on virtual lists where the item returned was not always complete .
• Fixed a bug/limitation that prevented ObjectListView from responding to right clicks when it was used within a UserControl (thanks to Michael Coffey).
• Corrected bug where the last object in a list could not be selected via SelectedObject.
• Fixed bug in GetAspectByName() where chained aspects would crash if one of the middle aspects returned null (thanks to philippe dykmans).

10 May 2008 - Version 1.12

• Added AddObject/AddObjects/RemoveObject/RemoveObjects methods. These methods allow the programmer to add and remove specific model objects from the ObjectListView. These methods work on ObjectListView and FastObjectListView. They have no effect on DataListView and VirtualObjectListView since the data source of both of these is outside the control of the ObjectListView.
• Non detail views can now be owner drawn. The renderer installed for primary column is given the chance to render the whole item. See BusinessCardRenderer in the demo for an example. In the demo, go to the Complex tab, turn on Owner Drawn, and switch to Tile view to see this in action.
• BREAKING CHANGE. The signature of RenderDelegate has changed. It now returns a boolean to indicate if default rendering should be done. This delegate previously returned void. This is only important if your code used RendererDelegate directly. Renderers derived from BaseRenderer are unchanged.
• The TopItemIndex property now works with virtual lists
• MappedImageRenderer will now render a collection of values
• Fixed the required number of bugs:
• The column select menu will now appear when the header is right clicked even when a context menu is installed on the ObjectListView
• Tabbing while editing the primary column in a non-details view no longer tries to edit the new column’s value
• When a virtual list that is scrolled vertically is cleared, the underlying ListView becomes confused about the scroll position, and incorrectly renders items after that. ObjectListView now avoids this problem.

1 May 2008 - Version 1.11

• Added SaveState() and RestoreState(). These methods save and restore the user modifiable state of an ObjectListView. They are useful for saving and restoring the state of your ObjectListView between application runs. See the demo for examples of how to use them.
• Added ColumnRightClick event
• Added SelectedIndex property
• Added TopItemIndex property. Due to problems with the underlying ListView control, this property has several quirks and limitations. See the documentation on the property itself.
• Calling BuildList(true) will now try to preserve scroll position as well as the selection (unfortunately, the scroll position cannot be preserved while showing groups).
• ObjectListView is now CLS-compliant
• Various bug fixes. In particular, ObjectListView should now be fully functional on 64-bit versions of Windows.

18 March 2008 - Version 1.10

• Added space filling columns. A space filling column fills all (or a portion) of the width unoccupied by other columns.
• Added some methods suggested by Chris Marlowe: ClearObjects(), GetCheckedObject(), GetCheckedObjects(), a flavour of GetItemAt() that returns the item and column under a point. Thanks for the suggestions, Chris.
• Added minimal support for Mono. To create a Mono version, compile with conditional compilation symbol “MONO”. The Windows.Forms support under Mono is still a work in progress – the listview still has some serious problems (I’m looking at you, virtual mode). If you do have success with Mono, I’m happy to include any fixes you might make (especially from Linux or Mac coders). Please don’t ask me Mono questions.
• Fixed bug with subitem colors when using owner drawn lists and a RowFormatter.

2 February 2008 - Version 1.9.1

• Added FastObjectListView for all impatient programmers.
• Added FlagRenderer to help with drawing bitwise-OR’ed flags (search for FlagRenderer in the demo project to see an example)
• Fixed the inevitable bugs that managed to appear:
• Alternate row colouring with groups was slightly off
• In some circumstances, owner drawn virtual lists would use 100% CPU
• Made sure that sort indicators are correctly shown after changing which columns are visible

16 January 2008 - Version 1.9

• Added ability to have hidden columns, i.e. columns that the ObjectListView knows about but that are not visible to the user. This is controlled by OLVColumn.IsVisible. I added ColumnSelectionForm to the demo project to show how it could be used in an application. Also, right clicking on the column header will allow the user to choose which columns are visible. Set SelectColumnsOnRightClick to false to prevent this behaviour.
• Added CopySelectionToClipboard() which pastes a text and HTML representation of the selected rows onto the Clipboard. By default, this is bound to Ctrl-C.
• Added support for checkboxes via CheckStateGetter and CheckStatePutter properties. See ColumnSelectionForm for an example of how to use.
• Added ImagesRenderer to draw more than one image in a column.
• Made ObjectListView and OLVColumn into partial classes so that others can extend them.
• Added experimental IncrementalUpdate() method, which operates like SetObjects() but without changing the scrolling position, the selection, or the sort order. And it does this without a single flicker. Good for lists that are updated regularly. [Better to use a FastObjectListView and the Objects property]
• Fixed the required quota of small bugs.

30 November 2007 - Version 1.8

• Added cell editing – so easy to say, so much work to do
• Added SelectionChanged event, which is triggered once per user action regardless of how many items are selected or deselected. In comparison, SelectedIndexChanged events are triggered for every item that is selected or deselected. So, if 100 items are selected, and the user clicks a different item to select just that item, 101 SelectedIndexChanged events will be triggered, but only one SelectionChanged event. Thanks to lupokehl42 for this suggestion and improvements.
• Added the ability to have secondary sort column used when the main sort column gives the same sort value for two rows. See SecondarySortColumn and SecondarySortOrder properties for details. There is no user interface for these items – they have to be set by the programmer.
• ObjectListView now handles RightToLeftLayout correctly in owner drawn mode, for all you users of Hebrew and Arabic (still working on getting ListViewPrinter to work, though). Thanks for dschilo for his help and input.

13 November 2007 - Version 1.7.1

• Fixed bug in owner drawn code, where the text background color of selected items was incorrectly calculated.
• Fixed buggy interaction between ListViewPrinter and owner drawn mode.

7 November 2007 - Version 1.7

• Added ability to print ObjectListViews using ListViewPrinter.

30 October 2007 - Version 1.6

Major changes

• Added ability to give each column a minimum and maximum width (set the minimum equal to the maximum to make a fixed-width column). Thanks to Andrew Philips for his suggestions and input.
• Complete overhaul of DataListView to now be a fully functional, data- bindable control. This is based on Ian Griffiths’ excellent example, which should be available here, but unfortunately seems to have disappeared from the Web. Thanks to ereigo for significant help with debugging this new code.
• Added the ability for the listview to display a “this list is empty”-type message when the ListView is empty (obviously). This is controlled by the EmptyListMsg and EmptyListMsgFont properties. Have a look at the “File Explorer” tab in the demo to see what it looks like.

Minor changes

• Added the ability to preserve the selection when BuildList() is called. This is on by default.
• Added the GetNextItem() and GetPreviousItem() methods, which walk sequentially through the ListView items, even when the view is grouped (thanks to eriego for the suggestion).
• Allow item count labels on groups to be set per column (thanks to cmarlow for the idea).
• Added the SelectedItem property and the GetColumn() and GetItem() methods.
• Optimized aspect-to-string conversion. BuildList() is 15% faster.
• Corrected the bug with the custom sorter in VirtualObjectListView (thanks to mpgjunky).
• Corrected the image scaling bug in DrawAlignedImage() (thanks to krita970).
• Uses built-in sort indicators on Windows XP or later (thanks to gravybod for sample implementation).
• Plus the requisite number of small bug fixes.

3 August 2007 - Version 1.5

• ObjectListViews now have a RowFormatter delegate. This delegate is called whenever a ListItem is added or refreshed. This allows the format of the item and its sub-items to be changed to suit the data being displayed, like red colour for negative numbers in an accounting package. The DataView tab in the demo has an example of a RowFormatter in action. Include any of these words in the value for a cell and see what happens: red, blue, green, yellow, bold, italic, underline, bk-red, bk-green. Be aware that using RowFormatter and trying to have alternate coloured backgrounds for rows can give unexpected results. In general, RowFormatter and UseAlternatingBackColors do not play well together.
• ObjectListView now has a RowHeight property. Set this to an integer value and the rows in the ListView will be that height. Normal ListViews do not allow the height of the rows to be specified; it is calculated from the size of the small image list and the ListView font. The RowHeight property overrules this calculation by shadowing the small image list. This feature should be considered highly experimental. One known problem is that if you change the row height while the vertical scroll bar is not at zero, the control’s rendering becomes confused.
• Animated GIF support: if you give an animated GIF as an Image to a column that has ImageRenderer, the GIF will be animated. Like all renderers, this only works in OwnerDrawn mode. See the DataView tab in the demo for an example.
• Sort indicators can now be disabled, so you can put your own images on column headers.
• Better handling of item counts on groups that only have one member: thanks to cmarlow for the suggestion and sample implementation.
• The obligatory small bug fixes.

30 April 2007 - Version 1.4

• Owner drawing and renderers.
• ObjectListView now supports all ListView.View modes, not just Details. The tile view has its own support built in.
• Column headers now show sort indicators.
• Aspect names can be chained using a “dot” syntax. For example, Owner.Workgroup.Name is now a valid AspectName. Thanks to OlafD for this suggestion and a sample implementation.
• ImageGetter delegates can now return ints, strings or Image objects, rather than just ints as in previous versions. ints and strings are used as indices into the image lists. Images are only shown when in OwnerDrawn mode.
• Added OLVColumn.MakeGroupies() to simplify group partitioning.

5 April 2007 - Version 1.3

• Added DataListView.
• Added VirtualObjectListView.
• Added Freeze()/Unfreeze()/Frozen functionality.
• Added ability to hand off sorting to a CustomSorter delegate.
• Fixed bug in alternate line coloring with unsorted lists: thanks to cmarlow for finding this.
• Handle null conditions better, e.g. SetObjects(null) or having zero columns.
• Dumbed-down the sorting comparison strategy. Previous strategy was classic overkill: user extensible, handles every possible situation and unintelligible to the uninitiated. The simpler solution handles 98% of cases, is completely obvious and is implemented in 6 lines.

5 January 2007 - Version 1.2

• Added alternate line colors.
• Unset sorter before building list. 10x faster! Thanks to aaberg for finding this.
• Small bug fixes.

26 October 2006 - Version 1.1

• Added “Data Unaware” and “IDE Integration” article sections.
• Added model-object-level manipulation methods, e.g. SelectObject() and GetSelectedObjects().
• Improved IDE integration.
• Refactored sorting comparisons to remove a nasty if...else cascade.

14 October 2006 - Version 1.0