We just released version 8.4 of the Visual Scheduling Widget Standard Edition (VSW SE for short). This minor release contains the following enhancements and improvements:
Visualization of Baseline Constraint Dates
It is now possible to display release date and due dates for the baseline of activities. They get visible by showing symbols besides the baseline bar below the main activity bar in the activities view. By default, the symbols used are the same as the ones for displaying the release and due dates but can be changed. If the default diamond symbol is used, it inherits the color of the baseline bar, but that can be changed as well.
Tooltips with Interactive Content
Tooltips optionally now can be entered with the pointer and therefore can be used interactively without causing the tooltip to disappear. This interactivity is enabled by the new IsInteractive property on TooltipTemplate objects. Additionally, the onShowTooltip callback now provides a corresponding isInteractive property when a HTML string is provided by the application instead of a TooltipTemplate.
Outside Texts also on Allocation Bars
For greater flexibility in labeling allocation bars, it is now possible to place texts outside the bars, as already known for activity bars. These texts can be positioned above and below the bar by using the new properties BarBottomOutsideText and BarTopOutsideText for Allocation objects. The text is automatically clipped at the date where another allocation bar starts in the same horizontal position. To maintain readability against the background of the diagram, you can customize their color using the properties BarTopOutsideTextColor and BarBottomOutsideTextColor.
Special Tooltips for Visual Additions of Bars
Now it is possible to define separate tooltips for the constraint symbols, for the baseline symbols and bars, and for the outside texts of allocation and activity bars.
Symbols Showing Font Awesome Characters
You can now define symbols using characters from the Font Awesome icon set. Font Awesome provides a comprehensive icon font widely used in web applications. Previously, it was possible to create custom SVG files containing Font Awesome characters, but each SVG had to embed the entire font definition, resulting in a large footprint. Now you can include the font file once using the approach “SVG symbols” explained on the Font Awesome website. Using that method, you can afterwards use the characters directly within Symbol objects of VSW.
Miscellaneous
Disabling Drag&Drop
It is now possible to disable drag&drop functionality separately for rows and bars. Until now, this could be done by the option editable only for both together.
Coloring of Time Area Background
You can now easily synchronize the background color of the time area with that of the table. To support this, a new property TableColorVisibleInTimeArea has been introduced for Activity, Resource, and Skill objects. This enhances visual consistency across the diagram.
Easier and Faster Removal of Objects
The removeAll method has been enhanced to support the removal of all objects of multiple types in one call by passing an array of object types. VSW now automatically optimizes the removal sequence internally to achieve maximum performance.
Displaying Free Capacity on Curve Tooltips
In addition to showing capacity and load values using tooltip templates on curve tooltips, you can now display the available free capacity as well. This is done by including the keyword #FreeCapacity in your tooltip definition.
Simplified Access to Overflowing Symbols in the Symbol Column
Previously, when a row’s symbol column contained more symbols than could fit, users had to click the “…” icon to view them. Now, hovering the mouse over the symbol column is sufficient to reveal all hidden symbols.
Graphics and Semantics of Collapse and Expand Button
The visual appearance of collapse and expand buttons in the table rows has been slightly adjusted for better clarity. This is especially an improvement for the buttons for allocation rows, that showed a different semantics than the other buttons in the past. Now they behave identically.
Performance Enhancements
To improve loading speed, the internal processing of calendar and period highlighter data is now deferred until these elements become visible on the screen. This results in more responsive initial rendering, especially in large datasets.
Features in previous releases
