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Release Notes

BCGControlBar Professional Edition

Version: 37.2. Released: 12/03/2025

  1. We have implemented Visual Studio 2026 support for both retail and evaluation product versions. The pre-built evaluation libraries and DLLs for Visual Studio 2026 are fully tested and uploaded to our servers. If you don't have the active product subscription but would like to verify your product built with one of the former versions of our libraries in Visual Studio 2026, please download the 30-day fully functional evaluation version.

  2. The new class CBCGPVisualManagerVS2026 implements a Visual Studio 2026-like theme (see screenshot). From now on, you can easily add a new, fresh look to your existing application using just one line of code. The key features of this new visual theme are
    • Modern, Fluent UI-inspired look.
    • 10+ ready-to-use color themes (see screenshot).
    • User-defined themes (see screenshot).
    • The docking pane pin/unpin buttons have a new look (see screenshot).
    • The new highlightable toolbar grippers have a fresh design (see screenshot).
    • Checkboxes and radio buttons with a larger size and contrast look (see screenshot).
    • The active docking panes, tabs, and MDI children are surrounded by accent-colored borders (see screenshot).
    • Small gap between the toolbar rows (see screenshot).
    BCGP_VISUAL_THEME_VS_2026_LIGHT, BCGP_VISUAL_THEME_VS_2026_DARK and others were added to the BCGP_VISUAL_THEME enumeration. For your convenience, we have added this new theme to the BCGControlBar Pro Application Wizards (see screenshot). Although this theme was designed for the toolbar-based application, you can also use it in the ribbon-based UI (see screenshot). Our sample RibbonGadgets demonstrates this. Please look at BCGPVisualStudioGUIDemo, BCGPControls and other examples and samples to examine this new appearance.

  3. Controls
    1. CBCGPTreeCtrlEx: Implemented the vertical selection bars (located on the left side of the selected item—see screenshot). By default, this bar is drawn only in Office 2021-2024, Visual Studio 2026 and native Windows themes, but you can specify its visibility by calling a new method, SetItemSelectionBar (for the specific control), or by changing a new global class member, m_bItemSelectionBar (for all controls).
    2. CBCGPPropList: enhanced the property subitem support:
      • The CBCGPProp::AddSubItem method has a new, optional parameter, "nInsertAt," which allows specifying the added subitem position.
      • A new method, CBCGPProp::GetSubItemIndex, retrieves the specific subitem index.
    3. The CBCGPProgressCtrl has an improved appearance in marquee mode when using modern visual themes (see screenshot).
    4. The new Visual Studio 2026 theme has been applied to many of our controls, such as the grid, calendar, editor, and others (see screenshot).

  4. Edit control
    1. Improved colors in the dark themes: the editor foreground colors (specified in the language settings XML file) have more contrast now and are easily readable when the edit control has a dark background (see screenshot).
    2. Enhanced supported color formats in the XML file for language settings. In addition to the previously supported basic color names and 'rrggbb,' we have added the Web color name support and the '#rrggbb' and '#rgb' formats.

  5. Miscellaneous
    1. MSAA: If the accessibility support is disabled in the global data, the EnableActiveAccessibility method is not automatically called anymore. This problem was in some specific classes, such as CBCGPButton, CBCGPListBox, and others.
    2. Smart docking indicators have added the following new styles:
      • BCGP_SDT_VS2012_DARK (see screenshot): used in the Visual Studio 2012-2019 and Office 2016-2024 dark themes.
      • BCGP_SDT_VS2022_DARK (see screenshot): used in the Visual Studio 2022-2026 dark themes.
    3. CBCGPGraphicsManager and CBCGPPyramidChartImpl: improved the 3D pyramid appearance (see screenshot).
    4. Integration Wizard: removed the option to install a legacy (HTML-based) Application Wizard in Visual Studio 2017-2019.
    5. BCGTranslator: implemented loading of the combo box items from the dialog info (DLGINIT section) in the resource file. From now on, you don't need to manually add these source strings to the translation grid, so the dialog translation is much easier now.

  6. Examples and Samples
    1. The new Visual Studio 2026 theme has been added to many of our examples and samples.
    2. BCGPControls: added demonstration of how to display the selection bar in the extended tree control item.
    3. BCGPVisualStudioGUIDemo: demonstrates Visual Studio 2026 themes with a custom color.

  7. Fixes
    1. CBCGPDockingControlBar: the docking pane located in the rebar does not have an unnecessary active border now.
    2. CBCGPTasksPane: addressed an issue with the scroll button height in the multi-DPI environments.
    3. CBCGPSliderCtrl: addressed some issues with incorrect tick mark positions when the control has the TBS_AUTOTICKS style.
    4. CBCGPPropertySheet: omitted an unnecessary tree control scroll after the property page activation by clicking the tree node.
    5. CBCGPCalculator: fixed the bug with incorrect processing of the '.' character in the environments where the decimal point is displayed as ',' or another symbol.
    6. CBCGPBreadcrumb: if the breadcrumb item has user-defined data, this data is assigned to the drop-down corresponding menu item.
    7. CBCGPChartVisualObject: addressed issues with the incorrect location of the data labels in the pyramid and funnel charts in specific cases.