Products

Alternative Grid (AltGrid) is a versatile ActiveX grid control. Built using ATL and WTL the grid is highly customizable and easy to extend. AltGrid is effectively 4 grids into one: - A cell-centered grid with a sophisticated Object Model including columns, rows, cells, etc. - ListView mode - similarly to the Windows list view control - whole row selection only. - Tool-palette - similar to the VB properties palette (window). - Hierarchical grid - similar to the Outlook Grid it supports multiple level categories. Built-in support for Printing and supports Print Preview via AltPrintPreview - a reusable standalone ActiveX control. Supports persistence to and from XML. Auto-Preview - similar to the auto-preview feature in Outlook. Flexible style architecture where cell, column, row and other object can have easily definable styles. Versatile and extensible cell control architecture, where cell controls of any complexity can be plugged-in at run time. Very light-weight, high-performance, with no deployment dependencies. AltGrid is currently in its final beta.

 

Alternative Shell (AltShell) is a Client-Side Application Framework for the Microsoft .NET platform. AltShell is a reusable, semi-complete ‘shell’ application that can be specialized to produce custom applications. In addition AltShell allows runtime assembly of custom applications from available and customizable AltShell objects, or plug-ins. AltShell is comprised of a set of frameworks or subsystems, a set of horizontal services that run across these subsystems, and a set of plug-ins and tools that make AltShell itself configurable and easy to use. AltShell was conceived with the following vision in mind: A Client-Side Application Framework that enables software architects, designers, and developers to manufacture software product families out of customizable and interchangeable components in an automated and simple way.  AltShell draws upon our extensive experience in the field of software architectures and building graphical user interfaces for the Microsoft Windows platform. It taps into the market opportunity created from the emergence of the Microsoft .NET platform and technologies to offer a true plug-and-play UI framework for the Microsoft Windows platform. The timing for for such offering is right – in contrast to the market for middleware (CORBA, DCOM, Web services, etc.) the market for UI frameworks currently has many offerings for UI components and none for client-side application frameworks. At the same time the introduction of Microsoft .NET platform in early 2002 created a major industry shift and momentum. Independent market analysis by Gartner Group projects that by 2005 as much as 60% of new .NET applications will be designed with high-fidelity client deployment in mind. Accordingly, new software projects will likely be exclusively created using .NET and existing projects will be ported to it. The growing appreciation in the software community of the importance of software architectures and best practices will only add to the demand for products like AltShell. AltShell delivers an unprecedented level of fulfillment on the most important tenets by which software architectures are evaluated – maintainability, interoperability, extensibility, efficiency, reliability, testability, and reusability.