New Developer Features

Part 3 of Crystal Reports XL
by: Reports guru David McAmis

For developers, there is a grab-bag of new features regardless of whether you develop in .NET, COM or Java. To start, Crystal Reports XI now includes the ability to store images external to the report file itself. This may seem like a small thing, but it has been a sore point with developers for a while, especially with web developers who want to use Crystal Reports in Web applications but don’t want to store the images in the report itself, which could increase the file size dramatically.

In addition, the use of CSS Style Sheets has been better documented in this version, making it a viable option for Web developers who want to integrate reports with the same look-and-feel into their web applications.

For application developers integrating reports into their .NET applications, the viewer components have been updated (Figure 3) and include all of the new features found in the report designer (dynamic parameters, new export formats, etc.). There is a setting to disable tool-tips, which was an annoying feature in previous versions, as most report developers would not enter tool-tips for each element on the report.