In case you are not sure how to do it with your type, there is an example in the updated sample.

The effect with the various built-in palettes is very professional and I must congratulate Phil of ComponentFactory for the excellent job he does with the Krypton Toolkit. His product is not only a suite of very polished controls, it is also a library that 3rd party developers can use to paint their own controls. And this is a joy to use.

The supplied drawing manager for krypton painting is an example with my own tastes. You are free to modify it or derive your own class from it. If you hit some limitations related to the drawing, your feature requests are welcome (this is true for the features of the calendar too, of course).

The free MonthCalendar, as well as the Krypton drawing manager and a sample are all zipped in this archive.

This choice was also motivated by a second category of customers who use the free Krypton Toolkit API. This framework has no DateTime components (yet). For them I had just to ensure that my calendar is skinnable. But more on this in another post.

Not to make a big change, my calendar by default looks like the MS one (+ a mouse hover effect) and has the following features:

• It is completely free (see at the bottom). Why? Simply because this is not my business and the community needs a good one that is also supported in a commercial package
• It can be used standalone or inside the SFPE DateTimePicker
• It has a CultureInfo property
• It is not limited by the fateful 1753 year but by what the DateTime type can accept
• It can display an optional and localizable "Today" button
• It is nullable, so it can display an optional and localizable "Clear" button too
• There is a true continuous acceleration when keeping the month and year buttons pressed
• An overridable drawing manager allows you to customize its look

There are some limitations for this first release, simply because I needed a simple calendar for the DateTimePicker:

• It displays only one month (no rows and columns of months)
• It doesn't handle range selections
• There is no bolded dates

That said, you have nothing to loose trying it. It's free and I think this is not just another calendar component. Personaly I tried the various ones proposed by some famous component vendors and I was not so impressed. They put the accent on the nice themes, but each time I was able to find a visual glitch or an annoying limitation.

Even if you are not a VisualHint customer, you can send me feature requests and I will enhance this calendar bit by bit (here in the comments or at UserVoice). Let me know if you like it too...

Get the month calendar here (the supplied sample references the free Krypton toolkit, so if you don't want that, simply remove the reference and the corresponding code in the form class).

Now, does it give you a clue about my new task for SFPE?

To work, you need to handle the ValueChanged event, like this:

private void dateTimePicker1_ValueChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    FieldPack fieldPack = (sender as FieldPack);
    Field field = fieldPack.GetField(3);
    if (field != fieldPack.EmptyField)
        SetDayLabel(fieldPack.OwnerEditor as DateTimePicker, field);
}

private void SetDayLabel(DateTimePicker dtp, Field field)
{
    if (dtp.Value != null)
    {
        DateTime value = (DateTime)dtp.Value;
        string suffix = "th, ";
        if (value.Day == 1)
            suffix = "st, ";
        else if (value.Day == 2)
            suffix = "nd, ";
        else if (value.Day == 3)
            suffix = "rd, ";

        if (!field.Value.Equals(suffix))
        {
            field.Value = suffix;
            field.OwnerFieldPack.OwnerEditor.RecalcLayout();
        }
    }
}

Depending on your language, you can of course change the prefix. Note that there is no particular requirement for the format string.

As you can see, it takes the "v" character followed by the max frames count. Even a floating number can be used, like 29.97 for NTSC.

Note that this comes from a feature request received on July 16. I found it so useful (being a video editing fan myself) that I decided to work on it. The SFPE framework is so nice to use that I published the final result on July 23. Knowing that I had to work on other stuff as well, this surprised my customer who then sent one of the testimonials you can see on this page.

It is not demonstrated in this video, but I remind you that this editor can be used in the DataGridView and in Smart PropertyGrid.Net too, and with the exact same features.

If you have any question about this editor, just drop me a note here, in the forums or through the helpdesk. You will be able to play with it very soon when SFPE version 1.2 is out.

First here is a nice screenshot taken from the updated supplied sample:

You can see the editor in action and a subset of its properties in a PropertyGrid. And here are its features:

• It can be used standalone, in Smart PropertyGrid or in the DataGridView. In the last case, the column of the grid can have the timespan type, long type for ticks and double type for seconds).
• Flexible format string:
    • D for days without leading zeros
    • d for days with leading zeros
    • H for hours without leading zeros
    • h for hours with leading zeros
    • M for minutes without leading zeros
    • m for minutes with leading zeros
    • S for seconds without leading zeros
    • s for seconds with leading zeros
    • F (up to 7 times) for ticks as fraction without trailing zeros
    • f (up to 7 times) for ticks as fraction with trailing zeros
    • T (up to 7 times) for standalone ticks without trailing zeros
    • t (up to 7 times) for standalone ticks with trailing zeros
    • ":" for the time separtor
    • Static fields can be added, something like d 'days' H 'hours'
• Min and Max values can be set.
• The most significant field has no max value (except as specified by the global max value set), so you can have a value of 24 hours and more if needed.
• Updown button can be displayed.
• Nullable (with delete key or checkbox).
• Auto-incrementation can be switched on (for ex, seconds passing from 59 to 0 will increment minutes, and so on).
• A new FieldAdded event allows you to modify a field on the fly, for example to change the “day” static string to the plural “days” depending on the current value.

This new editor is a free addition to Smart FieldPackEditor.Net and is planned for release in a few days. A screencast will also be published next week.

This is feasible thanks to the Krypton Toolkit API (which is a free framework available here). Instead of reinventing the wheel, I contacted Phil Wright to learn more about his toolkit and I learnt that his assembly could be used only to skin custom controls. So I have just created a custom SPG drawing manager: KryptonDrawingManager.cs. It uses all the known themes of the toolkit and you can even design your own palettes.

The synchronizer class can be downloaded here (please, let me know if you find any issue with this class, I will be happy to fix it).