Today, Aurigma is announcing that it will be ending the development for two image controls libraries that were included in the Graphics Mill image processing library: Graphics Mill Web Controls and Graphics Mill Win Controls.
Why we’re doing it
We originally introduced the Graphics Mill Web Controls library in 2007. The SDK was initially built using the now outdated ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET 2.0 frameworks. Despite the outdated frameworks, we continued to develop and maintain the library. On the other hand, we found that the learning curve of Graphics Mill Web Controls – its Vector Objects component in particular – was very high, so we pivoted our focus to Customer’s Canvas, our online web-to-print editor. The Web Controls library became an essential part of Customer’s Canvas. Since that time, we have ceased active development of the Web Controls version included in the Graphics Mill SDK.
The Windows Controls library was initially an integral part of Graphics Mill. It was based on the old Windows Forms class library, which is no longer popular among developers due to such modern technologies as WPF and UWP. Since its 9.x versions, the WinControls package was discontinued in future releases of Graphics Mill. The last available version on NuGet is 8.2.17.
Alternatives
To ensure that our customers can still support existing code in the long-term, we decided to publish the full source code of the Web Controls package and the full source code of the Windows Controls package on GitHub.
If you are starting a new project, we recommend that you consider our Customer's Canvas product, which allows you to build an online graphics editor much more easily and has been implemented with a modern technology stack and sturdy architecture.
Terms and dates
We continue to provide support for existing Web Controls customers as long as their maintenance contract is active. If the maintenance contract for Graphics Mill is renewed after November 1, 2018, then we will continue to provide support for Graphics Mill Core, but not for Graphics Mill Web Controls.