ComponentOne, a division of GrapeCity and a major provider of software components for Microsoft (News – Alert) Visual Studio, has released ComponentOne Studio Enterprise 2013 v3.

“Our 2013 v3 release of ComponentOne Studio Enterprise offers developers the tools to build the most modern touch-enabled apps, along with tools for maintaining and updating legacy applications," said Greg Lutz, product manager at ComponentOne. "The v3 release further strengthens our commitment of helping developers deliver rich, responsive desktop and web apps on time and under budget."

The new release reflects growing changes in business IT, with more people using mobile devices like smartphones and tablets in addition to PCs. Among other things, it includes a number of new HTML5 controls as the new standard is rapidly becoming accepted for building cross-platform mobile apps.

ComponentOne has paid considerable attention to the visual presentation of the apps in addition to the functionality, adding options for theming into the new version.

ThemeRoller for ASP.NET Wijmo lets developers create custom themes without having to code in CSS (News – Alert).

C1Themes also allows developer to use premade themes if they want to dispense with the theme customization altogether.

ComponentOne also supports Microsoft’s Bootstrap theming framework in the new version.

“We have enhanced our support for developers working in Visual Studio 2013 by officially supporting Bootstrap in Studio Enterprise v3," said Lutz. "By designing our controls to integrate seamlessly with Bootstrap, Visual Studio 2013 clients will have a vast amount of tools available for building their web applications." 

The company also has a number of other components that developers can drop into their applications. The C1FlexGrid and C1RichTextBox controls allow for easy input and drop-down controls.

Products like these are intended to make it easier for developers to create custom applications without having to code these elements themselves. User interface elements are among the most tedious, whether on the desktop or on the Web. Apple (News – Alert) got a lot of acclaim in the ‘80s for its Macintosh Toolbox that allowed developers to create apps using its innovative user interface elements. ComponentOne does much the same thing for building complex Web apps.