The area panel support allows users to easily arrange multiple chart areas. Charts can be set in different layouts, namely a grid panel, canvas panel, or stacked panel layout. Users can even set their own customized panel layouts for arranging chart areas.

Synchronizing chart areas allows multiple charts to share a common primary axis while maintaining a unique secondary axis for each chart. This feature is useful when comparing two sets of data that share a common measurement. With this feature, a chart area can be resized by clicking and dragging, and the other chart area will be resized automatically. Users can set maximum and minimum resize heights for the chart areas. Zoom support is also available, and can be used to zoom in on both chart areas simultaneously along the shared axis.

The range selection feature allows users to select a particular range of an axis. The selection is shown as a colored rectangle over the range that is being selected. Users can select a range on a primary or secondary axis.

The range highlight feature allows users to highlight a particular interval on a chart’s axis. A range can be highlighted on a primary or secondary axis.

The data point highlight feature allows users to highlight a particular segment of a chart series. The color of the highlighted segment will be a different color from the rest of the data series. The highlight color can be customized. The data point selection feature lets users click on a data point to select it.

Sparklines provide compact charts of high-density data, similar to those featured in Microsoft Excel. They are drawn without axes or coordinates to represent general variations in data. Three types of sparkline charts are available: column, line, and win-loss. Data series in sparkline charts can be highlighted.

Statistical function support has been added to Essential Chart for Silverlight. These functions can be used to analyze chart data by computing the average, standard deviation, variance, and more. This is very useful when the chart is bound to a data set. The computations are done on the back end, and users are given the results of the computations as raw data. The output of the functions is not plotted in the chart.

Essential Chart for Silverlight also now supports four types of utility functions for performing statistical tests on chart data: F-test, T-test, ANOVA, and Z-test. These functions provide raw data output for use in statistical analysis.

Users can set different backgrounds for different segments of a chart based on axis intervals. Alternating backgrounds can be applied horizontally or vertically in a chart area, providing more control over its look and feel.

Watermark support has been added to Essential Chart for Silverlight, enabling users to add a text or image watermark behind the chart area. Watermarks can be useful in preventing illegal copying of charts when accessed by unauthorized users. Extensive customization options are available for chart watermarks, including font, font size, image stretch, font color, alignment, opacity, and rotation angle.

This feature enables users to place content such as copyright or other identifying information at the bottom of a chart area.

Charts can now to feature a scale break to include outlying data in the chart area. Scale breaks are very useful when there is a break in continuity of the values plotted on the secondary axis. Scale breaks can be added to a chart automatically or set manually. The appearance of the scale break can be customized to be a straight line, a wave-like line, or the appearance can be randomized. Other customizable options include the line color, line thickness, space color, space width, and line style.

Empty point support allows users to add valueless points to charts where no data is needed for certain chart series. For instance, if a chart is used to show data taken from Monday through Friday, Saturday and Sunday can be present in the chart but be assigned empty points. Users can customize how empty points will appear in charts. Empty points can be set as symbols, images, or with custom colors. Empty points can also be used to display the average of a previous chart series and the next two.

This feature allows chart series data to be sorted in ascending or descending order. Chart data can be sorted based on x-axis values, y-axis values, or both, allowing users to quickly reorganize and analyze their data as needed. Both indexed and non-indexed axes can be sorted.

This feature allows users to have multiple pie chart series within a single chart area in a concentric manner, resulting in an inner pie chart, and outer pie chart, an outermost pie chart, and so on. This feature enables users to visualize and analyze a greater amount of data than is normally possible in a single pie chart.

Users can apply different colors to chart segments with the built-in color palette or their own custom palette. This allows users to visually distinguish between different chart series. This feature also provides functionality to apply different stroke types, both built-in and custom, to chart series.

Panning support has been added to allow users to navigate a chart area more easily. This is especially useful when a user has zoomed in on the chart area.

Formerly, axis labels were always placed on the outside of an axis. This feature allows chart axis labels to be set above, below, or across the axis lines.

Users can customize the appearance of the GridTree control using Microsoft Expression Blend. The appearance of header styles, cell styles, expander styles, and row styles can be customized using Blend.

Users can zoom in and out of the grid by changing the zoom scale of the control. The zoom factor is controlled by a slider.

A new “Transparent” theme has been added as a built-in skin to the skin manager framework for Silverlight controls. Users can easily apply this skin to individual controls or at the application level. Both Syncfusion and Microsoft Silverlight controls can use this theme.

This feature allows users to scroll through menus that are very long in the context menu via scroll buttons. For instance, if a context menu lists an option for selecting a font size, the different font sizes can be displayed in a scrollable list. This feature supports all Syncfusion Silverlight themes.