In this blog post I will try to explain how CSS z-index works and a how to avoid a few common mistakes. First of all the z-index is used to control the z-order of positioned HTML elements. Simply put it controls the stacking order of HTML elements. To set it set the "z-index" CSS attribute of your element to some integer value.

Z-index works only for positioned elements

Positioned elements are elements whose "position" CSS attribute is set to "relative", "absolute" or "fixed". The default "position" is "static" which means that by default setting z-index has no effect.

Z-index ...

The upcoming Q2 2009 release of RadControls for ASP.NET Ajax is now built with Visual Studio 2008. As most of you know Visual Studio 2008 supports multi-targeting and we decided to exploit that feature in order to improve our productivity. Here are the main reasons of preferring Visual Studio 2008 over Visual Studio 2005:

1. The IDE provides better development experience.
2. C# 3.0 provides lots of features which do not require .NET 3.5. To name a few:
• object initializers
• using the new "var" keyword
• anonymous types
• auto properties
3. Improved compilation time.
4. Seamless change of configurations - we can easily change ...

As you probably know some of our controls support web service load on demand (a.k.a. client-side databinding). Also in ASP.NET MVC we can call controller actions via Ajax. In this blog post I will show you how to populate RadComboBox and RadTreeView on demand by using a controller action which returns JsonResult. Let's start with RadComboBox:

Configure RadComboBox for Load on Demand

I have added the RadComboBox control to the default Index.aspx view and configured it like this:

<telerik:RadComboBox  runat="server"  ID="RadComboBox1"  EnableLoadOnDemand="true"
    ShowMoreResultsBox="true"  EmptyMessage="Type here ..."  Height="200px">
       <WebServiceSettings  Path...

We have updated our MVC Forum sample application to use the official ASP.NET MVC 1.0, RadControls for ASP.NET Ajax Q1 2009 and the latest installment of Telerik OpenAccess ORM.

Online demo | Download source

This blog post has been updated !!!

If you tried our Q1 2009 Beta you have probably noticed that there is a brand new assembly installed in your GAC - Telerik.Web.Design.dll. We decided to separate the design-time code from the web control implementation code. The reasons are many - better separation of concerns, less assembly references for the main assembly (Telerik.Web.UI.dll). We now have the freedom to extend the design time capabilities of RadControls for ASP.NET Ajax without bloating the main control assembly.

Why didn't we make it that way from the beginning? The only reason is that Visual Studio ...

I am glad to announce that yesterday we released a public sample application built with RadControls for ASP.NET Ajax, ASP.NET MVC and Telerik OpenAccess. You can check the online demo, or download the source code. This application is a basic online forum which uses RadControls in ASP.NET and demonstrates integration with ASP.NET MVC. Here are a few screens from the forum:

The "home" page (uses RadTreeView, RadGrid and RadMenu)

The "new thread" page (shows RadEditor)

The "account settings" page (shows RadUpload)

The "statistics" page (shows RadPanelBar and RadChart)

To compile and ...

As you probably know by know the Q3 ...

The Q3 2008 release is now out and I am glad to inform you that RadScriptManager provides support for ASP.NET MVC view and master pages. What this means is that RadControls for ASP.NET Ajax can be used in ASP.NET MVC. We have tested with the ASP.NET MVC Beta 1 release.

As you may know accessibility standards require a web page to work when JavaScript is disabled. In this blog post I will show you how to make RadMenu work even without JavaScript. I will also show how to make JAWS reader "see" all items rendered by RadMenu (even the hidden ones).

Disabling JavaScript

First we need to find a way to disable JavaScript in our browser of choice. For FireFox you need to install the web developer toolbar plugin. Then you can easily use the "Disable JavaScript" option:

In Internet Explorer you should first edit the security settings for ...

Since the Q2 2008 SP1 release RadTreeView, RadMenu, RadPanelBar and RadTabStrip support hierarchical databinding to the LinqDataSource control. In this blog post I will demonstrate how to do this with RadTreeView (the steps are identical for the aforementioned controls).

1. Create a new Web Site in Visual Studio 2008 and copy the Nortwind database in your App_Data folder
2. Add a new "Linq to SQL classes" item named "Northwind.dbml"
   
3. Open "Northwind.dbml" in design mode and drag the Employees table from Server Explorer. The Employees table is self referencing and suites perfectly for this example
   
4. Open Default.aspx in design mode and ...