Kiril's blog

HelpDesk ready for action

Kiril Matev — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 04:06:59 GMT

So much has been going on lately, I almost forgot to tell everyone about the integration application we released a while ago. We wanted to deliver an application which is built entirely with our RadControls for Winforms. However, we had to wait until the reengineered RadGridView shipped as a part of Q1 2008, in order to provide an application which integrates the latest and greatest technology we have to offer.

Soon after our Q1 2008 release, which features a significantly improved grid control, we released the HelpDesk application - a sample contact management system, which uses a number of controls - RadRibbonBar, RadGridView, RadTreeView, RadCalendar, and RadForm, among others. It is an example how our product can be used to have a consistent style across the entire application. Here's a screenshot of the main screen.

What's valuable about the application is that it shows a fairly common way of control�interaction, which you can use for guidance in writing your own applications. It presents the use of our product to implement a subset of the features applications typically offer.��

You can get more information about the application here.

We plan to have a series of how-to's about the process of writing the application. These will explain in detail how the application was constructed, highlighting major features and appearance details, and how they have been implemented.

In the meantime, get the application from your Client.NET account, and try it out. Let us know what you'd like to see in future versions of this integration example - what controls are you using? What scenarios you'd like to see implemented?

RadCarousel - Even More Bang for your Buck

Kiril Matev — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 06:27:00 GMT

Introducing the RadCarousel component into our suite can be compared to what the BigBang was to the Universe in the early days. We've seen it all - from feature requests straight after its initial release, to statements it is worth as much as the entire suite. A few words of introduction - the RadCarousel animates a number of alternatives to choose from in a visually appealing way. RadCarousel animates the location, opacity and scale of its items. Items can be moved along any path described by a Bezier curve or an ellipse. These basic capabilities allow the control to be used to display items, in a way that is highly customizable and attractive.

I'd like to share with you a few ways to improve the component's performance to enable you to take maximum advantage of its capabilities. You can get a smoother animated motion using the tips below:

��Removing the carousel background

��Decreasing the number of the visible items

��Decreasing the size of the carousel items

But again, as nice as this may sound, you're interested in how we'll be making it better. So, what's coming up in RadCarousel in Q2 2008?

1. We'll expose properties controlling the animation of items, such as the number of frames, and animation delay. This will allow you to fine-tune the operation of the control to even better adapt to your specific needs.

2. You'll be able to edit the path of items at design-time, using the mouse. You'll see changes in the path as you make them. This will save you time in picking the required path for the items to follow.

Please share with us any feedback you have on the RadCarousel. What features would you like to see in the future, how do you think we can change the current functionality to suit your needs better? Your feedback plays an important role in our decision-making progress, as we would like to enable you to deliver more than you or your customers expect.

Introducing RadForm

Kiril Matev — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 09:33:00 GMT

Hey everyone. The other day, I was responding to requests for more information on how to use the new RadForm, and I felt like we're not being proactive enough in showcasing what our product has to offer. I'd love our customers to use our product to their maximum advantage, and I realize we have an important role to play to facilitate that. In this respect, I'd like to say a few words about one of our newest additions to the control suite - RadForm.

RadForm is an alternative to the standard Windows form. It offers you all the standard form functionality and has right-to -left language support. Furthermore, it supports MDI scenarios, with both other RadForms or windows forms nested within. It features ? toolbar that can be shared among all the child forms in the parent form.

A pretty compelling feature is its theming capability, which allows you to achieve a consistent appearance throughout the entire application. It gives the developer a straight-forward way to customizing the form, and significantly improves the user experience.

A few of points to make about the new component:�

The RadForm is not meant to supersede the ShapedForm.�
It only provides a rounded-corner shape, which cannot be changed.�
It cannot take any non-standard shape, the way the ShapedForm can.

Please find more information about the RadForm here:
http://www.telerik.com/support/kb/article/b454K-hta-b454T-ckd-b454c-ckd.aspx

RadGridView unleashed

Kiril Matev — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 09:43:15 GMT

Hello everyone, my name is Kiril Matev and I'm a software developer for the Windows Forms team at Telerik. We're all pretty excited about the newly reengineered RadGridView, which is a part of our Q1 2008 release, and I'd like to highlight a couple of features you might find useful.

So far, you had to always construct a datasource, initialize its columns, and rows, and then bind it to the RadGridView. However, many simpler scenarios demand just adding, editing and removing rows using the API directly. This so-called unbound mode for the RadGridView has long been a must-have feature for many of our customers.

We had the opportunity to provide it, together with grouping in unbound mode in our latest release. You can add columns, and then rows directly like this:

�GridViewDataColumn dataCol1 = new GridViewDataColumn();
�GridViewDataColumn dataCol2 = new GridViewDataColumn();
�GridViewCommandColumn commandClm = new GridViewCommandColumn();

�this.radGridView1.Columns.Add(dataCol1);
�this.radGridView1.Columns.Add(dataCol2);
�this.radGridView1.Columns.Add(commandClm);
��
�for(int i=0; i < 100; ++i)
��this.radGridView1.Rows.Add(new object[] {"a", i.ToString(), "Details" });

We're pretty glad about that, because this allows customers to benefit from the powerful capabilities of the component in scenarios, where binding is not needed.

Another very useful feature is saving and loading the layout of the RadGridView from a file. Imagine the following scenario - you have customized the layout of the RadGridView - changed column widths, pinned, or hidden columns.

This feature is very straightforward to use. It is controlled by two methods, LoadLayout, and SaveLayout, which take the file names to be used as input or output, as shown below:

this.radGridView1.SaveLayout("savedLayout1.xml");
this.radGridView1.LoadLayout("savedLayout1.xml");

It helps your users to customize and use their own settings of the RadGridView, thus increasing usability, and ultimately the value of the service you have provided. These two additional features make us excited because we give you the tools to deliver more than expected.� And we're always happy to have been a part of your success.

Theming Optimizations

Kiril Matev — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 07:04:00 GMT

Ever since the first release of RadControls for Winforms, we have tried to deliver WPF-like visual effects outside of the WPF platform. This has allowed our customers to deliver dazzling effects leveraging their knowledge of the stable Winforms paradigm. On the other hand the end users are stunned by the richness of the UI interface and the slim behavior that is traditionally reserved for the high-end multimedia systems.

Although quite attractive, this eye-candy has always caused a slight increase in component loading time. We have always tried to avoid this tradeoff of performance versus visuals. In our latest release, we have implemented a new approach to applying themes that serves to close the performance gap somewhat.

All the themes used to be automatically loaded for the components you have on a form. When you placed a control on the page, you would change its Theme property to the value of the theme you'd like to use. At that point, all the themes are already loaded, resulting in a less-than-optimal memory footprint.

We have implemented a new approach that only loads the themes you are using in a form. You will notice that two new themes, Aqua and Desert appear as components in the toolbox, as shown in the diagram below.

You have to drag them from the toolbox to the form are for them to become available in the list of themes for a control. The screenshot below shows that once the AquaTheme was dragged onto the form (it appears in the panel at the bottom), it becomes available in the list of themes for the button.

When all themes are re-engineered in this� particular manner (which is about to happen for the Q2 2008 release) developers will have the option to load only the themes required by the application. This approach to styling allows you to have a greater variety of appearance schemes you can use without having a negative impact on the performance of your application. Take that, visuals versus load time tradeoff.

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