Nikolay Atanasov's blog

RadGridView for Silverlight public CTP and RadControls for Silverlight SP1 now available for download

Nikolay Atanasov — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 13:37:00 GMT

To show our intention to work on major LOB controls, we are launching a CTP version of RadGridView control for SIlverlight. We wanted to share our efforts with the community and receive valuable feedback on the results we have accomplished. Therefore, we are launching the CTP edition of the Grid control to ask you evaluate the product and provide all your thoughts on the matter. Our Grid team is eager to include all the features that are heavily demanded by the community. The CTP build is currently available under the users' accounts as an additional download to the latest SP1 of the "RadControls for Silverlight" bundle. We decided to launch both releases as this will enable the users build versatile applications using all our controls along with the newly added grid component. The official release of the Grid control is scheduled for the Q1 release next year.

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What does RadGridView for Silverlight include:

Grouping
Sorting
Editing
Programmatic Filtering
Auto-fit column
Column resize
Column reorder
Grouping aggregates

What is improved in the rest of the RadControls for Silverlight:�

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RadContextMenu now inherits DataContext from the element, to which the ContextMenu is attached
RadWindow - fixes on control's appearance:
�� 1. Fixed the resize
�� 2. Focus management fixes
�� 3. Fixed pin button default state
PageNavigation improvements.
RadPanelBar - bigfixes:
�� 1. You can now place panel items in panel items
�� 2. Improvements on the styling of the control under Expression Blend
�� 3. ScrollViewer of each control is now styled

RadControls for WPF official release

Nikolay Atanasov — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 10:58:33 GMT

With the Q3 edition of RadContorls for WPF Telerik has officially included in the suite three major controls - RadScheduler, RadChart and RadGauge.

Thus, Telerik puts the accent on rich data visualization and interactivity by introducing powerful and completely stylable and customizable controls.

RadContorls for WPF features a new theming mechanism for the Slider, ProgressBar, TreeView, TabControl, PanelBar, Calendarand DatePicker controls to make them consitent with the rest of the controls in the suite. Also , a new skin (Vista) has been added to further enrich the UI capabilities of the controls and let you create consistent LOB applications.

Not only we introduced new controls , but we also prepared several integration examples to show how our controls work and collaborate with each other in real life examples.
These are:

Delivery Schedule demo application
Reporting Tool demo application
Time monitoring tool demo application

For more details please check our Online Examples and the full Release Notes.

There are other tools being in a development stage at the moment, so stay tuned for any updates such as early CTP and Beta editions. We will surely share our efforts before officially launching any other control so that we can gather your feedback and improve our controls based on your experience with them.

RadControls for Silverlight official release

Nikolay Atanasov — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 03:44:27 GMT

After we launched the RC1 release shortly after Microsoft published Silverlight RTW it was high time for us to start preparing for the official edition of the RadControls for Silverlight suite. Here it is, with Q3 2008, RadControls for Silverlight is officially released.

RadControls for Silverlight is the richest set of tools to help you develop Silverlight applications, which is a solid foundation for the next-generation of line-of-business applications.

RadControls for Silverlight includes over 20 UI controls that can be used in pure Silverlight applications or as parts of existing ASP.NET applications. Sharing the same codebase with our WPF components, the Silverlight controls offer a clean and intuitive API, complete Blend support and powerful theming capabilities that will radically improve your RIA development. Telerik introduced a new style building mechanism that allows you to easily customize the color scheme of any of the predefined skin by simply changing several brushes that are common for all skins.

This is a milestone release for Telerik Silverlight suite, in which unique Page Navigation and Drag & Drop Frameworks have been added to further enhance the capabilities of Silverlight development. Later this week we will also add to the suite a Beta version of the forthcoming RadGridView for Silverlight. As this is a major and key control we wanted to gather customers' feedback before officially launching the control with Q1 2009. Other major addition to the bundle is the RadGauge control allowing you to display and monitor live data using the various features that the control provides.

To help you further advance the navigation of your applications Telerik also introduced RadContextMenu and RadCoverFlow controls.

Not only we introduced new controls and frameworks, but we also prepared several integration examples to show how our controls work and collaborate with each other in real life examples. These are:

There are other major controls and features that are currently being developed and will be live as of Q1 next year. This development includes RadDocking control. We will launch a beta version of the control right after we have a stable internal build.

For more details please check the Online Demos and the full Release Notes.

RadControls for Silverlight compatible against Microsoft Silverlight2 RTW and releasing more controls soon!

Nikolay Atanasov — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 12:00:02 GMT

We are just a few days away from releasing the full RadControls for Silverlight suite which with its advanced and unique capabilities will help you accelerate your Silverlight development.� As we follow closely the Microsoft release schedule, the suite was released and updated right after Microsoft Silverlight2 RTW release, when we showed you two new controls RadCoverFlow and RadContextMenu. Here are the novelties that you can expect with the upcoming release on November 5:

RadGauge
Great new integration examples showing our new Drag&Drop functionality, Page Navigation functionality, Databinding and Telerik advanced media components. New QSF design.
New Theming mechanism allowing you to change the controls' color scheme as easy as changing several brushes�
RadGridView (beta)

Stay tuned for our milestone release on November 5!

CTP before the official release of Telerik's charts, gauges and scheduler for WPF

Nikolay Atanasov — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 09:35:00 GMT

As the official Q3 release approaches, we decided to launch a preview of our controls that will officially become a part of the "RadControls for WPF" bundle. These are our RadGauge, RadChart and RadScheduler controls.

We have been continuously working on these during the last several months to improve and further advance the controls to let you build complete Line-Of-Business applications with our full range of controls for WPF.

With the wide variety of LOB controls and the consistent skins these controls provide, we aim at easing the process of building a complete and flexible UI of desktop applications.

You can check the online demos at�http://demos.telerik.com/wpf/futures

RadChart

RadChart now allows you to use several new 2D and 3D types as well as the newly added Axis AutoStep and Axis AutoScale functionalities.�

New 2D Types:

StackedBar100
Bubble
Stick
Candlestick
StackedArea
StackedArea100
StackedSplineArea
StackedSplineArea100
StackedBar100
Bubble�

New 3D Types:

Bubble
Line
Spline
StackedSplineArea
StackedSplineArea100
Area
StackedArea
StackedArea100
StackedBar
StackedBar100

Axis AutoScale Functionality
Axes automatically adjust the MinValue / MaxValue range based on the series data that is displayed in the associated chart area.

Axis AutoStep Functionality
The AutoStep function feature introduces a new and improved level of re-scaling that allows the chart axes to automatically re-arrange their values in order to avoid point labels overlapping and preserves the neat and clear outlook and easy understanding of the presented information.

Strip lines
RadChart introduces vertical and horizontal strip lines for 2D and 3D charts for improved readability for looking up individual values. With them the users can easily identify and highlight data that appears at regular intervals or in a specific key range for better understanding of the information presented in the chart.

RadScheduler

RadScheduler now features a new animation - the Changing View animation appearing upon changing the day/week or month views.

You can now click on the headers of the days/weeks to navigate even easier between the views.

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The�Client.NET accounts�have been updated�and all the users (both Trial and Licensed users) can download the latest CTP edition of these controls to evaluate them locally at their sides. We will greatly appreciate your feedback on how you find the controls and the latest changes we made. Gathering your opinion is always the best way to ensure our products keep getting better.

RadControls for Silverlight 2 RC0

Nikolay Atanasov — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 12:35:06 GMT

The latest RadControls for Silverlight 2 have been uploaded to the Telerik site. The files can be downloaded form the Client.Net accounts. This version is entirely compatible against MS Silverlight 2 RC0 that was launched a few days ago.

Still to come in the following days:

Detailed release notes, all the breaking changes, what's new in the suite.

New Integration example using RadControls for SIlverlight

Nikolay Atanasov — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 07:46:00 GMT

To demonstrate a real life business application that uses Telerik RadControls for Silverlight, we prepared another sample application showing a web portal about job offerings. We called it the JobBoard application. We managed to include there most of the currently available RadControls for Silverlight. These are:

RadComboBox
RadTreeView
RadWindow
RadUpload
RadNumericUpDown
RadDatePicker
RadMediaPlayer

The Home page features a "quick find" section at the top most part of the screen, a tree-view navigation on the left and a grid showing the results.

The RadTreeView on the left loads its child nodes on demand for a better performance and faster initial loading.

Clicking upon a grid-row pops a RadWindow containing a form that allows the user to apply for a job-position.

By clicking the Apply button another form appears allowing the user to fill-in some personal details and attach a resume. The form uses several standard textboxes, buttons, RadComboBox, RadUpload and RadDatePicker controls.

The main sections of the application are divided into several tabs - "Find Jobs", "Post Job", "Companies" and "Help". Clicking on the different tabs the user will be navigated to another page.

Post Job page - Several RadComboBoxes, RadNumericUpDown and RadDatePicker are used within this page. They allow the user to add different details about the job-post.

Companies page - This page contains a grid containing a list of all companies. Clicking on a grid row will filter the grid, thus showing all the job-offerings of the selected company.

Help page - RadMediaPlayer shows a short movie demonstrating the logic of the application.

RadGauge for Silverlight - coming up with Q3

Nikolay Atanasov — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 06:34:08 GMT

There are lots of exciting things coming up with the official release of "RadControls for Silverlight". One of them is the newly included RadGauge control in the suite. As it has already become a tradition - RadGauge for Silverlight will share the same code base as its WPF analogue. This will allow the users to use the same API with both the controls.
With Telerik RadGauge for Silverlight you will be able to display and monitor live data using the rich set of features the control provides. Furthermore, you will be able to completely customize the look of the control in any way that best fits your application's functionality.
You can see below some of the RadGauge designs we are currently evaluating at our side. All your feedback will be greatly appreciated.

New build of RadScheduler for WPF for Q2 2008 SP1

Nikolay Atanasov — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 10:39:36 GMT

We prepared a new build of RadScheduler for WPF that is fully compatible with the Q2 2008 SP1 release of RadControls for WPF. The ZIP file is attached to the following forum thread:
RadScheduler new build for Q2 2008 SP1

You can download it and give it a go.

We also featured in the ZIP file the updated examples about RadScheduler.

Below, you can find a full list of all the changes that have been included in the latest RadScheduler build:

New Features:

SchedulerView changes
- The derived classes for each View (Day, Week and Month) have been removed
- There are new classes ViewDefinition (Day, Week, Month) that are used for displaying data in different view modes (similar to web scheduler's settings). These definitions are used to create the SchedulerView (renamed to SchedulerViewModel). The scheduler itself has three properties -DayViewDefinition, WeekViewDefinition, MonthViewDefinition that you can use. Check out the "Customizable views" example.

Basic implementation for Import and Export of Appointments to iCal format. In the future this implementation will be greatly expanded and integrated into the provider's infrastructure.

SelectedAppointment and SelectedAppointments properties have been added to RadScheduler. The ability to select multiple appointments is also integrated. Check out the "Selected Appointment" and "Selected Appointments" examples.

SelectedTimeSlot property has been added to RadScheduler. Check out the "Selected TimeSlot" example.

Culture and FirstDayOfWeek properties have been added to RadScheduler from CalendarInfo. Therefore, CalendarInfo has been removed.

What's Fixed:

Navigation from one month (week) to another was not always showing the correct appointments.

Various bugs when editing appointment-recurrence's pattern.

Other minor improvements and optimizations.

"Silverlight: Write and Win!" Contest

Nikolay Atanasov — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 02:44:59 GMT

Telerik became an exclusive sponsor of the "Write and Win" Contest organized by SilverlightShow.Net.

"This contest aims to provoke people like you - geeks and fans, developers and designers, to show us what you've learned, what you've made, what you know. And all this will be shared with the community. Thus, we all make the Silverlight community stronger and active" states the official message at www.silverlightshow.net.

The prizes that Telerik provides include:

1^st - RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX + WinForms + Reporting Developer Subscription and Source Code License ($1,299 value). This is Telerik's most comprehensive license and it includes a Gold Support Package, free product updates and new product releases for a period of one year. This bundle license also includes complimentary licenses for RadControls for Silverlight and RadControls for WPF

2^nd - RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX Developer Subscription and Source Code License ($999 value). This license includes all 23 Telerik ASP.NET AJAX controls, a Gold Support Package and free product updates for a period of one year. The winners will also receive complimentary licenses for Telerik RadControls for Silverlight

3^rd - RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX Developer Subscription and Source Code License ($999 value). This license includes all 23 Telerik ASP.NET AJAX controls, a Gold Support Package and free product updates for a period of one year. The winners will also receive complimentary licenses for Telerik RadControls for Silverlight

Additional prizes are also provided by the organizers from SilverlightShow.Net.

All the details can be found at:
"Silverlight: Write and Win!" Contest Rules

New "Online Help" is now available for RadControls for Silverlight Beta2

Nikolay Atanasov — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 10:05:43 GMT

I am really excited to announce the newly updated Documentation page about RadControls for Silverlight. Currently, you can directly open and browse the newly added Online Help or download the latest CHM file containing the same topics. We will be surely enhancing the content of the help files so that the users could find there most of the answers they are looking for. Our goal is to provide a wide range of topics - from simple "how-to" articles to advanced and complicated topics about our controls for Silverlight.

RadControls for Silverlight 2 Q2 2008 Beta 2

Nikolay Atanasov — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 06:16:30 GMT

With this Beta2 release RadControls for Silverlight has been enhanced with several brand new controls:

RadTimePicker

RadTimePicker is an easy to use control allowing you to integrate time selection in your web applications. The control exposes an advanced parser that converts numeric/alpha-numeric values into a valid time. Using the templates of the RadTimePicker control you can arrange the items in your very custom manner. The control also supports defining selectable time-range through its Start/EndTime and Interval properties, or binding to a collection containing pre-defined values.

RadExpander

RadExpander control is a flexible control that helps you save space and achieve an easier navigation through your site. You can place the expander anywhere on your page and embed any content inside the drop-down (content) area. RadExpander also gives you the control over its ExpandDirection to let you adjust the control as per your custom layout.

We included a common overlay mechanism for all controls using pop-up windows. This mechanism allows proper overlaying when several windowed/popup objects appear on the screen.

The Documentation has been updated. We added general topics and some pretty advanced articles on databinding and styling.

You can check the deteailed Release Notes and see our Online Examples.

Join the Early Adoption Program

Nikolay Atanasov — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 10:00:03 GMT

We would like to welcome you to the Telerik RadControls for WPF and RadControls for Silverlight Early Adoption Program!

As part of the Early Adoption Program we would like to reward all community members who are eager to try our newest products - RadControls for Silverlight and/or RadControls for WPF. Your feedback and feature suggestions will be instrumental in helping us further develop the products so that they meet your requirements. Your ideas and suggestions will be rewarded according to the scheme below:

Bug Report - 1000-2000 Telerik points

Feature Request - depending on how valuable the feature request is and whether it can be implemented or not - 500 - 2000 Telerik points

Showcase example -a real-life example showing the usage of our RadControls for Silverlight/RadControls for WPF. All we need is just an URL pointing to an application or screen-shots/source code demonstrating the usage of the controls - 1000-5000 Telerik points

General Feedback - 500-1500 Telerik points

You can use the public forums to share your feedback with us.

Telerik points will be updated in your Client.NET accounts and you will receive a separate e-mail once Telerik points are added for your feedback. You can use the accumulated Telerik points as a discount for future purchases of RadControls for Silverlight, RadControls for WPF or another Telerik product. 100 Telerik points equal $1 discount on Telerik products.

The Early Adoption Program will be open until November 1, 2008. Your product suggestions and ideas are highly appreciated!

RadControls for Silverlight 2 CTP2 release

Nikolay Atanasov — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 06:49:50 GMT

RadControls for Silverlight 2 CTP2 is fact. This is another public preview that gets us closer to the official release of our RadControls for Silverlight 2. However, there will be another Beta releases before the official launch of the controls. The next update will be available with the forthcoming Q2 release due end of July.

With this CTP edition the RadControls for SIlverlight 2 bundle has been enhanced with several brand new controls :

Window for Silverlight - RadWindow exposes most of the best-known methods and properties of a WPF window, which have already become natural to manage and use. You have the ability to set up properties like start-up location, states, styles, resize modes, title, top, left and topmost. You can also rely on the common events for a window like Opened, Loaded, Closing, Closed that expose event arguments such as Dialog and Prompt results. Even if you are not into creating your own windows, you can simply use the line-long static methods Alert, Prompt and Confirm.

   - Ordering - RadWndows overlay each other as the top most window overlays the rest

   - Configuration - RadWindow is fully configurable in terms of determining size, state and position.
   - Alert, Prompt, Confirm - RadWindow exposes Alert, Prompt and Confirm methods to allow you   replace the standard dialog boxes provided by the browser.


   - Themes and Styling - The control can be easily styled using Blend. Additionally, you can use several pre-defined themes
ComboBox for Silverlight - Telerik RadComboBox for Silverlight is a powerful drop-down list control.The product introduces a number of advanced features like autocomplete, grid-like multiple columns, databinding, rich events model, etc.

    - Powerful DataBinding - Telerik RadComboBox for Silverlight can be bound to various datasoure types such as Object data, XML data, WCF and ADO.NET WebServices.
    - Editable mode - RadComboBox can work in both "editable" and "not editable" modes. Additionally, the RadComboBox can be marked as read-only even though the editable mode has been enabled.
    - Autocomplete - RadComboBox has full autocomplete support - while you type into the input area, the combobox returns all the relative matches for the currently typed text.
    - Multicolumn Mode - You can use custom ItemTemplate to represent grid-like multiple columns.
    - Keyboard support - RadComboBox has full support for keyboard navigation with arrow-key navigation.
    - Filtering - The RadComboBox items can be filtered depending on the typed text in the input field. This feature is especially useful when the drop-down contains a huge amount of items.
    - Themes and Styling - The control can be easily styled using Blend. Additionally, you can use several pre-defined themes
Slider for Silverlight - Telerik RadSlider is a flexible UI component that allows users to select a value from a defined range. The control is completely customizable in terms of appearance and offers numerous configuration options like orientation, small change, mouse wheel support, selection range, snap to tick, tick placement, tick template, etc.

    - Orientation - Set the orientation of the slider to either horizontal or vertical as per your needs.
    - Move the thumb to the mouse pointer - Allow the thumb of the slider move to the location of the mouse click that occurs while the mouse pointer pauses on the slider track.
    - Move slider to the closest tick - Allow the slider move the thumb to the closest tick mark.
    - Themes and Styling - The control can be easily styled using Blend. Additionally, you can use several pre-defined themes
Layout Panels for Silverlight
    - DockPanel - You can place child items in the dockpanel so that they do not occupy any space, which is not used by other docked elements. The DockPanel provides a built-in auto sizing that applies to the elements when their sizes are not pre-defined.
    - WrapPanel - You can place child elements in a sequential position from left to right, breaking the content to the next line at the edge of the containing box.
    - UniformGrid - The panel's child elements will be arranged in a grid layout.

All the other controls have been improved in terms of styling, appearance and general behavior. The QSF section contains examples of each control and its major features. You can refer to the Quickstart examples to get more details about the controls and their capabilities. To download the controls, use this link. Note that you have to sign in first.

Telerik's "Online Store" demo based on RadControls for Silverlight 2 Beta 2

Nikolay Atanasov — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 10:01:23 GMT

Lately, we have been preparing a sample application showing the usage of our RadControls for Silverlight 2 in a real life scenario.� Finally, we are able to make this application public and let you experience the flexibility of our controls.

We have just uploaded the demo at:
SnowBoard Online Store

You can also access the example from our�RadControls for Silverlight - Overview page by clicking on the banner residing in the bottom-right corner.

We tried to show all the flexibility and interoperability between our controls by combining them into a fully-functional and flashy online store for snowboards. This is the place to thank to our partners from "LIB Tech" for providing us with all the content for this application.

The "Online Store" demo application�features RadTabControl, RadCube,� RadNumericUpDown as well as animated WrapPanel and a DockPanel. Since the Silverlight 2 platform does not provide animated WrapPanels and DockPanels, we built our own panels to use them in this example. These are separate components that will shortly become an official part of our "RadControls for Silverlight 2" bundle.� Using panels in our application is essential as they provide the technique to replace the archaic table-based webpage layouts thus achieving a rich visual appearance. Currently, you can find the WrapPanel and DockPanel as part of the RadControls for Silverlight 2 Beta 2, CTP release. However, we are still working on improving their performance and after some polishing they will be officially included in the next Beta 1 release due mid-July.

In addition to the aforementioned controls, we used customized sliders, scroll-viewer and buttons.

The top most part of the page shows a navigation menu using buttons. We customized the appearance of these buttons to fit in the entire page's design.
In the right panel, you can see a RadTabControl that allows you to filter the boards, compare them or add boards to the Shopping Cart. Once a board has been added to the Shopping Cart, a RadNumericUpDown appears letting you increase/decrease the quantity of the boards you want to purchase. The Board Selector section tab uses customized checkboxes and sliders to let you filter the products as per your requirements.

In the bottom most panel, you can find another animated WrapPanel and a customized Scroll Viewer. These can be used as an additional navigation through the pre-filtered boards.

We will be continuously updating this example by including other controls that are available with our current "RadControls for SIlverlight 2" bundle.� We might be even preparing another sample to show a different real-life application.�