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Q2 Asp.Net skinning

It’s that time of the year again and we’re getting ready for the next quarterly release here at telerik. This time we have a major visual update coming for the ASP.NET product line. Almost all skins will get a refresh – some a minor QA to bring back to original designs, others a more thorough facelift. Wanted to get back to you even before the beta release next week with a sneak view of what’s coming so you can have your say. Here’s the major planned changes in skinning:

  1. Black skin preserves its general look only gets a bit less….well, black – after feedback from you we decided to brighten up the shades a bit to improve on readability.
    Black Skin RadDock
  2. Default 2006, our much coveted original default skin will be replaced by a much needed simple gray skin – no color, no frills, a simple look to fit any design. The new skin, codenamed “Gray” is designed to seamlessly fit in any existing apps you might have already deployed using the Default 2006 look.
    RadMenu Gray skin
  3. Inox gets a whole new look – general colors and metal feel will be preserved, but all interfaces will be thoroughly improved to reflect a more modern look.
    RadGrid Inox Skin
  4. Mac skin, much to our surprise, will be made obsolete, after feedback from our skinning survey indicating no one is using it…
  5. The Telerik skin will get a thorough redesign. General color scheme is preserved, only the green gets further away from the signature “telerik” green in favor of a more standard color fitting more of your scenarios.
    RadGrid telerik skin
  6. WebBlue gets only a minor retouch to freshen up the looks without any breaking changes.

All other skins will get the usual round of polishing/bug fixing. Much of our concern during the redesign has been preserving the general feel of our skins so that the new look fits in your existing applications. Ideally, we wanted to update the skins to keep them in line both with their original look and with the latest in interface design trends so that simply by upgrading an existing app you get a slicker look. We do realize in some cases visual discrepancies between the old and new look might be a nuisance, but we hope you will appreciate the fresher, more modern look.

Comments  6

  • 30 Jun, 08:09 AM

    Too much gradient in the Gray theme; makes it look too 3D which makes it hard to blend in with existing UI. Less is more in this case.

    comment by: Peter
  • 15 Jul, 11:26 AM

    We need another skin like Vista which is a dark version of your Vista skin. Something that looks like ComponentArt's default skin (then I can start replacing CA components with Telerik components). Also, when designing your skins it is tremendously important that no aspx changes are needed on our pages. We want to let the user choose one of a set of skins, say your Vista or your Office2007. This cannot currently be done without having different aspx pages for a number of controls (radgrid for example). I understand it is impossible to have all skins render with the same aspx but having a subset of compatible skins would permit users to select their preference without a lot of developer work. Ideally, the same html, css classnames, and images exist for every skin and only the the class definitions and images are different.

    comment by: john
  • 24 Jul, 07:03 AM

    Hi Peter, we have taken your feedback in consideration - the glassy feel is gone from the new gray skin in the Q2 release and it sports cleaner, more subtle gradients.

    John, thanks a lot for your feedback! Can you get back to me with specific issues you have with the RadGrid? ASPX declarations used to be a problem some time ago, but now I believe all our components are fully skinnable without any need for setting additional properties in the aspx? Are you using the latest version of the components? Also, I believe our default skin matches Component Art's black-and-white feel? Please check our new default skin, I believe it should fit your requirements...

    comment by: Zhivko Dimitrov
  • 27 Jul, 06:16 PM

    Changing existing skins is just a really bad judgement call in my opinon. The new outlook calendar is just horrible. I had to reinstall the prevoius version to get my near completed interface to look correct again after downloading the new update. If your going to change skins, you should name them something else or least make it really easy to access the old ones with the new version.. Just my own two cents...

    comment by: Jack
  • 27 Jul, 06:28 PM

    I take that back... It's the new Office 2007 calendar not Outlook.

    comment by: Jack
  • 27 Jul, 10:46 PM

    I must of missed the survey we were heavy users of the "Mac" skin... Oh well...

    comment by: Jafin
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