We keep a close track of the latest trends and we know how popular HTML5 and CSS are these days. That is why while implementeing our new theme engine, which we presented in our previous blog, we added a small, but powerful styling feature  and in this blog we want to tell you more about it.
 

Until now there were two ways to create new themes for RadControls. The first one is to use the Visual Style Builder tool (http://www.telerik.com/products/winforms/tools.aspx) and to create or modify an existing theme. The other way is a bit tricky as you should edit an XML...

As we are constantly trying to improve our controls, in Q3 2011 we are introducing new HTML rendering for Telerik’s ASP.NET AJAX Input control – single input rendering. First of all I should assure you that the old rendering is still available, so all your custom styles and complicated scenarios with RadInput will still work.

Let’s check some of the advantages of the single input rendering mode comes with: 

• No table is used when having buttons and/or labels, which results in quicker rendering.
• Less HTML is rendered as a whole, which leads to less data transferred to the client.
• The control can show readable text when...

RadGridView provides numerous handful approaches to customize its appearance, even at runtime. For example, you could use formatting events or the Style property. However, sometimes it is handy to specify complex conditions in a script form. In our previous release we introduced an expression editor which allows for using formulas and expressions both at design time and runtime. In our next release we will introduce the same powerful feature for conditional formatting. You and your end-users will be able to target and style RadGridView cells and rows using powerful expressions.

With the help of our existing rule-based conditional formatting you can easily highlight all cells...

As you may already know, we are working hard to improve the RadSlider in a broad way. We've fixed a lot of issues, but also added a lot of new cool features. Now it's so easy to customize and bind (in MVVM-ish way), that I've created this Windows 7 "Mixer" like example in less than an hour. I didn't change the Slider's ControlTemplate and don't have a single line of code behind.

(Please note that the new slider will be available with the beta of Q2.2011).

Download and play with the new bits.

Just play with the Sliders - note that the most left one is...

RadControls for WPF, 2011.Q1

We will start with the project from the previous post:

DOWNLOAD: RadScheduleView_GroupHeaderTemplates.zip

And will produce the following project that has its timeruler items modified:

DOWNLOAD: RadScheduleView_TimeRulerItemTemplates.zip

Using the GroupHeaderContentTemplateSelector you can bind to the resource data. In the time ruler this is not the case. The time ruler items present date information and at this time they can’t be modified through items source property. We will create an inline template selector and discuss some of the TimeRulerItem DataTemplates.

Converting the TimeRulerItemTemplateSelector to Local Value

Select the RadScheduleView, go to the “Styling” section in the “Properties” tab and click the rectangle near the “TimeRulerItemTemplateSelector” property. Then...

RadControls for WPF, 2011.Q1

The attached project will be generated in this blog and will be used in future:

DOWNLOAD: RadScheduleView_StartUp.zip

This is probably the first post of a series that will guide you through RadScheduleView styling. We will try to use Blend as much as possible for the styling and designing part and VisualStudio 2010 for some of the code that we will need.

Setting the References

RadScheduleView requires the following references:

• Telerik.Windows.Controls
• Telerik.Windows.Data
• Telerik.Windows.Controls.Input
• Telerik.Windows.Controls.Navigation
• Telerik.Windows.Controls.ScheduleView

Adding the RadScheduleView in the Design Surface

In the MainWindow select the “[grid]” element, find the RadScheduleView in the toolbox and double-click it:

Probably the view now does not look...

With the number of the themes in our suite constantly increasing (two more are coming in Q1 2011) it will surely take some time to review all of them for the different controls. This may sound like a simple problem, however the plot thickens when you are creating a new theme and you would like to know whether your forms look properly with your custom theme, and whether you are not missing an unstyled element here and there.

As a result, in Q1 2011 we will introduce a new tool that solve these issues for you, and will save you time...

We have received a lot of questions how can the application theme be changed at run time. The most important thing here to mark is that each time the application theme is changed all the controls should be re-drawn. Without going into too much detail, we could explain the application themes as a mechanism to replace the content of the Generic.xaml file in every loaded Telerik assembly at runtime. This does not affect the controls that already have default style applied, hence the need to create new instances.
Because in the Silverlight applications the RootVisual cannot be changed at run time, we...

 

A big thank you guys! Tribute to the generosity of you, our community, we now have 50% more skins available for the telerik ASP.NET components. Check out the latest additions in our Skins Exchange Program and feel free to download a copy for your project. Also, don’t forget to vote for your favorite community skin – we have an Xbox and free RadControls licenses waiting for the winners. Voting will close on September, 15th.

Once again, I would like to express our enormous gratitude to everyone who took the time to contribute their custom-made skins to the program. What started as a...

Once again, I am excited to announce the start of a new initiative to improve the user experience with skinning the Telerik controls. We are starting work on a new Visual Style Builder application for the ASP.NET AJAX Controls and a major upgrade of the existing application for the WinForms Controls. The Visual Style Builder will allow easy, point-and-click customization of component skins, eliminating the need to get acquainted with the front-end structure of the controls. The Visual Style Builder will also speed up development of skins across several components - you will be able to define a style once and...