r.a.d.controls = 13 + 5: the math behind (Part II)

In my first post on r.a.d.controls Q4
(http://blogs.telerik.com/vassilterziev/posts/05-10-09/r_a_d_controls_13_5_the_math_behind_Part_I.aspx) I made an overview of r.a.d.grid 3.0. Today it’s time to share some information about r.a.d.combobox 2.0, r.a.d.toolbar and the long-awaited r.a.d.calendar.

In the course of the previous week I’ve had a chance to review the work in progress and I am very happy with what our dev and design teams have done - all products are both high-performance and very visually appealing. The latter is pretty important as our products, in terms of capabilities, are way ahead of documentation and examples and customers do have a problem to see all their beauty and power at a quick first glance.

We have done quite a bit to ensure that the products are well-designed as there is a lot of room for additional features, especially in the area of calendaring where we plan to offer the richest ASP.NET calendar. It won’t happen with v 1.0 but those who are familiar with our products and check r.a.d.grid 3.0 will see that we are quick in adding new features when the product has been engineered well.

So, what will you see in r.a.d.calendar 1.0?

1. Localization - completely integrated with the System.Globalization classes

2. Month view (Years-view and week-view yet to come). r.a.d.calendar will offer a customizable FirsDayOfWeek, and a customizable matrix ( days x rows ) in which one will have the ability to format the number of rows/columns to display in the view. Most vendors provide predefined 7 x 6 month view, and our calendar will allow to generate decorative month views say 3 rows x 14 columns (but a maximum of 42 cells in a month view). That’s a pretty cool feature that I really wanted to see as it gives you a lot more flexibility how to structure your calendar.

3. Multiview - the calendar will have the ability to show multiview presentations which show multiple months in the calendar's client area. This feature is adjusted with the properties MultiviewRows and MultiviewColumns. Also one needs/can define the so called "focus" of the calendar in multiview mode, which is pointed by the Focused Date property and the FocusedDateRow and FocusedDate which point where (row/column) in the matrix will be rendered the focused date

4. Templates support - footer and header fully customizable templates, and a collection of dynamic templates used for giving a rich and full calendar days presentation which could
be assigned on a "per day" basis. This is especially useful if you want to implement a scheduler-like interface with additional info and images about events, links to extra info and so on.

5. Date selection - one will have the ability to use column and row selectors, and use images, text, or HTML as a template for these selectors, and will have the properties UseDaysAsSelectors and UseWeeks as selectors, which will use auto generated data for the days/weeks by the calendar. On the client multi-date select will be available not only with the described above visual helpers, but by keeping a pressed keyboard key and clicking with the mouse.

6. Days Presentation direction - the month view will have another customization feature - it will allow to render the dates in a month not only in a horizontal manner, but row by row also or in other word vertically in strips - that gives another possibility for designers.

7. Preview areas - the calendar will allow a "read-only" preview areas showing the previous and next calendar areas to the default and active one. That will be a unique feature of r.a.d.calendar (at least for some time till the competition catches up:). The credit for this great feature goes to Svetozar, our VP Marketing.

Well, it seems that this is becoming a very long post so I think it’s time to wrap things up. I hope my schedule will permit me to cover the combo 2.0 and toolbar releases with the same level of detail in the next couple of days.