What’s coming in RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX Q1 2009?

Q1 2009 release countdown continues at full speed! Now get ready for the RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX release bits, especially for those of you who haven’t tasted the Beta yet. So here are the most exciting aspects of the upcoming release.

New Controls
Our offering is growing even more with the addition of the File Explorer control and the HTTP Compression Module.
A flexible web control for file management, RadFileExplorer completely mimics the Windows Explorer functionality and is entirely built with Telerik RadControls. You can easily add it to your page, and organize your files and folders: create, rename, delete, drag and drop, all the familiar file operations and all of them performed on the client (without the need for Ajax server round-trips). To improve performance and user experience RadFileExplorer can load on demand (using ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Callback mechanism) only for the current expanded section.

See online examples

The other brand new member of Telerik’s AJAX toolbox is RadCompression, which is designed to automatically compress your AJAX and Web Service responses for even faster data transfers. The compression process is completely transparent to your client-side code (JavaScript or Silverlight) and your server-side code. It simply reduces the number of bits that must be sent over the wire (from your server to your client) and thus improves your page performance.

Read the following article and learn more about RadCompression and its behavior in two specific binding scenarios with RadGrid.

RadScheduler Binding to WebServices
With the Q1 release RadScheduler gets unique client features resulting in major performance enhancements. You will be able to bind it directly to Web Services allowing you to perform some operations on the client such as add/remove appointments. In this mode all operations are forwarded to a Web Service for processing using JSON calls for data transfer. This completely eliminates the need for postbacks and improves server load and bandwidth usage.

See a live demo

Skinning
The new release will introduce some radical improvements in the RadControls visual appeal. All Telerik skins will get a major facelift for greater consistency and appeal across skin elements such as rows, buttons, headers, selected states, disabled states of items, etc.

Since this enhancements require certain CSS interventions  (removing excess CSS, changes to the CSS naming conventions of the controls to better support nested RadControls) if you have custom CSS you need to update it. For more details, read this blog post from Telerik Sr. Developer Tervel Peykov.

Finally, the "Default2006" and "Gray" skins will be replaced with the new "Default" skin, which closely resembles their color scheme.

New examples and demo applications
WebMail Demo Application simulating the familiar functionality of Outlook. Built almost entirely in a declarative matter. Source code is provided.

New .NET 3.5 demos
Telerik AJAX controls fully leverage .NET 3.5 and come with built-in support for LINQ, LinqToSQL, EntityDataSource, ADO.NET DataServices, and WCF Web Service.

Binding RadMenu to EntityDataSource

Binding RadMenu to LinqDataSource

Read all Q1 2009 Release Highlights

Stay tuned for more exciting news from the ASP.NET Teams.