Telerik AJAX Q2 2011 BETA bits

by ASP.NET AJAX Team | Comments 14

Right after the Q2 2011 Beta release of Telerik Extensions for ASP.NET MVC which was launched yesterday, it is our pleasure to present you with the long-anticipated Q2 Beta release of RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX. Our industry-leading AJAX suite receives fresh and tempting updates, hence wait no more but give them a spin! The AJAX Q2 Beta bits are uploaded in the Telerik accounts under the AJAX Product Files Download section, both for the TRIAL and PAID version of the product.

New controls, new skins, and more

With this release we adjoin another two AJAX components to our portfolio - Image Editor and Notification.

  • Image Editor - powerful component for editing graphics real time in the browser with which you can opt an image and define attributes like width/height or opacity; flip, rotate or crop it; zoom, print or add text to the image, and save it. More tools will be added gradually for the post- Q2 2011 version of the image editor.
    AJAX_ImageEditor
    AJAX_ImageEditor2
    See demos
  • Notification - light popup widget with semantic HTML output which supports static content, load on demand (via WebService or callback), embedded and custom icons, and built-in context menu. The component can be further customized by applying animations, designating intervals after which it will automatically show or update, specifying its position on the screen, etc.
    AJAX_Notification2 

    AJAX_Notification3
    AJAX_Notification1
    See demos

Moreover, we extended the set of skins that are shipped with our AJAX controls with four more - Transparent and three Office2010 variations (Blue, Silver and Black). We also separated an individual assembly (Telerik.Web.UI.Skins.dll) which, starting Q3 2011, will host all AJAX skins except the default one (see this blog post for details).

That is not all - to facilitate you in finding and operating with our controls via the Visual Studio ToolBox, we decided to introduce Telerik AJAX ToolBox groups in Visual Studio 2008/2010.  The names of the groups are chosen based on the usage of the components (i.e. Data, Data Editing, Navigation, Calendar and Scheduler, etc.). Here is a preview of what your VS toolbox will look like when you install the new major version of the AJAX bundle:

AJAX_VSToolbox_Groups


Finally, with this drop we officially confirm FireFox 5 compatibility of our AJAX components.

New features for existing controls

Updated Grid VS Design-time wizard - having radically new look and feel starting Q1 2011, the Grid's VS wizard gets some useful updates (located in Grouping and Client Settings tabs) that facilitates the developer to define grouping and client settings in a completely codeless manner through the design-time configurator.
AJAX_Grid_VSDesigner

Tighter integration between Editor and RibbonBar - RadEditor exposes RibbonBar toolbar mode which directly utilizes our AJAX RibbonBar for seamless integration of both components. Thus you can manipulate the editor content using the RibbonBar interface without writing a single line of code.

AJAX_Ribbon_Editor_Integration
See demo

RibbonBar Templates - presented for the first time in Q1 2011, the AJAX RibbonBar gets an important update by giving the ability to define templates for its items (HTML, other controls, Telerik AJAX controls, etc.). Expect more features to follow for the official Q2 2011 push.
AJAX_RibbonBar_Templates
See demo

Scheduler PDF export - in addition to the broad set of features supported by our AJAX scheduler, it now provides export to PDF option which is very convenient in cases when you would like to export and print your schedule for offline reference. You also have the freedom to choose the view (day, week, etc.) which will be exported.
AJAX_Scheduler_PDF_Export
See demo

TreeList features - the TreeList is supplied with a bunch of new features like drag and drop and load on demand of items, scrolling with static headers, as well as enhanced Visual Studio Design-time Wizard. See the images below for your visual pleasure and rush to the live examples to test the new stuff.
AJAX_TreeList_DragNDrop

 AJAX_TreeList_VSDesigner
AJAX_TreeList_LOD_Scrolling

See demos

SharePoint 2010 Web Parts Updates

Let's not forget the SharePoint 2010 web parts that come as part of the RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX distribution. With this update we are proud to inform you that our SPRadGrid web part already supports client-side binding to SPLists and Excel files (through web services). What is more, it also exposes option for binding to external lists using Business Connectivity Services. Some really exciting news for all SharePoint developers out there! Stand by for new examples that illustrate that on our SharePoint 2010 demo site by the end of this week.

Lastly, the AJAX Q2 2011 Beta online demos and documentation can be viewed at the usual locations: Live Demos | Documentation

Full Release Notes List > AJAX Q2 2011 Release Notes

I think that is all for now - more to come in a couple of weeks when the final Q2 2011 pack will be published. Until then, you can leave us your feedback in the public AJAX Q2 2011 Beta forum.

 

Register Today

Register for the Free Webinar on What's New for Web Developers in Q2 2011.

Register now as seats are limited!

When: Wednesday, July 19

11:00 AM EDT Register 

Check this page for the full Q2 2011 webinar listing.

About the author

Stefan Rahnev

Stefan Rahnev

is the Unit Manager of the ASP.NET Telerik Division. He has been working for the company since 2005, when he started out as a regular support officer. His next steps at Telerik took him through the positions of Technical Support Director and co-team leader in one of the ASP.NET AJAX teams. Stefan’s main interests are web development, agile processes planning and management, client services and psychology.

Posted in: aspnet-ajax

14 Comments

Yassine BENNANI
Where is the combobox multiselection with checkboxs ???
Ben Hayat
Wow, even the updates are like having NEW feature controls.

I love the idea of  the new VS toolbox grouping. Excellent move. This product is very rich.

As Yassine pointed out, no mention of ComboBox with multiselct in blog or demo. Just wondering...

Silverlight team just released a new control called RadPropertyGrid that can work with Datagrid which shows only one record (selectedItem). This control saves so much time for apps that has large number of CRUD operations. Or a control that performs as "DataForm" that we could hook up to an ObjectDataSource.
Right now I have to manually build these.
This would be a great addition to your toolbox.

Thank you for GREAT update!
..Ben
Ben Hayat
@Evan, you're right. I missed that. Very nice!!!
..Ben
Simeon
@Yassine As seen in the release notes for the BETA RadComboBox now has 'simple checkbox' support, which is unrelated to the selection. More info about the feature and its exact specification you can find in the corresponding PITS item: Issue ID 2978.

The reason we do not have a demo now is that the work on the checkboxes is still in progress. We will extend the current functionality to allow multi-select for the official Q2 2011 release.
Ben Hayat
I would like to make a suggestion on the demo pages. At top right corner where we can select a list of skins, it shows a list of all available skins. My suggestion is to put the word "new" next to those skins names that are new in this release. This way, we can immediately tell and try the new ones.

Thanks!
..Ben
Ben Hayat
As always, when Telerik (no matter which division) come out with a new control/product, they do it right all the way.

Looking at the new Notification control, it's done right from ground up and covers a vast # of of scenarios.

I needed something like this when you have a "Flowflow" style application where you can initiate a series of related server side actions and you want the user to continue working, this will help to communicate with user.

Thank you again team!
..Ben
Jon E
Yay finally grouping in VS!

Other things look great too - looking forward to having a play with the updates tomorrow.

In the meantime I'd suggest taking the session timeout notification demo down to 15 seconds rather than 60...  Kind of a long time to wait to see how it works :)

Best Regards,

Jon
Stefan
Thanks for all your feedback, folks!

@Ben: Thank for the idea about the PropertyGrid control. However, I think there is such MS equivalent in the .NET world named DetailsView control, and it can be styled by our FormDecorator to be in sync with the appearance of the rest of the AJAX controls :)http://demos.telerik.com/aspnet-ajax/formdecorator/examples/decorategridformdetailsviews/defaultcs.aspx It supports binding to data source controls and, given the circumstances,  I do not see much value in creating our own PropertyGrid version.

The remark about the new skins is right on spot - we will try to mark them somehow in the skin chooser dropdown to be distinguished easily at a glance. Thanks for the nice words about our new Notification component as well!

@Jon E: Unfortunately we are not able to specify shorter interval than 60 seconds because the sesion timeout setting allows whole minutes values only.
Ben Hayat
@Stefan:
Your points are well taken with the property grid control by using DetailsView & FormDecorator. The key that I had missed was using the "FormDecoarator". I'm still new on the ASP side. I come from Silverlight... :-)
Thank you for the answer!
..Ben
Brian
For the image editor, can you please add the following feature?

- Combine the image editor with the file upload tool.
- Allow us to set a max resolution, width, height, and file size of the image the user can upload.
- Set a crop window size to match our max width and height

Use Case: 
Users can upload an image of an inventory item; however, we would like to ensure the user only uploads an image of the size we want.

Bonus Feature:
We actually store/retrieve the images in the database via WCF web services. It would be great if we had an example of how to do this. We prefer not to upload the image to the IIS server, only to have to take it, convert it, then upload into the database.
Stefan
Thank you for the proposal, Brian. I will pass it to our devteam to be considered for the future versions of the AJAX ImageEditor control. I will also notify them about the idea for a new example you shared with us.
Milind Shevade
What about organization chart ?

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