A closer look at the new RadNotification control in RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX

by ASP.NET AJAX Team | Comments 4

Have you ever searched for a quick and simple way to notify your users that something new is going on? Or just to show them some status message upon specific condition or time interval? This is now pretty easy to achieve with the new RadNotification control which joins RadControls for ASP NET AJAX suite in the Q2 2011 release!

Until now, you could achieve the same effect by using some popup in multiple approaches but you will always need to add a timer, load on demand code, server script or something else, depending on the exact requirements and that is why we designed RadNotification to provide all this out of the box and make your development easier!

RadNotification screenshot

Here are the main features of RadNotification:

  • Load on demand functionality
     RadNotification provides ability to use LoD out of the box in two manners – via callback or a WebService.
  • Show and/or update at specified time interval
     You can configure RadNotification to automatically show and/or update at a given time interval by simply setting a few server properties.
  • Built-in, fully customizable context menu
     RadNotification provides a built-in context menu, similar to the one found in some desktop notifications. The menu can optionally show with a target icon in the titlebar and you can specify any other targets as well.

  • Lightweight semantic HTML output
    The HTML markup of the RadNotification incorporates our know-how accumulated from developing the RadWindow and RadToolTip. It has semantic DIV rendering and does not include any layout TABLE elements.

  • CSS3
    With Internet Explorer 9 and above, all major browsers now support the new styling features of CSS3. In order to keep the HTML footprint lighter and faster we have created rounded corners and shadows using CSS3 only. That will allow for custom skin developers to add just a few extra CSS lines to change the border radius, shadow color and blur distance. The CSS3 properties will not be applied to older browsers such as Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8, but that will not affect the functionality of the control.

  • WAI-ARIA support, RTL support, KeepOnMouseOver, AutoCloseDelay, animations, automatic positioning no matter the screen resolution and many more features
    You can see what else is available in our online demos below:
    http://demos.telerik.com/aspnet-ajax/notification/examples/overview/defaultcs.aspx

RadNotification context menu support

About the author

Iana Tsolova

Iana Tsolova

is Program Manager of Telerik’s ASP.NET AJAX division. She joined the company back in the beginning of 2008 as a Support Officer and has since occupied various positions at Telerik, including Senior Support Officer, Team Lead at one of the ASP.NET AJAX teams and Technical Support Director. Iana’s main interests are web development, reading articles related to geography, wild nature and latest renewable energy technologies.

Posted in: radnotification radcontrols aspnet-ajax

4 Comments

James
Can you post an example showing usage with a callback to simulate push notifications (i.e. COMET or Stomp style)?
Svetlina Anati

Hello James,
Comet is a web application model in which a long-held HTTP request is used. However, long polling can cause obvious scalability issues e.g when thousands or even hundreds of thousands of open connections must be handled simultaneously by the web server. With HTML5 WebSockets, though, when data changes on the web server, the web server can send a request to client, eliminating the need for polling and this is the best possible implementation of real time notifications for the time being. Researching and implementing this feature for RadNotification is already in our TODO list but I cannot give you an exact time estimate when this will be done. It could be done for Q1 2012 at earlist since tasks and priorities for Q3 2011 are already set, but I cannot ensure you that Q1 2012 will include it because that depends on customers’ requests and onging tasks.

With the current implementation of RadNotification you could achieve short polling through a callback which is the best option compared to postback or AJAX request. To achieve this you should set LoadContentOn=”TimeInterval”, assign the desired predefined interval value in milliseconds to the UpdateInterval property and use the OnCallBackUpdate server event for your server logic. In addition you could decide whether to show or not the notification message in the OnClientUpdated event  depending on the server result and you can also pass values from the server to the client by using the Value property.

All this is shown in our online  demos below:

http://demos.telerik.com/aspnet-ajax/notification/examples/updateinterval/defaultcs.aspx

http://demos.telerik.com/aspnet-ajax/notification/examples/outlookmail/defaultcs.aspx

I hope that my reply is detailed enough and helpful, in case you have any additional questions, do not hesitate to contact us again.
Regards,
Svetlina,
the Telerik team

Waqas Ahmed
My Client asked for making notifcation movable, can we do that? as we have behaviour property in radwindow.
Marin Bratanov
Hi,

This control is not intended to replace a RadWindow and this is why it is not movable out of the box. You can, however, consider using a plugin like jQuery draggable to make it movable. You can also use it for updates only and take the new information, then place it in a RadWindow that will be movable. Its ContentTemplate can be used for this.

Marin Bratanov,
Telerik

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