One of the many exciting and new items packed in the Q2 2013 release of RadControls for Windows 8 HTML is the RadCalendar control. It provides the most common feature set in you would expect from a typical Calendar UI and a bit more:

Figure 1. RadCalendar in all views.

• Month, year, decade and century views for easy navigation to the target date to select.
• Specifying an available range for selection by defining min and max values.
• Templates for the cells in month view.
• Special dates, which can be customized with the month view templates to show more specific information inside the calendar.
• A template for the footer, which by default shows a link to today’s date.
• Touch input for touch-enabled devices. The gestures RadCalendar recognizes do not interfere with other commonly handled UI gestures on the same page of the app. For example navigating to the next/previous month in month view requires a down/up swipe gesture instead of a horizontal one (which is usually handled for page navigation) and a pinch-in gesture zooms out to the year view, etc.
• Keyboard support for classic desktop/laptop devices.
• Smooth animations reflecting the navigation choices of the user that greatly improve the user experience.
• Built-in culture support (localization of text labels and formatting of dates) for all cultures supported by WinRT.

 
Figure 2. A RadCalendar localized in French.

On the developer side RadCalendar comes with:

• Full IntelliSense support with a built-in vsdoc in the Extension SDK of RadControls for Windows 8,
• TypeScript declarations for all properties and related types and
• An API that can be used to program a lot of custom UIs in your Windows Store Apps, e.g. multiple selection and detail panels.

Figure 3. Range selection implemented with the API.

Figure 4. Special dates templates with extra info per date in a separate panel.

What about the future?

We have some exciting plans for and around RadCalendar, which we will be rolling out in Q3 2013, two of which are built-in range selection and easier integration between two or more calendars that will further enhance the multiple selection user experience.

Until then, you can download RadControls for Windows 8 HTML now and see RadCalendar in action. Please share your ideas and feedback on our feedback portal or write to us in the forums or via our support-ticket system. We are eager to hear your opinion and comments about this new control.

Other links

More info about the new and interesting stuff coming out with the Q2 2013 release you can find by visiting the blog posts below:

• Data Storage for Windows Store Apps - a Walkthrough