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Audio, Video and the Cloud!

A wrap up of the Q3 2013 AJAX webinar

On Monday, October 28th, I presented a webinar demonstrating the cool new controls, and some of the great features that are now available in the 2013 Q3 release of the Telerik AJAX controls.  Many thanks to all who attended; it is always a pleasure to speak to the Telerik community about our products.

We showed you the three new controls in this release: MediaPlayer, Lightbox, and CloudUpload.  There were great features demonstrated for our long time favorites: the grid, editor, and scheduler.  The new HTML chart sparklines and data navigator functionality were shown as well. Finally, I wrapped up by showing you lightweight rendering and our new “auto mode” for rendering the Telerik AJAX controls.

You can review the video recording of the webinar at any time on Telerik TV.  You will become one of my “future people”… and once you watch the webinar you will know why.  Additionally, I have made the source code for the samples that I demonstrated from Visual Studio available for you to download.

Many of you had questions during the webinar.  Let’s review some of the common and interesting ones:

New Control Questions

Common to All New Controls

NEW CONTROLS!Q: What are these new controls using to render, jquery? Will it auto register or detect if it's loaded so it doesn't double load or cause conflicts?
A: The controls can be used with jQuery, but we primarily use standard JavaScript functions to render the controls. You can disable the built in jQuery if you'd like, as it is not required to render controls.

Q: All the new controls, which you are demoing today, can be used with VS2010 or they are compatible only with VS2013?
A: Yes, you can use them with VS2008, VS2010, VS2012 and VS2013

Q: I entered the meeting a bit late. Just wanted to know if all the changes discussed are also targeting the 4.0 framework
A: Yes, of course!

Cloud Upload

Q: Can Rad Cloud Upload work in a mobile app?
A: If the app is wrapped HTML app, yes it will work. If the app is native app, you can use the Windows Phone 8 upload control.  You can test our demos in your mobile device by navigating to http://demos.telerik.com/aspnet-ajax/cloud-upload/examples/overview/defaultcs.aspx

Cloud Upload to Azure, S3, or EverliveQ: Will you support upload to Skydrive, Google Drive, SalesForce or Dropbox?
A: We are planning to implement custom providers for the CloudUpload control. In case that there is a demand for this, we could consider to implement it out of the box.

Q: Pure client side upload is extremely valuable we are developing an ftp client applet just for this
A: Thanks for the feedback. We will consider making client-side upload.

Q: Any chance of adding file encryption to upload controls (outside of SSL) 
A: We could provide an access point in the upload handler where the developer could encrypt the uploading data.

Q: Does the Cloud upload load directly from the client to the provider or does it go through the server ?
A: Hello, RadCloudUpload uploads the files to the server and then the server sends them to the Cloud. So yes, it goes through the server. We are considering the possibility of adding a client-side upload in the near future if there is enough demand.

Media Player

Q: Can we use media player with a playlist?
A: The PlayList feature is in the works right now! We will have this option for the Q1 release.

A sample media player with title and play controlsQ: Why would you want to use the Telerik MediaPlayer and not the YouTube video player on a web site?
A: This is just an option, which will allow you to easily configure RadMediaPlayer directly in Visual Studio. The main purpose of RadMediaPlayer is to provide support for file types supported by the HTML5 video and audio tags.  Additionally, you can host your own media and present that content if your organization does not allow access to YouTube.

Q: Can the media player control display live event?
A: In theory, this should be supported by the <video> tag on which the controls is based, but we need to test this. Could you please open a support ticket with this request.

Q: Is Media Player frame accurate?
A: The player is based on the popular HTML5 <video> tag and the frame rate depends on the browser and the client's hardware configuration. The MediaPlayer itself does not have control over the rendering of the video steam.

Q: Will Media Player display subtitles? 
A: This feature is currently under consideration for implementation in one of the upcoming releases.

Lightbox

Q: Having markup for every img doesn’t make sense. Can I hook the lightbox to a folder?
A: Currently you can traverse the folder with few lines of code and add the images to the Items collection. You can also use the client-side API for this purpose.

A lightbox demoQ: Can you host an iframe in the lightbox control
A: Yes, you can see it in this demo: http://demos.telerik.com/aspnet-ajax/lightbox/examples/templates/defaultcs.aspx

 

Q: Can we use Lightbox for MessagePopups.?
A: You could, but you can also use notification, window etc, depending on your actual case.

Q: Does lightbox support RTL?
A: Yes, RTL mode is supported

Q: What do you use to minify your JS for Kendo and Asp.Net?
A: Uglify JS / YUI MIn

Q: Do the AJAX controls you have demoed have MVC equivalents?
A: Some of the AJAX controls have counterparts in the MVC suite: Grid, Editor, Window and other, but the truth is that the AJAX suite is developer for a longer period of time and it offers 5-10X more controls and features than the MVC one. See http://demos.telerik.com/aspnet-mvc/. The same is valid for the KendoUI MVC wrappers. 

New Features for Existing Controls

Editor

Q: Is there a means to strip specific HTML tags from the RADEditor Content?
A: Yes, you can write a custom content filter that will strip the desired tags with a regular expression http://demos.telerik.com/aspnet-ajax/editor/examples/contentfilters/defaultcs.aspx

Q: RadEditor cloud upload?
A: We should consider firstly adding support for the CloudUpload in RadFileExplorer. Because, the CloudUpload has providers only for uploading files, but not for getting and previewing the already uploaded files.

Q: Any new things coming for RAD editor?
A: Improvements in the inline and track changes commands. More new features will come in Q2 2014. That’s why, please do not hesitate to send us your feedback and feature requests! 

Grid

Q: How many rows can grid virtualization handle?
A: It is not limited to a certain number of rows. Whatever amount of data you can send back to the page and the browser can display properly is also supported by the virtualization. More information can be found in this help topic: http://www.telerik.com/help/aspnet-ajax/grid-virtualization.html

Q: When is the grid virtualization feature available for use?
A: The virtualization feature is available starting Q3 2013. You can check out an online demo here: http://demos.telerik.com/aspnet-ajax/grid/examples/performance/virtualization/defaultcs.aspx 

Scheduler

Q: Is the AgendaView customizable
A: We have covered some customizable scenarios in the following blog post: http://blogs.telerik.com/blogs/display-calendar-appointments-in-an-agenda-view-with-telerik's-asp.net-ajax-scheduler-control.

Html Charts

Q: Charts look good.   Please add extra zoomable features!
A: We are working on adding more extensive zoom/pan functionality, so stay tuned :)

Q: How many data point does RadHtmlChart support? 
A: This depends on the browser and its JS performance. Chrome, for example, can handle several thousands. Just stop the Transitions to increase performance, and reduce other elements (gridlines, labels, etc.)

Tile List

Q: Do you need Win8 for the tile controls?
A: Nope, you can run the TileList controls independently of the Windows that is installed on the server or the client.  In fact, you can open a site with a TileList on your favorite iOS or Android tablet and the control will work great

Q: Can live tiles use client side templates?
A: Yes, it already does. The clientTemplate property is a string (that can contain HTML) that is evaluated with the data from the service

Common Features

Q: Is it possible to make push requests to the client? via SignalR
A: The control in the browser initiates a request to the corresponding service (or page method). You can use its client-side events to cancel the request and write your own. When the template is about to be databound you get another event that you can use to modify it with your own logic

Q: Why wouldn't I want to use Lightweight rendering everywhere?
A: You may lose rounded corners and/or gradients in older browsers that do not support CSS3. Read this post for more details: http://blogs.telerik.com/aspnet-ajax/posts/13-06-13/attack-of-the-light-rendered-css3-and-html5-win Generally, you should not have issues even with older browsers.  
There is no reason not to use the Lightweight rendering everywhere. Our suggestion is to set the render mode in web.config AppSettings to Telerik.Web.UI.RenderMode = Auto. This way legacy browser will receive the old rendering and the modern browsers will receive the new rendering.

Q: What controls are supported in lightweight rendering mode?
A: Calendar, ComboBox, Dock, FormDecorator, Menu, ToolTip, and Window.  We’re committed to expanding this feature in the future. 

Q: Do all of these rich controls work well in Safari on the Macintosh?
A: The controls should work well on Safari on MAC as well as on the mobile/touch devices with Win8 Mobile and iOS. If you experience any problems, please report them via our Feedback portal.

Q: Does this version of Controls support the Release version of Visual Studio 2013 RTM
A: Yes, our controls in all of DevCraft Q3 2013 are Visual Studio 2013 ready.

Q: When will the Gantt Chart plan to be released? 2014 Q1? We have been waiting for a while. Thanks.
A: We will do our best to deliver it as soon as possible, but it will probably be Q2 or Q3 2014. 

… and of course the highlight question of the webinar

Q: Where did you get the great Pirate hat?
A: That is a Captain Jeff Sparrow ORIGINAL!  Actually, I picked it up while visiting the Disney parks in Orlando, just outside of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.

Summary

Thank you to everyone who participated in the webinar, and thank you for your interest in the Telerik ASP.NET Controls.  You can watch the webinar on Telerik TV and you can download the sample code for this webinar as well so that you can follow along at home.  Download a copy of the controls and get started with the Media Player, Lightbox, and Cloud Upload today.


About the Author

Jeffrey T. Fritz

Jeffrey T. Fritz is a Microsoft MVP in ASP.Net and an ASPInsider with more than a decade of experience writing and delivering large scale multi-tenant web applications. After building applications with ASP, ASP.NET and now ASP.NET MVC, he is crazy about building web sites for all sizes on any device. You can read more from Jeffrey on his personal blog or on Twitter at @csharpfritz. Google Profile


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