Telerik blogs

Kendo UI Q1 2015 Recording, Winners, and Questions

Last week, we hosted a webinar entitled, "Build HTML5 Apps Tailored for Any Device." This action-packed webinar covered many of the new features and improvements we added in the release of Telerik Kendo UI Q1 2015. If you were unfortunate enough to miss the webinar, don't worry! We posted a recording of it to YouTube.

This webinar received a huge amount of interest from customers. We had over 5,700 people from 131 different countries register during three weeks of promotion. During the webinar, a lot of questions were asked! 767 questions to be exact, which is absolutely incredible. Thank you so much to everyone making this one of our best webinars yet!

Prizes

And now, the good stuff!

Here are the winners of the prizes for the Kendo UI Q1 2015 webinar:

  • Optoma HD141X Home Theater Projector: Nathan Koterba
  • iPhone 6 Plus: Dave Perkovich
  • Surface Pro 3: Giridharan Sayeenathan
  • Nexus 6: Sandra Walters

We've also awarded licenses for Kendo UI and UI for ASP.NET MVC to 15 lucky folks who attended the webinar. Keep an eye on your inbox. We'll be letting you know that you're a winner. (Mind you, if you're using Kendo UI then you're already a winner, amirite?)

Questions

As I stated, there were a lot of questions asked during the webinar. I took some time to read through them and answer a few of the more interesting ones here. As always, if you have a question about Kendo UI that you'd like to have answered, please feel free to reach out and ask!

Responsive Widgets

It's great that you are adding responsive methodologies into your Kendo UI controls. Are there any plans to "tear down the wall" between the mobile controls and the desktop controls? It would be fantastic if there were only one set of controls all completely responsive and styleable, either as a mobile application or a desktop application.
Great question. You should check out our adaptive widgets like the Grid. Additionally, some of our mobile widgets operate very well in a large screen scenario. In the meantime, please keep an eye on the roadmap. We recently posted some of our plans for the Q2 2015 release.

Can we use the responsive widgets of Kendo UI to target different size mobile devices?
Yes. This is precisely what we've built for the Q1 2015 release. Go forth and be responsive!

Is the responsiveness of Kendo UI "liquid" (% sizes like Twitter Bootstrap) or can manage fixed sizes (more like CSS media queries)?
The responsive features are fueled by CSS media queries. You can learn more from our docs: Using Kendo UI in Responsive Webpages.

Why is the "hamburger button" for the Responsive Panel is not placed on right (by default) when the panel is?
The "hamburger button" is always on the left. However, you can customize the orientation of the panel via the API.

Within the AngularJS digest lifecycle, where is the Kendo UI responsiveness introduced?
The responsive features in Kendo UI widgets are built-in regardless of how you instantiate them. This means they are not dependent on AngularJS or other integrations.

Do the new responsive features work well with all themes that ship with Kendo UI?
Yes!

Kendo UI and AngularJS

Angular owns Angular Material supported by Material Design Google. How can Telerik contribute within this user experience?
Kendo UI ships with two (2) Material Design-based themes. I hope this helps.

You've shown a lot of new functionality with your widgets. Can you say anything about whether all this new functionality can be used in an AngularJS application?
Yes, it can! To elaborate, Kendo UI can be used seamlessly with AngularJS. That stated, the two frameworks have some overlapping features. If you are using AngularJS then you should use its routing mechanism and databinding; do not mix these features with the Kendo UI built-in MVVM.

Are you looking to "bake in" support for other frameworks besides AngularJS?
AngularJS is the only officially supported integration we have at this point in time.

Drawing API

Can the drawing API of Kendo UI be used to implement collection of signatures (using a stylus or finger on touch screens) and saving data to images on the web server?
I suppose you could. I'd start by checking out the Manipulating Paths demo. You could combine this with kendo.drawing.drawDOM() on the Surface to export a data URI or images of a signature that you've captured from a user. Once you have this, it's fairly simple to persist it to a backend database.

Can kendo.drawing.drawDOM() be used to save an "image" of a DOM to a database?
Yep! You can take the resulting image that's generated as a data URI and save it anywhere you like.

Can we print charts and other widgets - like the Gantt - using kendo.drawing.drawDOM()?
Yes! kendo.drawing.drawDOM() enables you to draw a DOM element into a kendo.drawing.Group. You can then render to output formats like SVG, PDF, HTML5 canvas or VML.

Can kendo.drawing.drawDOM() export a large node of a DOM element?
Yes. That stated, you can also export a large node across multiple pages.

Does kendo.drawing.drawDOM() enable you to split a DOM node as we wish?
This question is a little confusing since kendo.drawing.drawDOM() doesn't operate against the DOM. The only manipulation you can perform is against the kendo.drawing.Group that's generated.

Grid

Is there any way to show hidden columns on small screen devices? Say, through scrolling or a pop-up?
No, not at the moment. However, you may want to use the adaptive Grid rendering with scrolling if you don't want to have hidden columns. You can see a demo of this here.

Can the entire Grid be exported to Excel?
Yes. You'll want to set the excel.allPages to true.

Do you plan to implement import from Excel to the Grid? I know it's bit a tricky, but in some business systems gonna be useful.
Can we copy & paste data from Excel into a Grid?
Great question. Yes, you can do it, but it's a little tricky. We have a demo here you can check out to see how it's done.

Can I modify the formatting of the PDF that's generated from the Grid?
Yes. There are many configuration options available.

I really like your Grid presentation and the rich data virtualization. My question is: is the data-binding both ways?
Thanks! Yes, two-way data-binding is supported through the MVVM framework of Kendo UI.

How do I import JSON into the Grid? And, export the Grid to JSON?
Importing is easy. Simply use the DataSource or the JSON object. From there, you can serialize the JSON easily.

Does the allowCopy property from the Grid work with Flash?
No, it doesn't. There's no dependency on Flash. We rely upon the browser's support for the Clipboard API to make this work.

Does allowCopy copy values from templated cells like images?
No, it only supports text at this time.

Does allowCopy work from a mobile device?
Sadly, no. This is something beyond our control since support for the Clipboard API on mobile browsers kinda stinks.

Is there a property for copying a row of the Grid to the clipboard?
Yes, set selectable to "multiple" on the Grid. Check out the demo here.

Can you do customize the style when exporting from the Grid?
Yes, you can write a handler for the pdfExport event, which will enable you conduct transformations against the page content.

Do the responsive capabilities of the Grid also work when I enable inline editing?
Yes, inline editing still works when you specify things like the columns.minScreenWidth property for columns.

Gantt

Does the right-to-left (RTL) support trigger automatically based on the locale of the browser?
No, not exactly. You have to write a little bit of code to implement RTL support via the HTTP Accept-Language header. However, you really shouldn't use the HTTP Accept-Language header by itself. Yes, it can be a good indicator of the user's language, but a lot of other factors can get involved. For Kendo UI support for locales, please refer to Support Right-To-Left (RTL) Languages for more information.

Does the stylesheet, kendo.rtl.min.css support the RTL languages?
Kinda sorta. This stylesheet ensures that widgets render the appropriate way for right-to-left direction support. Languages are supported through globalization in Kendo UI.

Just curious: how did the Gantt chart become a core component of Kendo UI?
Through a lot of blood, sweat and tears. Oh, and just to be clear, the Gantt widget is part of Kendo UI Professional.

PDF

Does Kendo UI support exporting a password-protected PDF document?
At the moment, no. Sorry.

If I am using server pagination in the Grid, will exporting to PDF with pdf.allPages set to true make a request to load the content for all the pages?
Yes, requests will be made to the server for all data items from the remote service. Be careful if you have a lot of data.

How does the (new) Collapsible widget differ from the PanelBar?
Good question! The Collapsible widget targets mobile scenarios. The difference between the Collapsible and the PanelBar is that the Collapsible is a single collapsible panel, while the PanelBar contains a set of collapsible panels on multiple levels. You can consider it as a specific case of a PanelBar with a single root item hosting a single child item.

Can the PDF export process crash the browser after some time has passed?
Sadly, yes. Some browsers will crash or hang during the PDF export if you have a lot of data. In particular, Google Chrome tends to crash generating very large PDF documents. Conversely, Firefox is quite stable in this scenario. But of course, YMMV. A good solution to this is to include pako, a JavaScript port of zlib. Note: This library is bundled with Kendo UI as pako_deflate.min.js. This behavior is documented for the configuration of pdf.allPages.

Data Visualization

We can combine more than one chart from Kendo UI in one container?
Yes, we support multiple chart series in the same plot as illustrated in this demo.

Twitter Bootstrap and Kendo UI

Kendo UI or Twitter Bootstrap: what's a better choice for a beginner?
Why not both? I'm serious. Twitter Bootstrap and Kendo UI work very well together. It's like peanut butter and chocolate. :)

What is the key difference here between responsive web design with Kendo UI and using Twitter Bootstrap?
Kendo UI and Twitter Bootstrap are not conflicting; rather, they complement each other. You can use Twitter Bootstrap for overall responsive layout definition and the responsive Kendo UI features for additional "sugar" for different form factors.

How is Kendo UI different from Twitter Bootstrap?
Like Kendo UI, Twitter Bootstrap provides a set of widgets (or components). I would say that the components in Twitter Bootstrap are simpler in nature than those found in Kendo UI. Kendo UI has a lot more "industrial strength" widgets for more advanced scenarios (i.e. Grid, Gantt, Editor).

Do I have to install Twitter Bootstrap to use the new responsive design features in Kendo UI?
Do the responsive features eliminate the need for Twitter Bootstrap?
Kendo UI does not require Twitter Bootstrap. The responsive features of our widgets don't have any dependencies on third-party libraries or frameworks. That stated, please feel free to use it. It's great and can be used with Kendo UI.

Miscellaneous

How does the Bower install know what my license is?
The Bower feed for commercial Kendo UI versions is secured via the credentials for your Telerik account. This is how it knows what your license is.

Will Kendo UI work with Microsoft's new browser, "Spartan"?
We are currently testing the preview version of the MS Spartan browser with Kendo UI and will align our support for it with its future release.

Are there any special integrations with Sitefinity?
Nothing more than what's provided as part of the Sitefinity infrastructure and modules.

Is there a way to integrate Kendo UI with SharePoint?
Kendo UI can be integrated with SharePoint just like most other JavaScript libraries (i.e. jQuery UI). The steps outlined in our onsite installation guide should work well in SharePoint.

What is the ideal method for connecting a mobile app built with Kendo UI to a backend database?
You can use the DataSource to connect to a backend database that's exposed by service endpoints. It's pretty simple, in fact.

Is it possible to offer a dynamic search (i.e. ad-hoc query) against a database from a mobile app built with Kendo UI?
I'm guessing a little at what you're asking. If you want the DataSource to generate parameterized T-SQL on-the-fly then sorry, that's not something we support. I'll add that this is something you really do NOT want to do for a number of reasons. On the other hand, if your database is exposed with service endpoints that allow for parameters then yes, this is totally possible.

What characteristics make an application the obvious choice for ASP.NET MVC and Kendo UI?
There are no specific prerequisites. Generally speaking, any responsive web app built with an ASP.NET MVC backend is a viable candidate to be built either with Kendo UI or UI for ASP.NET MVC, which is powered by Kendo UI.

How can we invoke native APIs from Kendo UI?
Kendo UI doesn't provide a facility to target native APIs. For that you need two (2) things: an app container and a means of invocation. Luckily, we support both through NativeScript.

Is it possible to internationalize the Kendo UI components?
Globalization is the process of designing and developing an application that works in multiple cultures. The culture defines specific information for the number formats, week and month names, date and time formats and etc. We have a good overview on globalization with Kendo UI available in our documentation.

How are touch events supported in comparison to mouse events in the widgets that are being discussed?
Kendo UI widgets are all touch-optimized.

Can I use Kendo UI with the Telerik Platform?
Yes, Kendo UI is supported with the Telerik Platform.

Can I use Kendo UI with an IDE like Visual Studio?
Yes, absolutely! Kendo UI ships with a vsdoc JavaScript file to support IntelliSense. We have documentation on setting up IntelliSense to support Kendo UI here. Also, check out the Telerik UI for ASP.NET MVC Visual Studio Extensions.

What are requirements to put Kendo UI together with PHP?
Check out Telerik UI for PHP. Highly recommended.

What Chrome extension is Jen Looper using during her responsive demos?
It's great, right? It's Mobile View by Christoffer Jacobsen.

How can we use Kendo UI to build a mobile app in very easy way?
What is the best third party tool to build HTML5 apps that can run on any device?
Take a look at Telerik AppBuilder! Seriously. It's awesome. We also have a lot of articles about hybrid mobile app development published on the Telerik Developer Network. This should be your homepage, by the way.

Any plans or ways to use Kendo UI in emails? These days, the big thing is for emails to be responsive.
That's an interesting question. It's tough because Kendo UI is a JavaScript framework and JavaScript is somewhat limited in email agents. I'd be tempted to look at something like a email boilerplate or a third-party email service.

As powerful as the Kendo UI has become, is there a concern that the average (junior/mid-level) developer will lose their programming and problem solving skill and thus hurting their career development?
Uh, no. Software development is an ever-evolving industry in terms of technologies, frameworks, and - of course - challenges. I believe it's the best industry to be in. If you're worried about not keeping your skills up-to-date then I'd encourage you to get involved in open source.

Is .NET dead? Are you considering making a .NET interface to design these apps?
No, far from it. In fact, I think .NET has never been stronger. And no, we're not considering making a .NET interface to design these apps; we already have one. It's called Telerik AppBuilder. You should check it out. Works well by itself or integrated in products like Sublime Text or Visual Studio.

What plans do you have to take advantage of the new updates with ECMAScript 6?
What are your plans for ES6 support when it's released?
Any plans to support TypeScript? When are you planning to move to ES6 syntax?
Do you have TypeScript support for the Kendo UI objects?
We're fans of both ES6 and TypeScript. Kendo UI doesn't use ES6 directly due to our browser support requirements but there's nothing stopping you from using ES6 in something like Babel or TypeScript with Kendo UI.

Do you offer predefine template for TypeScript?
Yep, we offer TypeScript definitions. You can read more about using Kendo UI with TypeScript here.

Are you planning add support for Meteor reactivity to the Kendo UI DataSource?
We don't have any public to announce at this point. However, Cody Lindley wrote an article on Kendo UI and Meteor integration entitled, Build & Deploy Rich UI JavaScript Apps, FAST!

What's the best editing tool/editor for building a Kendo UI application?
Telerik AppBuilder, no question. It's awesome. That stated, I also love using Sublime Text and Visual Studio. Those environments are great for Kendo UI applications too!

How's your compatibility with older browsers? Do you maintain these responsive features in IE8?
How compatible is Kendo UI with older browsers?
Documentation on browser support for Kendo UI can be found here.

What is the difference between NativeScript and Kendo UI?
Kendo UI is for building applications that run in a browser or WebView (for hybrid apps). With NativeScript, there is no DOM; you're targeting native APIs of the mobile platform you're running on.

Has Kendo UI been tested in mobile browsers like IE on Windows Phone as well as WebKit-based browsers?
Yes. You can read about our browser support here.

My team is moving to Scala/Play. Do you know if there is a way to integrate Kendo UI as a server side script in Play?
You could try testing out Telerik UI for JSP with Scalate. However, I'm not sure if this would work.

Can we use Kendo UI for hybrid app development?
Yes, absolutely! It's ideally suited for building hybrid apps. Go nuts.

Is Kendo UI available with DevCraft Complete?
Yes!

How is it that Kendo UI is so much better than everything else?
Oh, stop it. You're making me blush.

How is it possible for Master Burke to always be so balanced and enthusiastic? He's a great person to have on-board. You guys are lucky.
Yes. Yes, we are.


ToddAnglin_164
About the Author

Todd Anglin

Todd Anglin is Vice President of Product at Progress. Todd is responsible for leading the teams at Progress focused on NativeScript, a modern cross-platform solution for building native mobile apps with JavaScript. Todd is an author and frequent speaker on web and mobile app development. Follow Todd @toddanglin for his latest writings and industry insights.

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