r.a.d.controls = 13 + 5: the math behind (Part I)

One of the most common questions we are getting in the last couple of months is - "What will you be releasing in Q4"? For a number of reasons our typical answer has been - “It's going to be one of the best releases ever! Don’t waste time, buy a r.a.d.controls subscription license, and get the updates for free”. Unfortunately nowadays the words “exciting” and “best ever” are so widely abused that no one really believes them. Instead, customers want to know all the details in order to determine why the new product is so much better than the old one.

So, you are wondering how we can raise the bar with the Q4 2005 release when there was so much great stuff released over the previous two quarters (4 new products, several key updates, Section 508 and XHTML compliance across the complete product line, betas for the telerik r.a.d.controls with native support for .NET 2.0)?

In the next couple of weeks I will make a few posts with exclusive details on what’s coming up ahead and will unveil the fruit of 6 month of hard work.

A quick intro about the new things in Q4:

• Official release of r.a.d.controls for .NET 2.0 (native support)
• r.a.d.grid 3.0
• r.a.d.combobox 2.0
• 5 new products (r.a.d.calendar, r.a.d.toolbar, and... stay tuned for the next two posts:)

I feel like starting my posts on Q4 with a quick overview of r.a.d.grid 3.0 as I am really excited by the work our team has done. Today I had a chance to take a look at the latest build and it seems that the grid guys have been successful in taking the product to the next level.

What’s new in r.a.d.grid 3.0?

• Automatic Updates, Inserts Deletes in asp.net 2.0
• Filtering (including as-you-type AJAX filtering)
• Much enhanced client-side (ability to control size and "virtual size" in scrolling mode, smoother column resize, resize of grid columns in scrolling mode, keyboard navigation,  ActiveRow navigation)
• AJAX scrolling mode
• Enhanced editing capabilities (“smart” grid columns that know what ColumnEditor to include based on the data type of the columns; codeless out-of-the-box support for adding new rows)
• Full AJAX support for 3rd party controls inside r.a.d.grid (with so many "leaders" in the sphere of Ajax it's hard to claim any innovations but...:)
• Improved cross-browser support (Opera and Safari fully supported now)
• Binding to custom object lists with Nullable type support - an absolutely UNIQUE feature of r.a.d.grid

The good news - everything comes without any performance hits. The grid team have even managed to optimize some aspects of the product and r.a.d.grid will continue to be the fastest grid on the market. I am very proud with our work as r.a.d.grid was slowly transformed in only 2 versions from a new and immature product with a very limited feature set to the grid with best performance, widest cross-browser support, one of the richest feature sets and the most developer-friendly programming model.

NEXT POST: overview of r.a.d.calendar, r.a.d.toolbar and r.a.d.combobox 2.0.