Weekly Webinar: Using RadTreeView for WPF

Ready for another Telerik Weekly Webinar? This week the topic is "Using RadTreeView for WPF," and Telerik Developer Evangelist John Kellar will be your guide to this key WPF control. Among the topics that will be covered during this free, live event:

• Data biding
• Implementing Drag-and-Drop
• Editing Node Templates

The event will be at the "normal" Weekly Webinar time: Thursday, April 30th, 11:00 AM Eastern, and it will be recorded for Telerik TV, too. To reserve your seat, register now. For those of you looking for the "RadControls for Silverlight in ASP.NET" weekly webinar, it has been moved to next week. That said, if you want to make sure you get your seat for next week's Weekly Webinar, you can register today and then join the Silverlight fun next Thursday. So quick recap:

• This Week: "Using RadTreeView for WPF" Register Now
• Next Week: "RadControls for Silverlight in ASP.NET" Register Now

We hope you are enjoying these free training resources. If you have any feedback, always feel free to share. My email address is easy to find: anglin[at]telerik[dot]com.

Advanced RadGrid for ASPNET AJAX webinar tomorrow

"A webinar on a Tuesday?" you ask. "I thought the Telerik Weekly Webinars were on Thursdays." If you had this inner monologue, you'd be correct- the Telerik Weekly Webinars are still your regular online Thursday date, but tomorrow you have an extra chance to get some more training on the RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX. Specifically, you'll have a chance to get some professional training from the experts at Falafel on RadGrid for ASP.NET AJAX. Tomorrow, Tuesday, April 28th at 9:00 AM Pacific Time (12 noon Eastern Time), you can attend a 2-hour live online training event that will cover advanced topics for the RadGrid for ASP.NET AJAX. You'll learn everything from how to setup client-side data binding to to enabling drag-and-drop operations in the RadGrid to boosting performance with LINQ. It's a must see event for anyone looking to take their RadGrid skills to the next level. And to all of you that usually wait for webcasts to show-up on Telerik TV, this one will not! You must catch it live, so don't miss your chance to get-in on this learning tomorrow. Price is just $30 for live, instructor lead training. Enjoy! Register for RadGrid Webinar from Falafel now

Last chance to vote in aspnetPRO Readers' Choice, Procastinators act now

Another year's voting in the aspnetPRO Readers' Choice awards is drawing to a close, so if you haven't yet voted, today is your last chance! Really. Voting closes tomorrow, Saturday, April 25th, so this the last call to all of you (like me) that like to put things off until they're really due. While prepping this post, I was surprised to discover that I hadn't announced the opening of the voting a few weeks ago, so let me quickly recap the categories where you can vote for Telerik this year: Best Community Resource: Telerik’s Community Best Component Set: Telerik RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX Best Content Managements System: Sitefinity Web CMS Best Grid: Telerik RadGrid for ASP.NET AJAX Best Navigation Control: Telerik RadMenu for ASP.NET AJAX Best Online Editor: Telerik RadEditor for ASP.NET AJAX Best Printing/Reporting Tool: Telerik Reporting Best Scheduler/Calendar Tool: Telerik RadScheduler for ASP.NET AJAX Best Testing/QA Tool: Telerik WebUI Test Studio (powered by ArtOfTest) Best Training: Telerik Training Best Utility: Telerik OpenAccess ORM Best Silverlight: RadControls for Silverlight And unlike previous years, the voting this year couldn't be simpler. Gone is the multi-page voting form that has long lists of nominees, and its place is a simple, one page Survey Monkey survey. You can literally vote in 30 seconds. We'd like to say a big thank you to those of you that have already voted in this year's awards. Voting is a great way to show Telerik you like the work we're doing and we genuinely appreciate the time you spend casting ballots for us. We look forward to continuing to innovate great new products and continuing to earn your Readers' Choice votes. Vote now in the 2009 aspnetPRO Readers' Choice Awards

Silverlight 3 session this Saturday in Second Life

Quick. Do you know what's new in Silverlight 3? If you hesitated- or if you're not really sure- there is a great (free) event for you to attend this weekend. On Saturday at 12 noon SLT (Second Life Time = Pacific Time), I'll be visiting the Second Life .NET User Group to give a brand new talk on "What's New in Silverlight 3." The talk will cover many of the highlights from the MIX09 Silverlight 3 announcements and you'll actually get to see Silverlight 3 in action. If you're a Silverlight developer and you don't have a chance to visit a local DNUG or Microsoft event, this is a great chance to come-out and learn about Silverlight with the .NET Community. And yes, this event is in Second Life, but don't let that scare you away. All you need to attend this event is the free Second Life software and a free Second Life account. It doesn't cost you anything to "enter" Second Life and visit the SL DNUG meetings, and you don't need a "high powered gaming rig" to run the SL software. I can run the software on my very much not gaming ready ThinkPad T60. So recap: Silverlight 3 at SL DNUG meeting this Saturday, April 25th @ 12 noon Pacific Time. To join the meeting and "transport" to the Microsoft Island Auditorium, simply use the following link: Transport to Microsoft Island Auditorium now

More Q1 2009 SP1s available, Reporting due soon

A couple of weeks ago, I brought to your attention the first round of service packs Telerik released for Q1 2009 controls. This week, let me bring your attention to (most) of the remaining service packs. Now, in addition the SP1s for ASP.NET, OpenAccess ORM, and WebUI Test Studio, we have SP1s for the RadControls for Silverlight, WPF, and WinForms. The new versions (for quick reference) are:

• SP1 for RadControls for WinForms (2009.1.414)
• SP1 for RadControls for Silverlight (2009.1.413)
• SP1 for RadControls for WPF (2009.1.413)

The only "missing" SP1 is for Telerik Reporting. The product team is finishing-up some work on fixing bugs in the new cross tab support, and as soon as that work is done, SP1 will be released. Meanwhile, there is a lot to be excited about in these new releases. In WinForms land, there are lots performance improvements and tweaks across the controls. The GridView, in particular, has optimized performance for conditional formatting, and the Calendar now supports drag-to-select operations. For the XAML controls, there is a ton happening in SP1. For the XAML GridView and Charts (remember, SL and WPF share a code base at Telerik), there are many, many new features, including everything from ExcelML export in the GridView to two new 2D chart types in Charts (StackedLine and StackedSpline). Silverlight also adds support to RadDock in SP1 for saving and loading state, so you can now easily persist user Dock settings. For complete details, be sure to check the Release Notes links above. Enjoy the SPs and stay tuned for updates on the Q2 2009 Road Map (coming very soon)!

Telerik RadControls Running on Azure

In case you're not keeping-up with the Telerik.com blogs, I recently published two posts talking about the "cloud readiness" of the Telerik RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX. The Readers' Digest version of the posts: Telerik RadControls are "Cloud Ready." Specifically, you can easily build applications that target Microsoft's new Windows Azure cloud platform and fully leverage your RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX to provide the familiar, rich, standards-based UI. For more back story, check out the original posts: RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX on Azure Deploying RadControls to Azure Two videos that are related to these posts will also soon be on Telerik TV (as in, within days). In the mean time, you can also see a live, real project hosting many of the RadControls (with more to come) running on the Azure CTP right now! Check it out: http://telerik.cloudapp.net So now that you know Telerik is "cloud ready," I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the cloud (and specifically Azure). Is this a hosting platform that you can't wait to use or are you happy with today's (arguably simpler) hosting models?

Advanced OpenAccess webinar tomorrow

Ready for an OpenAccess ORM webinar that goes beyond getting started? Tomorrow you'll have your chance as Telerik Evangelist Kevin Babcock delivers a new webcast on "advanced OpenAccess topics." What are advanced topics, you ask? For the purposes of tomorrow's webinar, advanced topics include the following:

• Learn how to use object-oriented techniques, such as inheritance and polymorphism, to create more complex mappings between persistence classes and the database
• Learn how to optimize data retrieval using FetchPlans and FetchGroups
• Learn how to perform operations that change the state of the database and how to use transactions to manage data concurrency
• Learn how to effectively use OpenAcsess configuration files to store your settings

The weekly webinar will be at the "normal" time and place: 11:00 AM Eastern Time on GoToWebinar. The event, as usual, is live and it is free! All you need to do is register to get your link to join the fun. For those of you in an "inaccessible" time zone, the event will be recorded and posted to Telerik TV, too. If you're not ready for an advanced topics OpenAccess webinar, then you may want to check out the recently recorded "OpenAccess 101" now available on Telerik TV. Register now for Advanced Topics in OpenAccess webinar

Join me at my TechEd BOF Sessions

Traveling to TechEd 2009 this May? If so, why not come visit one of my Birds-of-a-Feather sessions on Thursday. Thanks to your voting (and much thanks, by the way, for the votes!) both of my BOF sessions have been accepted and both have been voted popular enough to be on the "big BOF day." What's the big BOF day you ask? Well, since TechEd has cancelled the attendee party (typically held at Universal Studios) they are replacing it with a big "community night." One of the key "attractions" of the community night will be the Thursday night BOF sessions (I know- right on par with free food and drink at Universal), and that's exactly where you'll find me.

As a reminder, here are the two BOF sessions I'll be moderating:

• Build Great Web Applications Today: What Technologies Should I Use? In this session, we'll bascially discuss whether you should use ASP.NET AJAX, Silverlight, or mixture of both (or something else altogether) to build great web applications today. The goal is to bring some clarity to often confusing question: Which Microsoft technologies should I use or spend time learning? [Thursday, 2:45 - 4:00 PM]
• Telecommuting: Is the Grass Really Greener? In this session, I hope to moderate a good discussion about the pros and cons of working from home. I hope bring to the table my experience as a telecommuter for the last 2+ years and dispel some of the myths (both good and bad) of working remotely. It should be a fun session with lots of good answers to all the questions you've got about quiting your commute. [Thursday, 8:00 - 9:00 PM]

If you don't have time to visit my BOF sessions, be sure to stop by the Microsoft Web Experience Experts area and say hi. I'll be spending much of my time during the week staffing that area of Microsoft's "booth" and I'm always available to answer questions or talk about what's next from Telerik. See you in L.A. in a few short weeks!

IE8 starting to roll-out via Windows Update

You've known it's coming. You've seen countless posts about its official arrival at MIX09. And now you can expect to see many of your "average users" adopt Microsoft's latest browser via the magic little tool known as Windows Update. On Friday, the IE Team (via their blog) announced that IE8 would start rolling-out as an update for the Windows user base starting sometime next week. As the IE Team so plainly put it:

"Starting on or about the third week of April, users still running IE6 or IE7 on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, or Windows Server 2008 will get will get a notification through Automatic Update about IE8. This rollout will start with a narrow audience and expand over time to the entire user base. On Windows XP and Server 2003, the update will be High-Priority. On Windows Vista and Server 2008 it will be Important."

The IE Team goes on to say that IE8 will not be installed automatically. Users won't wake-up one morning and find their version of IE changed. They will have to opt-in to the install, but we all know many users "blindly" opt-in and say "yes" to dialogs from Microsoft. So, expect IE8 to rapidly replace IE7 and (hopefully) IE6 browsers around the world starting next week. You have made sure you site works in IE8, haven't you?

As a reminder, the Q1 2009 Sp1 release of the RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX fully supports IE8, so make sure you grab, test, and install that update if you need to gurantee IE8 support and you don't want to use the Compatability Meta Tag.

Telerik RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX on Linux

It's been a long time coming, but last week we were thrilled to announce our complete support for the RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX running on Linux! The support, of course, is enabled by the Mono project, which for those unfamiliar is the open source project that is constantly working to deliver the full .NET Framework for Linux environments. The Mono project is largely (if not completely) developed by Novell, and Telerik has worked very closely with the brilliant developers at Novell to ensure complete compatibility between Mono 2.4 and the RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX. In fact, you can see all of the Telerik Online Demos for the RadControls running on Linux live: http://mono.telerik.com What does this support mean to you? It means you can confidently build an ASP.NET 2.0 + Ajax Extensions application (Mono doesn't support .NET 3.5 yet) and deploy to a non-Windows environment. In other words, you can develop a web app on your Windows PC with Visual Studio and the RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX and then deploy it to an Apache web server running on Linux with the Mono extensions installed. This should be a huge win for those of you working in "Linux shops" and we're happy to be the first (and only, so far) UI component vendor to deliver rich support for the LAMA stack. Finally, I can't wrap-up without mentioning all of the Twitter traffic regarding this announcement. I'm thrilled that so many people are excited about this announcement and we hope that you remain just as excited as you start leveraging this support in your projects. So to you, regular readers, do you plan on building Mono-targeted apps this year?

Q1 2009 Service Packs starting to ship (update)

Looking for some updates for your Q1 2009 RadControls and Telerik tools? Then you may want to start grabbing some of the Q1 2009 first-round Service Packs. So far, there are two SP1s available for the Q1 2009 release:

• SP1 for the RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX (2009.1.402)
• Sp1 for Telerik OpenAccess ORM (2009.1.405)
• [UPDATE] SP1 for Telerik WebUI Test Studio (2009.1.402)

For the ASP.NET AJAX controls, SP1 marks Telerik's official support for Microsoft's latest and greatest version of IE. If you need to officially support IE8 for your customers, make sure you install Q1 2009 SP1. In fact, if you want the most recent build with even more fixes, check-out the Latest Internal Build (2009.1.408) for the ASP.NET controls. You won't get an installer with the Latest Build, but you will get the most up-to-date set of hotfixes for your code. For ORM, SP1 is also loaded with fixes and improvements. Most notably, SP1 continues to deliver enhancements to OpenAccess' support for LINQ. You can now use String.Compare and Collection.Contains() in your LINQ queries and the proper OpenAccess SQL will be parsed. There is, of course, much more, so I encourage you to review the release notes (linked above) and see if SP1 addresses issues you've been having with OpenAccess. For the other Telerik products, SP1s are coming soon. The Silverlight and WPF SP1 releases are just around the corner and should be available on Telerik.com by early next week. The WinForms SP1 is about a week away and the Telerik Reporting SP1 is about two weeks away. I'll post another update once all of those SPs are out the door. Until then, grab the service packs from your downloads page and continue to enjoy Q1!

UPDATE: Forgot to mention the Sp1 for the Telerik WebUI Test Studio! Thanks Konstantin! Find the link the the release notes above.

OpenAccess ORM 101 webinar today

Looking to improve your understanding of Telerik OpenAccess ORM? Today's your day. Telerik Evangelist Kevin Babcock will be delivering a webinar today that is going to introduce you to the basics of working with Telerik's new ORM. Here's a quick synopsis of what will be covered today: Finding a full-featured, yet easy-to-use, ORM is increasingly important these days as software developers aim to build applications more quickly. In this introductory session Kevin will demonstrate how easy it is to build your data layer using OpenAccess. You'll see how to transform tables into persistent classes using the Reverse Mapping wizard, and how to take existing classes and let OpenAccess create the database schema using the Forward Mapping wizard. Kevin will wrap up the session by demonstrating the ease with which you can use OpenAccess' first class LINQ support or the new OpenAccessDataSource control to hook up your data layer to the ASP.NET and WinForms data components with which you're already familiar. Sound interesting to you? Sign-up now to join the fun at 11:00 AM Eastern. As always, the Telerik Weekly Webinars are free and they will be recorded and made available on Telerik TV. This webinar will also lay the foundation for an "advanced" webinar on OpenAccess to air in a couple of weeks. Enjoy the free resource and stay tuned for more great Weekly Webinars from Telerik. Register now for the OpenAccess ORM 101 webinar

Intro to features in ASP.NET AJAX 4.0

Oops! I forgot to post this last week after my Microsoft TechDays session. For those of you that attended live, I'm sorry. Really. It was April 1st and the demo gods were definitely not with me. A quick change to VS2008 about an hour before my live session was the beginning of the end, but fortunately I took a mulligan and re-recorded the session without the demo errors. I actually recorded this about 10 minutes after the live demo crash and burn, and- of course- everything worked as it should. Go figure... In any event, enjoy this recorded webinar free of major demo problems. In it, you'll get a solid grounding in the roots of Ajax, learn that UpdatePanels really enable you to do AJAH (not AJAX), and learn some of the ways the new client-side templates, controls, and data context are making ASP.NET AJAX 4.0 cooler than ever. Watch in full quality on Telerik TV