Q3 Webinar Week Wrap-up

Wow! Q3 2010 was huge by every measure. Tons of updates to the Telerik toolbox. Tons of new demos, blogs, help documents, and videos. And tons of you joined us for the Q3 2010 Webinar Week! Last week we hosted 9 live webinar events to help introduce you to the Q3 2010 bits, concluding with Friday's special event that showcased the Telerik tools working together, highlighting how the toolbox can make you productive at all points in the software development lifecycle.

If you were unable to join the live webinar week, or if you missed an event, don't worry! All of the live events were recorded and are making their way to Telerik TV right now. Catch any of the webcasts on-demand using these handy links:

• What's New in Q3 2010 Overview Video (not a webinar, but good starting point)
• What's New in RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX, Telerik Extensions for ASP.NET MVC, and OpenAccess ORM
• What's New in RadControls for Silverlight, WPF and Windows Phone 7
• What's New in RadControls for WinForms and Telerik Reporting
• What's New in JustCode and JustMock
• What's New in TeamPulse Q3 2010
• What's New in WebUI Test Studio
• Special Event: Using the Complete Telerik Toolbox [Coming Soon!]

If you saw Friday's Special Event, you may have seen Evan Hutnick's cool "Ad-hoc Silverlight Reporting" demo done with Telerik's Silverlight data visualization controls and rich text editor. If you want to try the code for yourself, it is available now (direct link to download).

Enjoy the over 6 hours of new Q3-specific video content, enjoy the upcoming holidays, and stay tuned for news about 2011 release plans! We never rest so that you can!

Quickly update all Telerik product installs using PowerShell

With the Q3 2010 release now available, the challenge of updating your dev environment with the new versions can sometimes seem daunting. After all, the Telerik Ultimate Collection now represents more than 10 products, and thus more than 10 installers. Add any virtual machines you maintain to the mix, and the challenge of updating increases. Fortunately, all Telerik products use MSI installers, and with a little PowerShell we can easily script the complete system update.

Updating Your Telerik Products in 2 Steps

With a handy PowerShell script I've created (available below), you can easily update any system to use all of the latest and greatest Telerik tools in 2 simple steps:

1. Download all of the Telerik products you want to install
• Place the MSI installers in one folder
2. Download and run my Telerik Installer PowerShell script!

That's it. The script will automatically look for and uninstall old versions (pre-Q3) of Telerik tools and then install all of the products you've downloaded. By default, the script will look for the installers in "C:\Program Files (x86)\Telerik\Downloads\Q3 2010\", but if you'd prefer to use a different location, the script can be easily edited.

Run and done

The cool benefit of this script is that you can download your bits, run the script, and then go about your business while the uninstallers and installers run. No need to "babysit" your machine installing and uninstalling software.

On my primary machine (which has an SSD), the entire process took about 10 minutes: 4 minutes to uninstall everything and about 6 minutes to run all of the installers. On a VirtualBox VM running on an external USB drive, the process took about 35 minutes (15 to uninstall, 20 to install).

Regardless of the exact run time, it took exactly 30 seconds of my time to update my entire Telerik toolbox.

Enabling PowerShell Script Execution

If you've never run a PowerShell script, you may have a problem executing this script due to PowerShell's default security settings. To resolve the problem, you simply need to run a PowerShell command that allows script execution. Here's how:

1. Open a PowerShell command prompt
• Can be done via Start > All Programs > Accessories > Windows PowerShell
• Alternatively, right-click my PS1 script and select "Edit with PowerShell"
2. Execute the following command: Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted
3. A dialog will pop-up. Confirm your decision to change the execution policy.

Now you will be able to execute this script by simply right-clicking on the .PS1 file selecting "Run with PowerShell."

What about the Telerik Visual Studio Extensions auto-updater?

The Telerik Visual Studio Extensions (VSX) are awesome for updating your existing projects, or for updating individual projects directly from Visual Studio. The Telerik VSX tools can automatically check for newer versions of the Telerik tools, download the bits, and then update your projects. If you only work with 1 or 2 products, this is a great solution!

If you're like me, though, and you have everything Telerik installed (and, really, you should), it's generally easier to update everything at once with the installers for a major Q release. That's where this script comes in handy. Once everything is installed, you can still use the VSX tools to quickly update your projects to use the latest bits.

Side-by-side Installs

You can install many Telerik products side-by-side with older versions. This is sometimes useful when you have projects referencing different versions of the Telerik tools (though there are other options for "isolating" projects). While this script is configured to uninstall everything old, if you'd prefer to keep old versions, a simple script edit can help you skip the uninstalls. If this scenario becomes common, I'll provide a modified version with easy support of this option.

Download the Script

All that's left: Download the PowerShell script. Remember to edit the script if your installers are saved in a different folder. Otherwise, enjoy the simple system updater and feel free to send me feedback and ideas for improvement!

Q3 2010 is Live!

And just like that, Q3 2010 is live on Telerik.com! A slightly new and improved Telerik.com, at that. Today marks the official release of Telerik's final major update to the Telerik toolbox for 2010, and it is a huge release (as promised). More than 10 products get updated in this single release, so it's no small feat of both coordination and dedicated effort to continue to provide the most aggressive (some might say "agile") release schedule available from a professional software development lifecycle vendor.

By now, you've hopefully seen much of what's new in today's release, either in the pre-release blog series on the Telerik Blogs or in the "Live from HQ" videos here on Telerik Watch. We know it's a lot to absorb, so don't miss next week's Webinar Week, where we'll help introduce you to all of the new timesaving, developer rock-star making features and controls.

At a high level, here are some of the new things you'll find in Q3 2010:

• AJAX
• Two new controls: TreeList and Button
• Improved SharePoint 2010 WebParts (for Grid and Editor)
• Cool new Coverflow mode in Rotator
• Built-in OData support in Grid
• Progress indicator in AsyncUpload
• MVC
• Two new Extensions: TimePicker and DateTimePicker
• RTL support and Section 508 / Level A accessibility conformance
• Grid improvements (like column reordering and header templates)
• WinForms
• New control: CommandBar (replaces ToolStrip)
• Grid improvements (lazy loading, Excel 2010-like filtering, new hierarchy modes)
• Scheduler improvements (time zones, in-place editors)
• Silverlight (WPF)
• New theme: Expression Dark
• New data visualizations: SparkLines and BulletGraphs
• New control (WPF only): ScheduleView
• RichTextBox improvements (Table support, spell check, export to PDF)
• ESRI shapefile support in RadMap
• Telerik Reporting
• SQL Analysis Services Cube support (with new Cube Data Source)
• XML Report Serialization (save your report definitions in XML files)
• Interactive report drill-down
• OpenAccess ORM
• New converter: LinqToSql (more coming in the future)
• Spatial types support, improved Fluent API, PostgreSQL support
• New OpenAccess ORM SDK browser (very cool. check it out!)
• JustCode
• Unit Test Runner: Added MSpec support, improved speed
• Lot's of NEW:
• New Refactorings in C# and VB
• New visual features (like structural highlighting, configurable visual aid size)
• New quick fixes (like "Create Parameter" or "Create Field)
• New code templates with quick Shift+Space access
• JustMock
• Many additional mocking scenarios now supported, like:
• Mocking LINQ queries with custom selects
• Mocking Castle ActiveRecord
• Raising mocked events
• WebUI Test Studio (Huge update!)
• New in QA: Test Scheduling and Remote Execution!
• Email notifications for test completion
• New browser support: Google Chrome (and Safari 5 + IE 9)
• New test step explorer (with support for conditional test step logic)
• New (pretty!) test execution UI and visual test debugging

Phew! That's a ton- and that's a very light "summary" of Q3 2010. AND that doesn't include the recently introduced RadControls for Windows Phone and next week's updates coming to TeamPulse! Enjoy the Q3 2010 bits and remember to join us next week for the webinars.

Download the Q3 2010 bits

Q3 2010 Webinar Week, Register Now

 

Q3 2010 has arrived, and with it, TONS of new features and controls for you to wrap your mind around. If you received today's Telerik Newsletter, you also saw my new challenge for you: expand your horizons and try a Telerik tool from the Ultimate Collection you've not tried before (I'm guessing there's at least one). Telerik helps you be productive at more than just building UI these days, so I encourage you to discover how we can help you save time at the data layer, the business layer, during testing and QA, and even with project planning.

Since there is so much new stuff, and since I know you're taking-up my challenge right away, we're here to help you get started with another info-packed Webinar Week. There are two important things to know about this webinar week:

1. It starts on Monday, November 15th
2. There will be 2 webinars per day!
   • On Monday and Tuesday, it'll be the same webinar to help those of you in other time zones (like Australia and New Zealand)
   • For the rest of the week, it'll be two different events. More on that below.

Here's the schedule for next week's webinars. Click a link to register for the event.

	11 AM Eastern	10 PM Eastern
Monday	What’s New in RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX, Extensions for MVC and OpenAccess ORM	[REPEAT] What’s New in RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX, Extensions for MVC and OpenAccess ORM
Tuesday	What’s New in RadControls for Silverlight and WPF	[REPEAT] What’s New in RadControls for Silverlight and WPF

And for the rest of the week:

	11 AM Eastern	2 PM Eastern
Wednesday	What’s New in RadControls for WinForms and Telerik Reporting
Thursday	What’s New in Telerik JustCode and Telerik JustMock	What’s New in Telerik TeamPulse
Friday	What’s New in Telerik WebUI Test Studio	SPECIAL EVENT! Getting the most out of Q3

Don't miss Friday's special event! After a week full of product highlights, the Telerik Evangelists and Developer Support Specialists will come together and show you some cool integration demos and ways to use the Q3 2010 products together. It's a great way to wrap-up your week.

Of course, there will be prizes for attendees of each webinar. The more events you attend, the more chances you have to win, so register today and join us next week for the Q3 2010 What's New Webinar Week!

Q3 2010 Special: Live from HQ with more AJAX

Q3 2010 bits are less than a day away from your Account Downloads, and I know you're now teeming with excitement to get your hands on many of the cool things we've seen in the Live from Telerik HQ video series. I've got one more video to share, and this one is fun! I visit with one of the RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX Team Leads and he shows-off some very cool new features coming to the AJAX tools in Q3, like the new RadButton control and the new Coverflow mode in RadRotator. Check-it out and then make time to download everything Q3 tomorrow!

Watch the Ajax video in full HD on Telerik TV

Did you miss any of the Live from HQ videos? Don't worry! They're all available as a convenient video series on Telerik TV. Check-out all of the interviews and start putting faces with some of Telerik's technical product leaders.

Q3 2010 Special: Live from HQ with Reporting

We are less than 24 hours from the big Q3 2010 release, and I've got two more quick interviews Live from Telerik HQ to share. This time, we visit with the Telerik Reporting team for an overview of cool new features coming in Q3 (like XML Report Serialization, native Silverlight 4 printing, and the new Cube Data Source). This is a big release for Telerik Reporting and a great time for you to check it out if you're looking for basic BI in your .NET apps. Enjoy the video and stay tuned for the last soon!

Watch the reporting interview on Telerik TV in full HD

Q3 2010 Special: Live from HQ with ASP.NET MVC

Q3 is getting closer! We wrap-up today's interviews with a quick visit to the Telerik Extensions for ASP.NET MVC team. In this video, I visit with Senior Front-end Developer Alexander Gyoshev who shows us how the Telerik Extensions make it easy to embrace accessibility standards in ASP.NET MVC applications using the Telerik tools. Come back tomorrow for our final two interviews with Telerik Reporting and more ASP.NET AJAX!

Watch the ASP.NET MVC interview in full HD on Telerik TV

Q3 2010 Special: Live from HQ with Silverlight

Only three days to go 'til Q3 2010 is officially here! I know the wait is excruciating, but to help you pass the time I have 4 more Live for Telerik HQ interviews to give you a glimpse in to what's coming. We kick-off this week's interviews with a quick update from the RadControls for Silverlight, where we see how the new virtualized data source is going to enable new levels of performance when binding to large data sets. Enjoy the video and keep your browsers locked-in here for more Q3 updates!

Watch the Silverlight interview on Telerik TV in full HD

Did you miss one of the interviews posted last week? Don't worry, they're all available in the Live for Telerik HQ video series. So far, there are Q3 2010 interviews with JustCode, ASP.NET AJAX, OpenAccess ORM, WinForms, and Silverlight.

Q3 2010 Special: Live from HQ with WinForms

One more Live from Telerik HQ interview to hold you over the final weekend before the Q3 2010 release bits are available. This time I visit with the RadControls for WinForms team for a very quick overview of what's being prepared for Q3. Meet the Team Lead for WinForms, Tsvetan Raikov, and put a face with another one of Telerik's technical product leaders. Enjoy the update and stay tuned for more on Monday, starting with Silverlight!

Watch WinForms video in full HD on Telerik TV

Q3 2010 Special: Live from HQ with OpenAccess ORM

Q3 2010 continues to draw closer, and with it, more interviews Live from Telerik HQ. This time I visit with the OpenAccess ORM team to learn about improvements in Telerik's data access product for Q3 2010. The team shows-off the new SDK Browser and talks about new things coming to OpenAccess like an expanded Fluent API and improved Visual Studio designer. Stay tuned for more interviews with the technical teams at Telerik! Next up, WinForms!

Watch this video with the OpenAccess team in full HD on Telerik TV

Q3 2010 Special: Live from HQ with ASP.NET AJAX

Video two in the "Q3 2010 Special: Live from Telerik HQ" series. This time, I visit with Stefan Rahnev, Unit Manager for the ASP.NET AJAX, ASP.NET MVC, and Visual Studio Extension teams at Telerik. Stefan shows-off the new RadTreeList for ASP.NET AJAX and shares some other Q3 details, too. Enjoy the video and stay tuned for more Live from HQ as we continue to approach Q3!

Watch the full HD version of this ASP.NET AJAX video on Telerik TV

Q3 2010 Special: Live from Telerik HQ

Q3 2010 is just around the corner and it's going to be a massive release! More than 10 products simultaneously updated with new controls, new features, improved performance, and all of the other "secret sauces" Telerik cooks-up to help make you a more heroic developer. You've already got betas to check-out, but I know not everyone has time to review beta bits in their busy schedules. So, while you wait on the Q3 2010 What's New Webinar Week, I introduce a new video series:

Q3 2010 Special: Live from Telerik HQ

Over the next few days, leading-up to next week's Q3 release, I'll be posting videos captured at Telerik HQ with the product teams that work tirelessly to build Telerik's amazing tools. This is your chance to meet some of the technical leaders behind the Telerik products while seeing some "sneak peeks" at what will be in various Telerik products in Q3.

We start with the video embedded in this post (also available on Telerik TV in full HD). In this video, I visit with JustCode Team Lead Deyan Varchev to see what's cooking for Q3 2010. Enjoy the quick video and stay tuned for many more as we march towards Q3 2010!

Watch first Q3 2010 Special video in full HD on Telerik TV

Win Free Windows Phone 7, Telerik Licenses

Now that Windows Phone 7 is finally a reality that you can (almost) pick-up in stores (in the US), and now that Telerik has unleashed the powerful RadControls for Windows Phone CTP, it's time to giveaway some hardware and software! Over the course of several weeks in November, Telerik will giveaway a Windows Phone 7 to someone that has told a friend about Telerik's new RadControls for Windows Phone, and at the end of the contest, two people will get Telerik Ultimate Collection licenses (that obviously included licenses to Telerik's Windows Phone controls).

How do you enter? Simple:

1. Visit the "Bring a Friend" page on Telerik.com
2. Enter two email addresses for friends you think would like to know about Telerik's RadControls for Windows Phone 7
3. Tweak the email message (if you're a good friend) or just use the template we provide
4. Submit the form and wait to see if you win!

We'll draw winners every Thursday, beginning November 4th and wrapping-up on December 3rd. Full contest rules are available on the contest page, but this is definitely one of the easiest ways to get your hands on a Windows Phone 7 device and Telerik's new software this holiday season!

Help us spread the word and share RadControls for Windows Phone news today!

RadControls for Windows Phone CTP now available

Today is a big day for Telerik and Microsoft. As Microsoft shares news of its latest mobile development platform at the sold-out PDC in Redmond, Telerik is today announcing the immediate availability of the RadControls for Windows Phone CTP!

With today's CTP, and the first version of the RadControls for Windows Phone in general, Telerik is helping complete the Silverlight development toolbox for Phone developers. Out-of-the-box, the Microsoft Silverlight toolbox for Phone lacks many of the native Windows Phone 7 UI elements phone in the OS, such as the picker box and window. Telerik completes the development toolbox by providing many of the "missing" OS UI controls to Silverlight application developers, including a rich animation framework optimized for performance and battery life. For a complete comparison of the Telerik tools for Phone to the Microsoft toolkit, check-out the online comparison chart.

In addition, you have a chance to get a free license for the v1 RadControls for Windows Phone simply by being one of the first 500 people to download the CTP (and downloads are already going fast)! So what are you waiting for?! Download the CTP, have fun building mobile apps for Windows Phone 7 with unprecedented productivity, and maybe you'll walk home with a free license!

Oh! One more thing. You can also take a shot at winning a Windows Phone 7 simply by telling two friends about the Telerik RadControls for Windows Phone 7 CTP. For contest details, check-out this page on Telerik.com.

Finally, if you're in a rush, check-out the quick overview video on Telerik TV introducing the new RadControls for Windows Phone.

Q3 2010 betas available now for testing

Want to start trying the new features coming to Q3 a few weeks early? Want a chance to impact design of the new features before we ship? That's what betas are for, and several of the Telerik products have now published (or soon will) their Q3 2010 betas. This is your time to try-out near final versions of the Q3 2010 bits and share feedback on the active Telerik Forums.

Betas are available right now for the following products:

• RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX
• Telerik Extensions for ASP.NET MVC
• RadControls for Silverlight (and WPF <- XBAP link, use IE for best results)
• TeamPulse Standard Edition

Each link above will take you to the live Beta demos, where you can check-out some of the new features hands-on. Downloads for all betas are available in your Client.net account download page.

Over the next couple of weeks, we'll share more details about all of the new major features available in these suites, as well as in all of the other Telerik products being updated in Q3 (which, for those counting, is now 11 different products!). There are some very exciting improvements in everything from OpenAccess ORM with a radically enhanced Fluent API to Telerik Reporting with its new XML report definitions, so I encourage you to set some time aside to look at the value in  the full Telerik toolbox and try a product you've perhaps overlooked in the past.

Until then, enjoy the betas and send us your feedback. Q3 is just around the corner!

BONUS! Here are some quick links to blog posts on the Telerik.com blogs talking about Q3 beta features:

• Telerik MVC Extensions Q3 2010 Beta Preview
• The Telerik ASP.NET AJAX Q3 2010 Beta release is here
• Telerik Silverlight and WPF controls Beta preview of Q3 2010
• TeamPulse Standard Edition Q3 2010 Beta is Ready for Download

Using OpenAccess in LINQPad

Have you ever wanted to have a simple "scratchpad" for testing LINQ queries with OpenAccess ORM? LINQ is a great querying language, but sometimes it can be difficult to figure-out exactly how to craft those complex LINQ queries.  And while it's possible to go the route of "make a change, build, and see what happens," it's a huge waste of time.

Enter LINQPad, a simple tool that is perfect for quickly testing queries with OpenAccess ORM. LINQPad, for the uninitiated, is really a great scratchpad for testing any .NET code, but it's particularly useful for quickly testing LINQ queries (especially with the "pro" IntelliSense enabled).

Earlier this year, Steve Scott (aka Sitefinity Steve) posted some quick instructions for using OpenAccess with LINQPad, which was a very useful, simplified follow-up to an OpenAccess Team blog post from last year. OpenAccess has a change slightly since both of these posts were created, so here are quick updated instructions for querying OpenAccess with LINQPad.

SETUP
The first step after launching LINQPad is configuring Assembly References and Namespaces. To do this, press F4 and add the following:

• Under "Additional References":
• Telerik.OpenAccess.dll
• Telerik.OpenAccess.35.Extensions.dll*
• <Your OpenAccess Enhanced DLLs>
• Under "Additional Namespaces":
• Telerik.OpenAccess
• <Your Assembly Namespaces>

If you're using the new RLINQ OpenAccess DataContext, you should reference Telerik.OpenAccess.40.Extensions.dll instead of the "35" version. The "35" version is appropriate for assemblies using IObjectScope (pre-RLINQ). Your config should look something like this:

QUERYING
Now that LINQPad is configured, you can start querying! Only two steps are required:

1. Change the LINQPad editor Language to C# (or VB) Statement(s)

2. Write your query code, including scope initializer and LINQPad "dump":

Result? You can now start testing away with your LINQ queries and view the results in the LINQPad Results viewer. Clearly, if you're using RLINQ, you can skip the "GetNewObjectScope" and proceed directly to querying the DataContext. The connection string will default to what's stored in your DLL's App.Config. Finally, you're not limited to direct LINQ query testing. If you have repositories in your DAL, you can also test your data access using your repositories in LINQPad, too.

SQL DUMP
Since this approach to using OpenAccess in LINQPad does not implement the LINQPad provider model, the SQL dump is not available. LINQPad's provider model provides a simple way to expose the SQL dump for OpenAccess, but only for the newer RLINQ contexts. If there is interest, I will work on providing a simple OpenAccess driver for LINQPad that supports RLINQ to unlock the remaining features, like the schema explorer and SQL dump window.

WRAP-UP
Great ORMs require trust, and there is no easier way to build that trust with your ORM than to have a quick way to test and verify your queries. With a few simple steps, LINQPad and OpenAccess ORM can give you that simple tool and speed-up your data access productivity!

HTML5 and CSS3 session resources now available

The Rich Standard: Getting Familiar with HTML5

HTML5 and CSS3 Techniques You Can Use Today

Over the last month or so, I've been traveling a fair amount speaking at .NET events around the world. From TechDays stops in Canada, to a quick stop in Florida for the SW Florida Code Camp, to the local (and huge!) Houston TechFest, to my most recent stop in Bulgaria for DevReach 2010, it's definitely "Fall Travel Season" in full-swing.

At several of the conferences I've visited this fall, I've talked a lot about two technologies that I'm particularly passionate about right now: HTML5 and CSS3. These two evolving standards represent the future of standards-based web development, and with the current crop of browsers, there is no reason to delay adding these technologies to your web applications. If you attended one of my sessions at these events, a special thank you to you! Hopefully you enjoyed the sessions and were able to learn something in the time we spent together.

For everyone else, I've made the slides from these sessions available online via SlideShare. Both presentations are embedded above in this post (sorry RSS readers), but be sure to visit the presentations on SlideShare to see the full slide notes, where I've captured many of the useful links to HTML5 and CSS3 resources that compliment the slides.

Want more HTML5 and CSS3? First, make sure you're following me on Twitter. Much of what I share is related to HTML5 and CSS3, so hopefully you'll catch some good links there. Second, watch for these sessions at an event near your in 2011. I plan to continue talking a lot about HTML5 and CSS3 in 2011, so I look forward to seeing you in a session soon! For now, enjoy the resources.

New Silverlight video player on Telerik TV, HTML5 playback

While some of you are enjoying your Columbus Day holiday, I've got some exciting news to share that will make your holiday more enjoyable! Today, we are deploying a brand new video playback experience to Telerik TV. New videos added to Telerik TV will now use RadMediaPlayer for Silverlight for playback and IIS Smooth Streaming to give you instant start and skip ability. In addition, we've added support for HTML5 video playback, which means you can now watch videos on most HTML5 enabled devices, like the iPhone, iPad, and Android.

But we didn't stop there.

We have also added support for video chapters! That means we can now add chapters to longer videos, making it much easier for you to find that five-minute chunk you're interested in from a one-hour webinar recording (see some example chapters on this video). Today, chapters are only available on new videos using the new Silverlight RadMediaPlayer, but we aim to eventually make chapters available in HTML5 playback and on older videos, too.

Clearly, with hundreds of hours of video on Telerik TV, converting videos to the new Silverlight player will take some time. In the mean time, old videos will continue to playback with the Flash player you're used to seeing, but all new videos will be immediately available in the new Silverlight and HTML5 players. Over time, we hope to convert most of the older videos to the new format so you can enjoy the new playback features on all Telerik TV videos.

To help orient you to the new player and features, check-out this fresh Telerik Watch Minute. Give the chapters a try to see how they help you easily skip around, and see how Smooth Streaming eliminates the buffer delay.

So, let's review:

• Telerik now offers video playback using Silverlight!
• RadMediaPlayer powers the Silverlight playback experience
• IIS Smooth Streaming enables super fast content delivery
• HD MP4s and HTML5 video enables access to Telerik TV from devices like the iPad
• Chapters on videos make it easier than ever to quickly get the info you need

This is just the beginning. Stay tuned for more great updates coming to Telerik TV soon.

LIDNUG ASP.NET 4 presentation wrap-up

Ah, LIDNUG. The largest .NET User Group in the world (virtually). We had a great presentation yesterday covering what’s new in ASP.NET 4, with people joining from around the globe to see how Microsoft has improved WebForms in the “senior” release. We covered everything from changes in ViewState, to new modes for rendering ControlIDs, to simple ways you can leverage features of Dynamic Data in WebForms pages. In fact, the Dynamic Data demos lead @coridrew to express on Twitter:

"I want to cry with joy over the Dynamic Data enhancements I'm seeing demo'd in Telerik's .NET 4.0 www.LIDNUG.org webcast right now"

Thanks, @coridrew! If you missed the meeting, fear not. I've embedded the slides from today's presentation in this post (check in a browser if you're not seeing the slides in your RSS reader), and you can already grab the on-demand recording from the LIDNUG website. Hope you learn something useful about ASP.NET 4 and find new ways to be more productive as an ASP.NET developer!

TechDays Canada, Stop #2

After a very successful visit to Vancouver to kick-off Microsoft's TechDays Canadian tour a few weeks ago, I'm headed back to the Great White North to present at TechDays Edmonton. Tomorrow, Wednesday, October 6th, I'll be back in Canada talking about MVC for WebForms Programmers and Speeding-up Development Using 3rd Party Controls. If you're in the Edmonton area, hopefully you'll be able to join me for the fun!

As a reminder, all TechDays attendees are getting a license for the Telerik RadControls for Silverlight (a $1000 value). Heck of a deal for a sub-$400 conference ticket. I'm not sure if you can still get a ticket to attend, but it wouldn't hurt to beg at the door if you've not already secured your seat!

This will be my last stop in the TechDays tour. While I am the content owner for the MVC session, my fearless (and available) colleagues at Telerik will be covering the rest of the stops in cities like Toronto, Halifax, and frigid Winnipeg. If we don't catch you in Edmonton, come look for a face from Telerik later this Fall and be sure to say 'hi'!

What's New in ASP.NET 4, Today on LIDNUG

Sometimes blogs go silent longer than they should. Such has been the case with Telerik Watch recently. I've got 1,000 reasons why, some of which I'll try to enumerate over the coming weeks, but for now, there is more "urgent" news to share.

Today, Tuesday, October 5th, I'll be presenting at the "virtual" LinkedIn .NET User Group (also known as LIDNUG). At 11:00 AM Eastern (use this handy link to parse that time to your local timezone) I'll be presenting "Getting the Most Out of What's New in ASP.NET 4.0" via Live Meeting to a global audience of hundreds.

If you're interested in learning more about the latest release of ASP.NET, join me for this quick overview. You can register for the free event on EventBrite and then tune-in with Live Meeting from any computer. We'll be focusing on the WebForms features of ASP.NET 4.0, so if you're more interested in MVC, hopefully you can join me in Canada on Wednesday for a conversation on that topic!

See you online soon.

Join me in Canada for TechDays

The infamous Fall Travel Season is getting ready to kick into high gear, and first-up on my calendar is a trip to the Great White North for Microsoft TechDays Canada. In fact, I happen to be a National Session Lead for this year’s event, coordinating the “MVC for WebForms Programmers” session. TechDays will be hosted in 8 cities across Canada, starting with Vancouver next week and ending with Calgary in mid-December. I will be presenting at the kick-off stop in Vancouver next week week and then again in Halifax in early November. Most of the other stops will be covered by the talented Telerik Evangelist, Evan Hutnick.

While at TechDays, I’ll be doing two talks. First, obviously, the talk on MVC for WebForms Programmers will be a good intro session with practical tips designed to help long-time WebForms developers understand the transition to MVC. Second, I’ll be doing a “Power Talk” on Speeding Up Development Using 3rd Party Controls, featuring the Telerik Tools for Silverlight. We’ll look at how the RadControls for Silverlight are unlocking the power of the platform for LOB developers.

Oh! And as a great bonus for attending TechDays, Telerik will be giving RadControls for Silverlight licenses to all TechDays attendees! I’m not sure what it costs to attend TechDays, but I’d bet $1000 of complimentary software makes it a pretty good deal.

If you’re in Canada, register for TechDays now and come join Telerik (and me) as we travel across the country this fall!

Telerik wins Jolt Award for Best Application Library

It’s with great honor that I get to share with you that Telerik has been awarded the Dr.Dobb’s Jolt Product Excellence Award in the category of Application Libraries and Frameworks. This win recognizes the Telerik Premium Collection bundle, which as you know includes everything from the RadControls to OpenAccess ORM to JustCode, as the best collection of tools available for software development as determined by an experienced panel of expert industry judges.

This award is extra special because the Telerik Premium Collection was judged against all software libraries and frameworks- not just tools built for .NET. That means the Telerik tools were deemed the best tools for developers, period. Entries from a range of platforms, including .NET, Java, and who knows what else, were judged and Telerik came-out on top.

First, I want to again thank you, our active and loyal customers for continuing to give us the feedback that has helped us build definitive, industry-leading products! We work every day to make your lives easier and awards like this only serve to verify that we’re all moving in the right direction.

Second, I want to apologize to our non-.NET friends. Most of our tools target .NET very specifically, so we apologize that you will not be able to enjoy the best tools available for software development. Assuming you’re not ready to make the switch to .NET, hopefully you can enjoy some of our other tools like TeamPulse and WebUI Test Studio that are useful to .NET and non-.NET developers alike.

Enjoy working with best developer tools money can buy and don’t forget to vote for them in the Community Choice Awards this week!

Q3 2010 Road Maps showing you the future (update)

Long-time Telerik customers know that the value of a Telerik subscription extends far beyond the high quality tools we ship, encompassing industry leading support, constantly updated training materials, and an aggressive release cycle that continues to deliver three major releases every year! While some companies continue to charge more while offering less, and .NET framework components evolve at “framework speed,” Telerik innovates quickly to deliver more value in a year than virtually any other software tools vendor. And now that Q2 and the first round of service packs are behind us, it’s time to start looking ahead to the final release of 2010.

Q3 2010 is once again shaping-up to be a huge release. It’s becoming a bit cliché at this point to tout a release as “huge,” but there’s really no other way to describe our Q releases as each subsequent release delivers more updates to more products. To help you start planning for what’s next, we’ve started to publish the Q3 2010 Road Maps for many of the Telerik products.

I’ll provide direct links to the Road Maps below, but first, some cool highlights from what we’ve revealed so far:

• AJAX
  • 2 New Controls: TreeList and Button (richer versions of ASP’s LinkButton, ImageButton, and Button)
  • RadCalendar: New Range Selection feature
  • RadAsyncUpload: New Inline progress indicator
• MVC
  • New Controls: TimePicker and DateTimePicker
  • Grid: Many enhancements, including Column Reordering
  • Accessibility improvements + some exciting secret work
• WinForms
  • New Control: RadCommandBar (will replace RadToolStrip)
  • RadGridView: Adding support for ORM hierarchy, event-based hierarchy
  • RadScheduler: Adding in-place editors + Time Zones support
• Silverlight
  • New RIA Data Source control (for even easier Silverlight data binding)
  • New XAP Optimizer! (improved version of today’s Assembly Minifier)
  • New Sparklines (for “inline” data visualization)
  • RadChart: Adding Drill-down and Interactivity features
  • New Theme: Expression Dark! (inspired by Blend)
• ORM [UPDATED]
  • [Updated: As can happen when looking in to the future, the road map for OpenAccess ORM has changed slightly since the original post.]
  • New LinqToSql converter (to help you transition from “dead” L2S to OpenAccess)
  • Improved Schema updates, WCF Data Service generation
  • New Database Support: Postgres
• Reporting
  • Adding XML Report Serialization and Extended report interactivity (sorting, drill-down for table items)
• TeamPulse
  • Adding TFS 2010 bi-directional sync

Exciting? Yes. For now, try to stay focused and productive with the Q2 2010 bits and start making time for the Q3 2010 launch this November. You can find full road map details using the links below.

Road Maps

• RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX
• RadControls for WinForms
• RadControls for Silverlight / WPF
• Telerik Extensions for ASP.NET MVC
• Telerik Reporting
• Telerik OpenAccess ORM
• JustCode [not yet updated for Q3]
• JustMock [not yet available]

Vote for Telerik in 2010 Community Choice Awards

It’s that time again for you to tell the world about the great products you use from Telerik. Voting for the 2010 DevProConnections Community Choice Awards is open now and Telerik is nominated in 16 of the total 26 categories! While it’s great to take home awards like our recent Best of TechEd 2010 trophy, there is something unique about letting the voters on the Interwebs determine your fate.

What do you need to do? Vote today!

And then remind your co-workers, Twitter followers, Facebook friends, LinkedIn connections, DNUG members, and anyone else you see to vote in this year’s awards, too. To help you successfully cast your ballot for Telerik’s nominations this year, here is a quick voting guide for the categories where you’ll find us:

• Category (Telerik Product)
• Add-In (Telerik JustCode)
• Charting & Graphics Tool (Telerik RadChart for ASP.NET AJAX)
• Community Resource (Telerik’s Community )
• Component Set (Telerik RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX)
• Content Management System (Telerik Sitefinity Web CMS)
• Grid (Telerik RadGrid for ASP.NET AJAX)
• Navigation Control (Telerik RadMenu for ASP.NET AJAX)
• Online Editor (Telerik RadEditor for ASP.NET AJAX)
• Printing/Reporting Tool (Telerik Reporting)
• Project Management/Defect Tracking (Telerik TeamPulse)
• Scheduling/Calendar Tool (Telerik RadScheduler for ASP.NET AJAX)
• Silverlight Product (Telerik RadControls for Silverlight)
• Testing/QA Tool (Telerik WebUI Test Studio)
• Training (Telerik Training)
• Utility (Telerik OpenAccess ORM)
• Free Tool (Telerik OpenAccess ORM Express)

Vote in the DevProConnections Community Choice Awards. (Voting closes September 21st.)

Q2 Service Packs now available

Looking for some updates for your Q2 2010 Telerik tools? If you’ve got the Telerik Extensions for Visual Studio installed, you’ve probably already seen the automatic notification that newer bits are available (one of my favorite Telerik VSX features!). If not, here’s your official notice that Q2 2010 SP1s are now available for download on Telerik.com. Over the last week, we’ve shipped service pack updates for most of tools in the Telerik Ultimate Collection, from JustCode to WebUI Test Studio. Here are some quick highlights of what you’ll find in these SPs, along with the new version numbers and links to the release notes for quick reference:

• RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX (2010.2.826)
• Fixed support for ASP.NET 4 new ClientIDModes
• [RadAsyncUpload] Added detailed error info to Flash upload module
• [RadListView] Added support for custom item drag handles
• [RadCalendar] Added keyboard navigation between dates
• [RadEditor] 15 fixes, including improved cross-browser content generation
• [RadGrid] 20 fixes, including improvements export formatting and behavior
• Team blog post
• RadControls for Silverlight/WPF (2010.2.0812)
• [RadGridView] TONS of work, including new commands, performance improvements, and visual
• [RadRichTextBox] TONS of work and refactoring. This release improves greatly on the first Q2 release, but there could be breaking changes. I highly recommend starting with this SP if you’re going to work with RichTextBox!
• [RadChart] Added option to hide zero-value labels + 14 fixes
• [RadDataPager] Added new unbound mode support
• [RadTreeView] Added IsChecked property of type Nullable<Bool> to nodes
• [RadRibbonBar] Added keyboard navigation
• [RadMediaPlayer] Added poster frame support + property to disable seeking
• [RadBook] New support to preload pages
• [RadTransition] New transition effect: Pixelate
• Assembly Minifier performance and optimization improvements
• Team blog post
• RadControls for WinForms (2010.2.10.806)
• NEW! Conversion Wizard to help auto-convert obsolete PanelBar, TabStrip, ComboBox, and ListBox controls to the newer, more powerful RadPageView, RadDropDownList, and RadListControl replacements.
• [RadGridView] Over 25 fixes and improvements
• [RadListControl] A few breaking changes. See the release notes for details!
• [RadScheduler] Improved layout behavior and performance
• Team blog post
• JustCode (2010.2.826)
• Auto-update can now check for new “internal” builds
• Visual aids OnMouseOver can now be disabled, keyboard access added
• Many Good-Code-Red issues fixed (thanks for reporting scenarios!)
• Many improvements to JustCode Unit Test Runner
• Team blog post
• JustMock (2010.2.810)
• NEW! Added support for mocking F#
• ReturnsCollection method moved to Telerik.JustMock.Helpers namespace
• Many improved mocking scenarios. See release notes for full details.
• WebUI Test Studio (2010.2.830)
• Project upgrade wizard (auto backup of project and upgrade to new version)
• [Silverlight] Improved support for handling pop-ups, tooltips.
• Improved translators for RadControls for Silverlight and ASP.NET AJAX
• Many, many improvements across recording, test playback, and Dev/QA Editions. See releases notes for long list of details.
• Team blog post

Obviously missing from this list are Telerik Reporting and OpenAccess ORM. At present, neither of these tools will be shipping a Q2 2010 SP1 and are instead working hard on big new features for Q3 2010. For updates to these tools, make sure you check the Latest Internal Builds page on Telerik.com (OpenAccess currently has a 2010.2.804 build, and Telerik Reporting a 4.1.10.729 build).

Enjoy the new round of bits and stay tuned for Q3 2010 news! As the hot days of summer start to (hopefully) cool, we march ever closer to the next major Telerik release. Road Maps for Q3 2010 will start going live this week, so keep your RSS readers locked-in to Telerik Watch for more updates.

Download all of the Q2 2010 SP1 Telerik tools

Q2 Extensions for MVC official

And just like that, the Telerik Extensions for ASP.NET MVC Q2 2010 have left beta and are now officially available on Telerik.com! As you know, the Telerik Extensions were released as a beta with the rest of the Q2 2010 bits to ensure that the official release could deliver well-tested new UI extensions- most significantly, a new rich text editor. The extra time has been used extremely efficiently by the product team, and not only do we get polished beta features, we get some new features in the official release:

• In the new Editor, we’ve added:
• Font name and size tools
• Background and foreground color tools (basic)
• Smart indent
• Support for custom tools(!)
• Localization support
• Support for ASP.NET MVC 3 Preview 1
• Support for the new Razor syntax

This is a major update for the MVC Extensions and it delivers one of the most unique rich text editors available for ASP.NET (any “flavor”). We hope you enjoy the new bits.

Remember, the Telerik Extensions are still free and open source (GPLv2). We’ll be updating the CodePlex download very soon, too, so that you have the option of grabbing the tools there, if you prefer. We’ll also soon announce our road map plans for Q3 2010. We’ve got some exciting ideas for the final release of 2010 that should make the Telerik Extensions even more useful in a broad range of web applications. For now, download Q2 2010 and keep sending us your feedback.

Updated Telelerik Extension online demos

Baton Rouge SQL Saturday Wrap-up

Only a couple weeks late, I want to loop-back and provide a little follow-up on a few events I’ve participated in as August (and summer) wind to an end. On August 14, I hopped over to Baton Rouge to participate in the Baton Rouge SQL Saturday, an all day event that covered SQL and .NET. While the name is a bit misleading, the great Baton Rouge developer community pulled together more than 300 developers to talk SQL and .NET, and from my observation, the .NET sessions were filled to the brim.

I was late to the game joining the Baton Rouge speaker’s line-up, so I delivered two sessions: Building a Testable Data Access Layer and a quick “power talk” about the Telerik Toolbox. Thanks to everyone that joined the sessions! Hopefully you were able to takeaway some useful tips and tricks.

Meanwhile, I also participated in a Microsoft-hosted MSDN webcast covering the Telerik Toolbox for Visual Studio 2010 and TFS 2010. If you missed the live event, an on-demand recording of the event is available directly from Microsoft. It’s a great introduction (or re-introduction for you long-time fans) to what Telerik is doing these days, and it includes three demos that cover a range of Telerik tools (including WebUI Test Studio, the OpenAccess ORM Data Service Wizard, and the Silverlight Telerik Extensions).

Enjoy the archived webcast and stay tuned for more blog updates. After a weeks of events and some down-and-dirty dev work, it’s back to helping you be more productive .NET developers!

Best Practice: Making OpenAccess projects version independent

When working on any project that references external libraries, it’s important to configure your project references in such a way that “isolates” them from changes to your system. This is especially true if you’re working on a team and sharing code via source control. You want anyone to be able to check-out the project, and regardless of the software installed on their machine, be able to build and run the code. You also want to be free to upgrade your Telerik tools without being forced to upgrade all of your projects.

To achieve this version independence in your projects, follow this advice:

At at minimum, make local copies in your project folder of all referenced assemblies, and then have your projects reference the external libraries from this project relative location. In my solutions, I often create a top-level “Lib” or “Binaries” folder and copy my DLLs there.

I also create a Solution Folder of the same name in my Visual Studio solution and add these referenced assemblies to source control. By doing that, anyone that checks-out the project has all of the referenced assemblies needed to build.

This advice so far suggests two things:

1. DON’T reference external assemblies required to build your project from the GAC (except for perhaps Microsoft framework assemblies)
2. DON’T reference assemblies located in a directory that’s not included with your solution (such as an Program Files install location)

Breaking with either of the above suggestions will create headaches when sharing code with your team and headaches for you as you upgrade and change your system. It’s rare that you’ll want to upgrade all of your projects to a new version of an external library at one time, so free your projects from the whims of tool upgrades and reference local copies.

For most external libraries, like the RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX or Telerik Extensions, this is enough to achieve version independence for project builds. If you use OpenAccess, you may want to take one additional step.

Since OpenAccess “enhances” assemblies as part of the build process, your builds have a dependency on the OpenAccess enhancer (venhance.exe). To ensure that anyone that checks-out your solution can still complete a build without being forced to install OpenAccess, copy the venhance.exe to your local solution folders.

VEnhance can be found in the OpenAccess install directory in the SDK folder.

Copy this to your “Binaries” folder, and then configure your OpenAccess-enabled projects to use the local copy of VEnhance instead of the version in Program Files (the default behavior). That’s done by editing your Project Settings and adding a Post-build event:

1. Right-click on your project and select “Properties”
2. Click on the “Build Events” tab
3. In the “Post-build event” textbox, enter:
   "$(SolutionDir)\Binaries\VEnhance.exe" "-assembly:$(TargetPath)"
   (include the quotes and adjust the path to VEnhance as necessary)
4. Change the “Run” drop down to “Always” and save your project settings

Now your solution is completely version independent! You can install newer versions of OpenAccess ORM or any other Telerik tools and your solutions will continue to build against the configured tool versions. When you’re ready to upgrade, you can simply add the newer assemblies to your “Binaries” folder, update your project references, and then start enjoying the latest Telerik features.

Hopefully this basic advice helps you avoid some of the headaches of working with syncing versions of external tools in your solutions. Followed correctly, you’ll never have to worry about breaking existing projects with new installs of Telerik tools.

devLink 2010 Wrap-Up

This has been a busy summer for speaking and .NET events! After the recent virtual mvcConf and (real) Dallas TechFest, I made my way to Nashville to participate in devLink 2010. If you’re not familiar with devLink, it is one of the largest (and best) community-run conferences in the US. John Kellar and crew put-on a 3-day, multi-track event that rivals the “big shows,” but unlike the big shows, devLink doesn’t cost you a paycheck. This year, devLink returned to the beautiful Lipscomb University campus in Nashville, and the event packed with over 800 paying developers.

I travelled to Nashville to deliver three sessions and participate on an impromptu panel on finding a job (hosted by David Giard or TechnologyAndFriends vidcast). My sessions were for the web developers at devLink, and we packed the rooms standing-room-only:

• The Rich Standard: Getting Familiar with HTML5
• Combining WebForms, MVC, and Silverlight
• Getting the Most Out of What’s New in ASP.NET 4.0

Thanks again to everyone that joined me for the sessions, and big thanks to the person (sorry, didn’t grab your name) that taught that devLink vending machine a lesson for stealing my drink! I had a great time and hope you were able to learn something from the sessions. The code and slides for the sessions is available below for your on-demand learning pleasure.

For now, it’s time to prep and head-off to Baton Rouge for SQL Saturday. See you in Louisiana!

The Rich Standard: Getting Familiar with HTML5
[Slides (PDF)]

Combining WebForms, MVC, and Silverlight
[Slides (PDF)] [Code (Zip)]

Getting the Most Out of What’s New in ASP.NET 4.0
[Slides (PDF)] [Code (Zip)]