RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX Q308 SP1 released today

In our relentless pursuit to deliver improvements for our RadControls, today Telerik shipped the first service pack for the RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX Q3 2008. Usually, our goal is to ship SP1 about a month after an official release, but due to a few important post-release issues reported by you (our brilliant customers) we have released SP1 a little faster. Like all other service packs, this release focuses mostly on bug fixes and CSS tweaks, but there are a few notable new features in the release to look for:

• The "Register Handler" SmartTag option now adds sections to your Web.Config for both IIS 5/6 and IIS 7 (in other words, it registers the handlers/modules in both system.web and system.webServer)
• New NoRecordsTemplate and AlwaysVisiblePager for RadGrid with client-side data binding
• RadInputManager now supports server-side and client-side disabled styling
• Multi-day appointments in RadScheduler month view now render as a single elements (vs. single elements per day). Month view also now supports a new rendering mode to "auto expand" to content size (vs. being a fixed height).
• New OnClientLoad property added to RadSpell
• Server-side memory performance of RadTreeview node searching significantly improved

You can find the full release notes for the Q3 2008 SP1 release on the new Telerik.com and then download the new bits right away. Enjoy the fixes, the new helpful features, and stay tuned for the Q1 2009 Road Map coming very soon.

Q3 2008 released! (update)

My second big news item for the week (which most of you have probably already caught by now): the official Q3 2008 release is now live! This is a big release for Telerik- much bigger than Q2- and it includes a lot of new stuff, too much to really cover in a single post. Not only does the Q3 2008 release introduce Telerik's brand new OpenAccess ORM product, it also includes the first official version of our RadControls for Silverlight 2, our brand new charting engine for WPF, among many other new controls and enhancements. Layer that with our just launched Telerik.com redesign and you can see why this has been such a busy week! In the past, when I covered Telerik releases I could easily give you the highlights for the release because I only had to cover the RadControls for ASP.NET. To do the same now requires me to try to bring you the highlights from the RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX, WinForms, Silverlight, WPF, Telerik Reporting, and Telerik OpenAccess ORM! Clearly the challenge has grown. Still, for those of you looking for the Q3 highlights, here you go:

• New! Telerik OpenAccess ORM product
• New! RadControls for Silverlight 2 (including RadDragAndDropFramework and RadNavigation)
• New! 2D and 3D charting engine for WPF
• New! RadGauges for WPF and Silverlight
• New! RadScheduler for WPF and WinForms
• New! Rich Text support in WinForms controls
• New! WinForms theme color blending
• New! RadInputManager for ASP.NET AJAX
• New! 750+ page (free) book on RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX
• New! Reporting rendering engine (beginnings of cross tab support coming in Q1)
• Significantly improved rendering and performance in RadScheduler for ASP.NET AJAX
• Significantly improved client-side data binding for RadGrid for ASP.NET AJAX
• UPDATE: How could I forget?! New support for ASP.NET MVC in the RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX!

And that really just scratches the surface. For a complete overview of all the changes in each product line be sure to check out all of the release notes (I'll provide links below). This has been a banner year for Telerik and I think this release is a great way to close it out. We hope you enjoy the new bits and are as excited as we are to continue innovating in Q1 next year! Release Notes for the RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX Release Notes for the RadControls for WinForms Release Notes for the RadControls for WPF [Notes Pending] Release Notes for the RadControls for Silverlight Release Notes for Telerik Reporting Release Notes for Telerik OpenAcess ORM

New Telerik website now live, Running on Sitefinity

As you may have noticed by now, I've been a little quiet on the blogs this week. The reason: this is an extremely busy week. Not only are we still wrapping-up our content from PDC and preparing content for DevConnections, we're also making some HUGE public launches. First-up among those launches, after years of planning and preparation, the new Telerik.com is now live! And while that might be a big enough announcement in itself, it gets bigger. The new Telerik.com is running entirely on Telerik's own Sitefinity CMS 3.5 SP1! First things first, though. The new Telerik.com has been completely redesigned with the goal of making it as easy as possible to find content on the site and (for active developers) easy to use all of our support resources. The new website has been in some form of planning for well over a year and we appreciate everyone's patience as we limped along on the "old site" for longer than planned. I think you'll really enjoy the new site's layout and features, especially the heavily updated Client.net account page and simplified forums! One of the coolest things about the new site, though, is that it is a huge case study for Sitefinity. Telerik.com is obviously a very high-traffic site with hundreds of thousands of visitors from all around the globe. Running Telerik.com on Sitefinity has helped us not only prove the capability of the Sitefinity platform, but it has also forced us to build-in the "real world" performance improvements the plaform needed to host huge sites. It's EYODF at it's best. The end result is a great looking (and easy to manage) Telerik.com and tons of performance imrpovements in Sitefinity 3.5 SP1. As with any new site, though, our work is not done. We're working quickly to optimize performance on production servers and squash any reported bugs. We also have some more new "sub sites" to role out soon for blogs and videos, so stay tuned for even more updates. Until then, enjoy the new site and let us know what you think!

Looking Ahead: ASP.NET Q3 Road Map

Last week we looked at the updated Q3 2008 Road Maps for WinForms, WPF, and Silverlight. This week, let's take a look at the recently updated road map for the RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX. The Q3 2008 road map for the ASP.NET AJAX controls looks different than it has for past major releases. That's because the focus on the ASP.NET AJAX teams for Q3 is more about making the Telerik RadControls are highest performing, most stable ASP.NET components available on the market. Work like this is incredbily important and we are confident that by Q3 our controls will be unrivaled in terms of performance and stability- which should translate in to similar benefits for your Telerik-powered applications. But we're not stopping there for Q3. In addition to all of the work we're doing to maximize performance, we're also introducing some exciting new initiatives:

• Visual Style Builder for ASP.NET: This web-based tool will make it possible easily design new skins for the RadControls, completely visually. No need to parse the complicated Telerik CSS files.
• Silverlight Server Controls: We will start introducing ASP.NET AJAX server controls that make integrating Silverlight functionality in your ASP.NET applications very easy.
• Data Improvements: We've got a big announcement to make in this space for Q3, so stay tuned for the "big reveal" in a few weeks.

We're also adding new features and client-side enhancments to several of the key ASP.NET AJAX controls (like RadEditor, RadScheduler, and RadGrid), so all told Q3 is going to be a big release! Check back here often for more details as they become public and get ready for a great release in early November.

Looking Ahead: Q3 Road Maps posted for WinForms, Silverlight, WPF

With Q2 2008 soundly behind us, it's time to turn our attention to the quickly approaching Q3 2008 release. The next (and last) release for 2008 is currently scheduled to ship in early November, so we're less than 10 weeks away from another major Telerik release. The Q3 release is going to be a big one, too! There's a number of big things happening around the time of Q3- a few of which shall remain "secret" until a later date- but we can talk today about the plans for the RadControls for WinForms, Silverlight, and WPF.

The public road maps for all of these suites have been updated on Telerik.com, but since I like to make your lives as easy as possible, here are some highlights:

RadControls for WinForms

• New! RadScheduler for WinForms
• New! RadPrompt and RadConfirm for WinForms
• Major improvements in RadGridView
• Multi-row column headers
• Cell merge/span
• Optimized support for 100's of columns
• Major refactoring in RadDock
• Performance improvements across entire theming engine

RadControls for Silverlight

• New! RadGrid for Silverlight (ported from WPF version)
• New! RadTimePicker, RadDock, and RadContextMenu for Silverlight
• New drag-and-drop manager for all controls
• New animation framework for all controls
• New theming engine for all controls
• Vastly expanded documentation and examples

RadControls for WPF

• New! RadScheduler for WPF
• New! RadChart and RadGauges for WPF
• New themes for all controls
• Expanded documentation and new demo framework (a.k.a. QSF)

Check out the road map links below for more details and then stay tuned for more details on the ASP.NET AJAX, Sitefinity, and Reporting road maps for Q3.

RadControls for WinForms

RadControls for Silverlight

RadControls for WPF