Silverlight 2.0 RC0 released, Telerik RC coming next week (update)

In case you missed the news, Microsoft has just released the official Silverlight 2 Release Candidate build, a major step towards getting an official plug-in. Now, by many early accounts, we expected to have a final plug-in around this time, but I think it's clear that Microsoft is saving that release for the upcoming PDC festivities. So, we get an RC instead of an RTM, but according to the great ScottGu, applications built to work with RC0 should be upgradable to RTM with a "few hours" work. Among the highlights of things changed Beta 2 to RC0:

• Snap-to-pixel rendering by default (SL used to use "sub pixel" rendering). This will help Silverlight applications look "crisper" on screen and finally help improve the readability of the text!
• More new controls: Combobox, PasswordBox, and ProgressBar
• Updated default skin- looks much cleaner than the original default skin

And that's about it at surface level. For a complete list of the well over 30 breaking changes in RC0, check out Mike Snow's blog. Most of the changes are small "tweaks," but they may affect your app if you used a lot of the Silverlight API.

As for Telerik, we've got our RC0 bits ready to go. In fact, we were going to release them today, but Microsoft was a little late getting the RC0 plug-in out the door. On Monday, we will be releasing the RadControls for Silverlight 2 RC0, which will not only work on the new plug-in, but also pack some new controls and features (more on those later). And in about 4 weeks, around the time of PDC, we will release the RadControls for Silverlight 2 RC1, followed shortly by the official RadControls for Silverlight with our big Q3 release in early November.

It has been a long road, but Silverlight 2 is finally (almost) here!

UPDATE: I got our planned release day for the RadControls for Silverlight RC0 wrong. After the MS delay last week, we decided to add a few more things to RC0, so we need a few extra days to re-test. Look for Telerik RC0 by week's end.

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

RadControls for WPF and Silverlight Webcast follow-up

For those that missed it, we had a great webcast this past Thursday talking about the new RadControls for WPF and Silverlight. Over 200 people turned-out (thank you!) to hear about these new technologies and how Telerik is building tools to support them. If you missed the live event, though, don't fret. There are tons of on-demand resources now available for your enjoyment.

First, I took the time today to answer all of the questions that were asked during the session. The questions (almost 70) and answers are available in a freshly minted 10-page PDF. Hopefully you find the answers helpful on your quest to understand WPF, Silverlight, and Telerik's plans for both.

Next, the slides from the session are also available for immediate download. If you want to browse the PowerPoint content at your own pace, grab the slides and then find answers to your questions in the aforementioned PDF.

Finally, the complete recorded, on-demand version of the webcast is also now available for your viewing pleasure (with audio, for those that missed the webcast dial-in number). To watch the on-demand webcast, simply visit the original registration link, fill-in your details, and then the recorded version will start. The player does require Real Media in your browser, so if you don't have (and don't want) that installed on your PC, we'll be making a Flash-based on-demand version available as soon as we can.

Enjoy the on-demand resources and keep it locked-in here for more free webcasts in the coming weeks!

RadControls for Silverlight beta 2 released

While Telerik has been busy releasing service packs for the "production" products this week, the Silverlight team has also been busy releasing an update of their own. On Tuesday, Telerik released a new beta for the Silverlight controls (that's RadControls for Silverlight 2 beta 2 for those keeping track). With the official release of the Silverlight 2 plug-in imminent, this will probably be the final beta release from Telerik before the RadControls for Silverlight get a v1 release. And this release is no slouch. Here are some highlights from the release notes:

• New! RadTimePicker control for adding time picker functionality to Silverlight 
• New! RadExpander control (this is essentially a sliding content panel control)
• Significantly updated documentation
• Tons of bug fixes and improvements across all existing controls

Check out the complete release notes for all of the nitty-gritty detail and then download the latest beta from your client.net accounts. The Silverlight controls will be "official" soon enough, so keep sending us your feedback so we can have a solid v1 release!

Telerik Watch Minute: Getting started with RadControls for Silverlight

Hope you enjoy this new, fine-blended episode of Telerik Watch Minute. In this installment, I take a little more time (about 3 minutes) to quickly show you how to get started with the new RadControls for Silverlight (beta). I de-emphasize "beta" because we're really just waiting on Microsoft to go-ahead and published the "official" Silverlight 2 plug-in, which if I were a betting man would guess is coming out shorting after the Olympics (which is running in Beta 2). Once the plug-in is final, we'll release v1 of our controls. In any event, this episode shows you how to take the Silverlight controls you've downloaded and unzipped (there is no installer yet- that will come in a pending SP1 release) and start using them in a new Visual Studio Silverlight 2 beta 2 project.

A quick word of caution to those of you that have been developing with Silverlight 2 beta 1: the new Silverlight 2 beta 2 installers don't do a great job of getting your system cleaned-up and ready for Beta 2 development. I strongly encourage you to spend a few minutes cleaning your system of Beta 1 and then installing Beta 2 before starting development with Telerik's tools. If you have problems, leave a comment and I'll try to help as I just learned the hard way a lot of the tricks to upgrading.

Enjoy the "Minute" and stay tuned for more!

Q2 2008 comming next week

We've been building-up to this release for a while now- well, about 3 months, really- and it's time to prepare for the big event. The 2nd major Telerik release for 2008 will ship next week, and with it will come exciting new improvements, controls, and suites! Q2 2008 will not only bring many new features to the RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX and WinForms, but it will also officially introduce two new RadControl suites: RadControls for WPF and RadControls for Silverlight (though the Silverlight release will be "beta" until the plug-in is finalized). With so much in this release, it's easy to miss some of the important details. So while you wait for the big day, I've prepared a list of essential posts (both from this blog and the Telerik.com blogs) that you can read to get all the details you need to prepare for Q2:

RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX

• Q2 2008 Futures now live (RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX)
• New features in RadComboBox, RadTreeView, RadUpload and RadScheduler
• What's new in RadGrid for ASP.NET AJAX in Q2 2008
• Q2 ASP.NET Skinning
  

RadControls for WinForms & Telerik Reporting

• Q2 2008 Road Maps updated for WinForms, Reporting
• Design your RadCarousel with just drag & drop in Q2
  

RadControls for WPF & Silverlight

• RadControls for WPF Beta 2 released
• Telerik RadControls for Silverlight 2 CTP released
• RadWindow for Silverlight
• Optimizing the load size for Telerik Silverlight controls
• RadControls for WPF and Silverlight
• Announcing RadChart for WPF

Enjoy the posts and keep your RSS readers (or your browsers, for those not in to the "reader thing") locked-in here for the latest updates as Q2 draws near!

Silverlight 2 Beta 2, Telerik RadControls for Silverlight CTP released

Why make two posts for big announcements when you can combine and kill two birds with one stone? "For better blog stats," shouts the fellow blogger in the back of the room. True, but blog stats be damned. This is big news and I want to bring it to you as directly as possible.

First, as you may have heard by now (or assumed based on my TechEd coverage), the second beta for Silverlight 2 has been released. This beta continues to drive towards the first official release of Silverlight 2 (can we call it Silverlight.NET?) and brings some much needed improvements to the plug-in. Among the new features are additional built-in UI controls and improved WPF compatibility, but (as usual) the best place to get a complete run down on the features is ScottGu's blog. A refreshed version of Expression Blend 2.5 has also been released, so be sure to grab that, too.

Next, Telerik has also released its first set of downloadable controls for Silverlight 2! The RadControls for Silverlight 2 CTP is our first preview of what we're doing in the Silverlight space and it includes a number of controls:

• RadMenu
• RadUpload
• RadTreeview
• RadCube
• RadNumericUpDown
• RadProgressBar
• RadTabPanel
• RadMediaPlayer

Many of the controls are new and have no matching "default" in the Silverlight platform. Others extend the default features to provide richer UIs and easier development- similar to what we've been doing for years with ASP.NET. These controls will launch officially with our WPF controls in the Q2 release, and by then a few more controls will be added to the mix:

• RadPanelBar
• RadWindow
• RadCombobox
• RadSlider
• RadCalendar
• RadDatePicker

By the end of the year, you'll see even more in our Silverlight suite (including a powerful DataGrid control). And even better, all of the controls that we ship for Silverlight will have near identical equivalents in the RadControls for WPF! Our Silverlight and WPF teams are literally sharing the same code-base, so aside from a few UI tweaks for the WPF and Silverlight environments, the APIs for the controls will be 100% the same. UI code reuse sound good to anyone?

For complete details on our Silverlight CTP, check out a post from the RadControls for Silverlight product team. You can also check out live demos of the controls and download trial versions to play with. Then keep it locked-in here as we inch closer to the Q2 release and prepare to launch what is quickly becoming the most complete and tightly integrated WPF and Silverlight UI control suites.

RadControls for Silverlight demos online

Following the huge interest in the RadControls for Silverlight exposed during the recent World Premiere event, Telerik has delivered on its promise to make the RadControls for Silverlight demos available online. Now you can do more than watch the Silverlight controls in action; you can try them for yourself. Everything shown-off in the World Premiere (and then some) is available online, which includes the following Silverlight controls:

• RadAnimations
  
• RadButtons (6 types)
• RadCombobox
• RadListBox
• RadMenu
• RadProgressBar
• RadSlider
• RadTabStrip
• RadTextBox
• RadTreeView
• RadUpload

And while you can't download the Silverlight controls during this release, you can use the "View Source" tool on all demos to see the related XAML and C# markup. These demos should start to help you really think about how you'll be able to use Silverlight to build applications in 2008 and prove that Silverlight is going to be a platform just as capable as ASP.NET or WinForms.

While you're playing with the online demos, do remember that this is an alpha preview. Performance is severely limited by the Silverlight framework itself, so you can expect the final versions of these controls to be much faster than they are today as the framework matures. Other than that, have fun and be sure to share your feedback!