Have you ever filtered data in an Excel workbook? I bet the answer is yes. “Who doesn’t use Excel, dah”—I guess that would have been your reaction. If you have ever done a data filter in an Excel workbook you are familiar with the filter dialog that you use. Let me refresh your memory for a second. Here is a screenshot of the filter dialog that comes up in Excel:

Figure 1 MS Excel Filter menu

As you can see, the filter dialog provides you Sort Ascending, Sort Descending, Filters, Search Box and a Multi-select list with unique values available in the column. You can perform any of the listed actions on this column. Wouldn’t it be great if we had the same capability in our web applications?

In this post, we will talk about one of the new feature we have added to our ASP.NET AJAX Grid—namely “Excel-like Filtering.”

About Excel-like Filtering

With the Q3 2015 release of our Telerik® UI for ASP.NET AJAX, this Excel-like filtering feature was introduced. If you are eager to have a look at the feature first, jump right into our Excel-like filtering demo. Here is a screenshot of how the filter dialog looks in ASP.NET AJAX Grid:

Figure 2 RadGrid Excel-like Filter menu

The functionalities provided by the filter dialog are:

1. Sorting
2. Grouping
3. Column(s) selection
4. Search Box
5. Multi-select ListBox
6. Filter conditions

When the Excel-like filter is enabled on the Grid, an end user can perform any/all of the functionalities on any column in the grid. Way back in Q3 2013 we introduced a functionality called Excel-like Multi-select filter for the Grid. But at that time all we had was just the list box, and you could select the values you want to filter on the column. We have enhanced that feature to include other actions that you see in Excel filter dialog. I would say it’s a complete feature now.

Enabling Excel-like Filter on a Grid

Now that we know what this feature is all about, let’s see how to enable it on an ASP.NET AJAX Grid. Our RadGrid, apart from the default filtering, supports a filtering based on multiple selected values from a list, i.e. a Multi-select ListBox. The way you do this is by using a property called FilterType on the RadGrid and setting its value to CheckList. For the new Excel-like filtering a new FilterType has been exposed now. The value is called HeaderContext. Once the FilterType has been set to HeaderContext, you will then need to turn on the header context menu by using the property EnableHeaderContextMenu. It’s a Boolean so you can set it to True/False. Let’s see some code now:

Notice that the FilterType property is set on the RadGrid and EnableHeaderContextMenu is set on the MasterTableView. You can also set EnableHeaderContextMenu on the RadGrid level. In that case it will be global, i.e. all MaterTableView’s get this property set on them internally. So if you have more than one master table view and you want to enable Excel-like filtering on all of them, you can just set the EnableHeaderContextMenu property at the RadGrid level instead of each table view level.

Providing Data for Multi-select ListBox

As mentioned earlier, the Excel-like filter dialog provides you an option of a Multi-select list box. The Multi-select list box will display the unique available values for that column. You will need to provide a data source for the listbox. In the code snippet shown above, I am listening to the OnFilterCheckListItemsRequested event and provide a handler for that. Inside the handler I fetch the appropriate data and provide that to list box as data source. Here is the event handler code:

GetDataTable is a helper method that I have which just gets me distinct values from the selected column.

Summary

The Excel-like filtering is a cool new functionality in RadGrid that you and your end users can benefit from Q3 2015 onwards. It takes very minimal setup to enable that feature in your applications. If you want to provide an Excel-like filtering experience in your web applications this new feature is definitely worth trying. We look forward to hearing your feedback on it. Do let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.

In this release of Telerik® UI for WinForms we once again concentrated on providing an even better suite, and we addressed over 100 feedback items, most of which were in our most used component—RadGridView. Besides making the suite better, we also invested our efforts into creating the first VirtualGrid component on the market with support for hierarchy, filtering and sorting—RadVirtualGrid. Let me tell you more about it.

RadVirtualGrid Beta

The component aims to handle scenarios which require displaying millions of records from a data source. This is achieved by triggering an event every time a cell needs a value, and allows the developer to query a data source and provide values for the cells.

Even though the component is released as beta, we believe it is pretty stable for use and very soon we are planning on making it official. Here are highlights of RadVirtualGrid features.

Performance

The following gif demonstrates the control performance, which was of upmost importance for us, when building the control. Here is how fast the grid loads one billion cells of data.

Fast, huh?

Another thing worth mentioning in regards to the performance, is that in the above grid, during loading we have also resized 100,000 rows and 500 columns. That’s the definition of speed :)

Hierarchy

The most wanted feature in such a component according to our user’s requests is hierarchy. That’s probably because there is no component on the market (or at least we haven’t found one) that supports such a functionality in a virtual grid. This feature gap added to our motivation, and now we are happy to announce the very first virtual grid component on the market with support for hierarchy.

Sorting and Filtering

Filtering and Sorting is achieved using the FilterChanged and SortChanged events, which will get triggered when such an operation occurs via UI or programmatically. Once notified for the operation, you can use the filtering and/or sorting expressions to fetch the correct data.

Paging

Paging functionality is also supported, and the user can navigate through pages with the built-in paging panel.

Async Data Loading

Thanks to the built-in waiting indicators of both the control and the rows in it, users can be notified for a pending loading operation while your data is being loaded in a background thread.

Editing

RadVirtualGrid features nine types of editors out of the box that can be used for editing the most common data types and to handle the most common scenarios. An event is provided where the desired editor can be specified. Here is a list of the predefined editors:

• VirtualGridCalcualtorEditor
• VirtualGridDateTimeEditor
• VirtualGridDropDownListEditor
• VirtualGridMaskedEditBoxEditor
• VirtualGridTextBoxControlEditor
• VirtualGridTextBoxEditor
• VirtualGridTimePickerEditor
• VirtualGridColorPickerEditor
• VirtualGridBrowseEditor

On top of that, support for custom editors is also provided. Here is for example a track bar editor incorporated in a grid cell.

Pinned Rows and Columns

RadVirtualGrid also supports pinned rows and columns, so the users can see their most important information at a glance. BestFit is also there for you.

Support for CRUD Operations

All CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) operations are also supported and respective events are triggered for each of them to notify you of the operation taken, so the changes can be pushed to your data source.

Misc Features

Other features supported to further enhance the UX experience are:

• Context menus and tooltips
• Localization
• Cut/Copy/Paste operations
• Alternating row colors
• Fine grain UI customization with theme or programmatically with respective events
• Support for custom rows and cells

Coded UI for Visual Studio 2015

I am pleased to announce that as of Q1 2016, we're introducing support of Coded UI tests in Visual Studio 2015. It is important to note is that Update 1 has to be installed in Visual Studio 2015 in order to take advantage of this functionality, due to an issue which exists in the official version of Visual Studio 2015, which Microsoft has resolved in Update 1.

Help Button in RadTitleBar

Another useful feature we're introducing is the built-in help button in RadTitleBar. The button is placed next to the Minimize, Maximize and Close buttons and when clicked, the mouse cursor changes to a question mark. The next click over any control will trigger its HelpRequested event, where you can provide useful information regarding the control usage.

UI for WinForms Videos

Our videos channel has a new page.  A playlist with our videos is also available in our YouTube channel.

New Documentation Website

I am glad to announce our new documentation website as well, which has a modern look and feel and better navigation support. The structure is kept as it was, so it will be easy for you to navigate to your favorite sections/articles. Soon, we will be redirecting our previous documentation links to our new website. Take a look at our new documentation site here.

To learn more, you can also register for the upcoming Telerik DevCraft Release Webinar here.

Spreadsheet Going RTM

The new Spreadsheet widget, introduced as Beta in Q3’15 and instrumental for a variety of business applications, turns official with Q1 2016, adding a slew of new features to its arsenal. Some of the most notable are as follows:

• Client-Side Excel Import (from .xlsx files)
• Many new formula options and improved functions
• Enhanced export, validation and user input capabilities + customizations
• Client Export to PDF
• Ability to disable cells or range
• Localization Capabilities
• Auto-Fill/Fill-Down (as in Excel)
• Vastly expanded client API

New Kendo UI App Template (Dashboard) + VS Project Templates

In this release we are shipping a dashboard-like app template for Kendo UI, which helps you cut time by starting from a readily-available boilerplate for building dashboard interfaces. No need to code dataviz UIs from scratch, but rather start from this available app template and customize it in line with your needs.

Angular 2 State of Affairs + Dashboard App (AngularJS Version)

Kendo UI was among the first to support the Alpha of the next major version (v2) of the AngularJS framework. We are already working to support the Angular 2 Beta, announced by Google in the second half of December 2015. This will require some time as we've chosen to approach this in a radically new way, thus ensuring Kendo UI delivers Angular 2 support inherently, and make the Kendo UI widgets true Angular 2 components. Stay tuned for updates on our progress in the coming months, and in the meantime check this page and this blog post for more info.

On the other hand, we implemented our popular Northwind Dashboard sample app in Angular 1.x, which is the current officially supported Angular framework version. You can see the app here.

Grid and Calendar/DatePickers Features

With Q1 we are shipping Excel-like filtering capabilities (with search and checkboxes) as part of the grid column menu. These filtering options are quite intuitive to people who are familiar with MS Excel UI and would like to utilize their skills using web grids.



Additionally, the grid filtering capabilities are enhanced with options to filter by Null/NotNull or IsEmpty/IsNotEmpty values, thus making the filtering patterns you can apply even more flexible.

Moreover, the top requested and long anticipated feature to be able to disable dates in calendar/date pickers is now in place, thus making workaround implementations redundant and saving coding.

Documentation Improvements

Staying true to our continuous commitment to improve the Kendo UI documentation, we allocated some time for extending the content and beautifying our online documentation in terms of UX and navigation. This process will advance in incremental steps, and you can already find the results of the first wave of our improvements right here.

ASP.NET MVC Wrappers

ASP.NET 5 RC1 support

To date we are the first major component vendor to support the latest RC1 version of ASP.NET vNext with our Telerik UI for ASP.NET MVC product, going beyond Windows and enabling cross-platform web development on Mac and Linux. Check out this blog and this page for details.



Looking forward, we'll work in parallel with MS and plan to announce official support for the RTM version of .NET 5 shortly after it comes out in the first quarter of 2016. We’ll also introduce a set of Tag Helpers, which are the recommended semantic way to define simple UI elements in MVC6. 

Spreadsheet MVC Wrapper Features

The Spreadsheet MVC server wrapper now supports import/export of filters utilizing the Telerik Document Processing Library. In this way you can save or load filters previously applied on the spreadsheet data by your end users.

Is There More?

Release Webinar

Two Kendo UI Webinars presenting the product and what's new in Q1 (for existing and new users) will be held in February and March, respectively. Watch for the official announcement with the exact date and registration information in the coming weeks.

Quick Links

Ready to dive in and get your hands dirty? Follow the links to the demos, documentation and release notes for Kendo UI | UI for ASP.NET MVC | UI for JSP | UI for PHP.
Trial Downloads > Kendo UI | MVC | JSP | PHP.  

Got Feedback?

As a client-driven company, our main objective is to deliver products and tools that optimize the time for building apps and solutions from start to finish. We listen carefully to your feedback to identify areas in which we can improve and enhance our current offerings. I’ll be glad to hear your input and thoughts about this release in the comments section below, and feel free to post your suggestions for new functionality directly to our official feedback portal.

Everyone wants to work with nice looking web apps and sites, which offer modern and responsive design and capabilities. That’s why about three years ago, driven by this idea, we began a huge initiative to renovate the rendering of the Telerik® UI for ASP.NET AJAX controls by leveraging the modern trends and HTML5/CSS3 technologies to reduce their footprint and ease their customization.

With the today’s Q1 2016 release this long journey is over and now you can benefit from the 100% lightweight controls. All you have to do is to set the RenderMode (inline or in the web.config) to “lightweight,” and the controls UI will be rendered with semantic HTML5 and CSS3.

Other nice additions to the release you can take advantage of include the long anticipated Material Design theme and the official launch of Spreadsheet.

Material Design Theme

The new skin inspired by Google’s Material Design guidelines will help you build modern looking web projects, or of course update the look and feel of the controls in your existing apps. It features depth lighting and shadow effects which will make your apps more vivid and interactive.

You can directly test the Material skin in the live demos by switching the current skin to Material via the skin chooser, as well as enable it in your projects by updating them to Q1 2016 and setting the Skin property to “Material.”

Spreadsheet (Official)

Among the other highlights, I want to stress the official launch of the spreadsheet. You can benefit from the improved UI, exporting capabilities to PDF and XSLX and enhanced API, along with a bunch of new features such as:

• New Toolbar implementation
• Filter and context menus
• Validation and custom format dialogs
• Client-side Export to PDF and XSLS
• Vastly expanded client-side API
• Ability to disable cells or a range
• Localization capabilities
• Auto-Fill/Fill-Down (as in Excel)

New Label and Standalone Buttons to Aid Your Everyday Development

The long anticipated RadLabel control will allow you to substitute the regular ASP.NET labels in your web apps. The controls features seamless integration with the ASP.NET and Telerik WebForms components, along with a consistent look and feel with the built-in Telerik skins, and a rich server and client-side API for creating various captions for form editors.

You can also try the new standalone PushButton, LinkButon, ImageButton, ToggleButton and CheckBox buttons, which not only perform and look great, but are also fully accessible and easy to configure.

You can find more information about the newly introduced functionality in the release notes. To learn more, you can also register for the upcoming Telerik DevCraft Release Webinar here.

We are very excited to introduce the first official release for this year for Telerik® UI for WPF and UI for Silverlight components—Q1 2016.

This blog post will highlight the most important additions, but all details can be found in the full release notes for WPF and Silverlight.

New Controls

TimeSpanPicker for WPF

In Q1 2016 RadTimeSpanPicker for WPF comes in its official version (it was recently in beta). It is now ready to help you add the ability to pick timespan values in your desktop applications in a fast and elegant way for your users.

New Themes

Green Theme

The new theme exposes a flat design combined with a green accent. The Green theme brings along two variations—Dark and Light. The integrated corner radius can be adjusted by the user to guarantee a nice and smooth touch to the Telerik WPF controls.

New Features

Touch Manager

We added a new public API to help you introduce custom touch gestures in your WPF and Silverlight applications.

GridView for WPF

Text Search functionality enables string matching over the provided data source. The filtering is available through an interface for matching rows and highlighting the exact occurrences. Complex search conditions and string exclusion are also available.

RichTextBox

The ability to repeat the table header row on every page is a very convenient feature for documents with large tables spanning multiple pages.

TileList

Multiple Selection in RadTileList supports selecting multiple tiles simultaneously, operating with the whole set at once.

ScheduleView

In the TimeLine view, you can now change the Start and End of the TimeRuler for each day.

Don't waste another minute—download the latest bits for WPF and Silverlight and give them a spin. If you want to see some of the new features in action, take a look at our updated WPF and Silverlight demos.

We hope you enjoy the latest updates. If you'd like to share your thoughts you can always reach us through our Forums or through our Ideas & Feedback portal. Don't forget to sign up for the webinar below for a great chance to learn more.

Hello, Touch World!

TouchManager.AddSwipeStartedEventHandler(element, element_SwipeStarted);
  TouchManager.AddSwipeEventHandler(element, element_Swipe);
  TouchManager.AddSwipeFinishedEventHandler(element, element_SwipeFinished);

  void element_SwipeStarted(object sender, TouchEventArgs args)
  {
    // initialize some resources

    args.Handled = true;
  }

  void element_Swipe(object sender, TouchEventArgs args)
  {
    // execute swipe

    args.Handled = true;
  }

  void element_SwipeFinished(object sender, TouchEventArgs args)
  {
    // release resources

    args.Handled = true;
  }

It’s the first day at work after the nice and relaxing holidays. You are fresh and pumped to start the new year right by getting stuff done. But by mid-day, you quickly realize you are back exactly where you left off. The same stringent delivery deadlines and projects with UIs so antiquated that they give you the chills.

Time to chin up—because your beloved Telerik® DevCraft suite is here with the 2016 R1 release. To deliver your software development projects on time and to delight your users, you need awesome tooling. Modern, cutting-edge developer tooling should elevate your development experience and enable you to deliver solutions faster than what you would have envisioned even a few months back. That’s exactly what the latest DevCraft release promises. No matter what your app platform—mobile, web or desktop—this R1 release has something for you.

Come join Telerik Developer Advocates John Bristowe, Ed Charbeneau and myself, Sam Basu on February 3rd for the DevCraft R1 2016 release webinar. We’ll unpack platform-specific functionality to elevate your app development, and provide a developer’s perspective of what’s new in Telerik DevCraft. And we realize you all live in various parts of the world with varying time zones—so we’ll repeat the webinar twice @ 11 AM & 6 PM EST!

Here’s a quick glimpse of what we will cover in the webinar:

Web UI:

• Official release of spreadsheet components for Kendo UI, UI for ASP.NET AJAX and UI for ASP.NET MVC.
• Advanced responsive behaviors in UI for ASP.NET AJAX. Make .NET WebForms apps run seamlessly on every mobile device.
• More templates, sample apps and better documentation for the web UI suites.
• Support for ASP.NET 5 and MVC6 RC1 enables you to build rich cross-platform ASP.NET apps which run on Linux and Mac.
• Material Design-inspired theme and brand new Theme Builder for UI for ASP .NET AJAX. Helps you further modernize your application's front-end.

Mobile UI:

• UI for UWP. The first official release of the UI for UWP suite is here to enhance your Universal Windows Platform apps. A beta of the Grid Control ships with this release.
• UI for iOS. AutoCompleteTextView becomes official to enable easy search and selection from a list of data, while saving precious mobile screen real estate.
• UI for Xamarin. Windows Universal (8.1) support for SideDrawer for Xamarin. Forms to enable the SideDrawer to run across all three popular platforms—iOS, Android and Windows Universal.

Desktop UI:

• New components and themes for the Desktop UI suites. Improvements include the official release of TimeSpanPicker and a new theme for WPF.

Reporting:

• Report Sharing. Allows Report Server users to easily share reports with others, plus an improved scheduling logic and integration provision with existing Report Viewers.

Prizes

We really appreciate you taking the time to join the upcoming DevCraft R1 release webinar. But what’s a Telerik webinar without some cool prizes? You are in the running to win a prize just for attending the webinar. Extra cookie points for interactions! We love all your questions during the webinars—please keep them coming. 

Here's the prizes that are up for grabs:

1. Surface 3: For the best question
2. Apple Watch: Just for attending

Limited only by official Telerik sweepstakes rules.

Don't Miss the Latest DevCraft Webinar

As you can see, Telerik DevCraft R1 2016 is a packed release, enabling you to focus on feature functionality in your chosen development platform. We can’t wait to show you all the developer goodies that are baked in.

What are you waiting for? Register today and come join us for the DevCraft R1 Release webinar. It’s going to be a great time and we cannot wait to see you there!

As a trusted .NET vendor, we've long been preparing for Windows 10, and now the Telerik® UI for Universal Windows Platform has officially graduated from Beta. Read on to learn about how you can use these powerful features in your Windows 10 app development.

Windows 10 has already been here for about half an year and is showing a great adoption rate, breaking a record in the first month since its release. As a result, Windows 10 now has about 10% of the Operating Systems market share, which is quite good for an Operating System just half a year young. Windows 10 runs on a broad range of devices including phones, tablets, desktops and IoT (like Raspberry PI 2).

Quite expectedly, as a trusted .NET component vendor, since the dawn of Windows 10 we've been getting requests about introducing a suite of controls dedicated to Windows 10. Of course we were prepared for this, so soon after the Windows 10 release we published a CTP of UI for Universal Windows Platform—our suite of Windows 10 components. This was followed by a Beta version in mid-November. And here we are now—announcing the first official release of UI for Universal Windows Platform!

The UI for Universal Windows Platform suite contains nearly all the controls you're used to from our suite for Windows 8.1, UI for WU. Namely, more than 20 great feature-rich and robust controls, including:

• Chart
  
• ListView
  
• Map
  
• SideDrawer
  

A new addition to UI for UWP as we debut the official release is a Beta of the DataGrid control, which has been optimized for the desktop and tablet form factor.

I am glad to inform you that the official release of the DataGrid will arrive as part of the Q2 2016 release due in the beginning of May. At that time we'll enhance the DataGrid for the phone form factor as well, making it a fully responsive control.



The UI for UWP comes in two versions—A Free Trial, and a Paid License:

Free Trial

Core product

With the Trial version you get a fully-functional copy of the product that occasionally displays a Trial message. You can start your Trial now and get the bits from here.

Support

With the Free Trial you get 30-day support in the form of forum threads or support tickets, where you can expect a reply from us in 72 hours from the moment you post your question.

Paid License

In the Paid version you can expect all you had in the Trial version, but it is free from the Trial message.

Support

Being a customer with a paid license you get access to our forums and support ticketing system, where using the latter will allow you to get a reply from us in 24 hours from the moment you ask your question.

Pricing

You can purchase UI for UWP for $599, or if you are interested in more products from the Telerik portfolio, you may opt to buy a larger DevCraft license that will give you access and support to more than 20 products (depending on the tier). For more information, please check the pricing page.

Source Code

As with the rest of our .NET products, the Paid license gives you access to the source code of the UI for UWP controls.

Demos

A demo application of developer-friendly examples of the code, which you can easily reuse in your applications, will be available soon.

Documentation

The features and API of UI for UWP follows those of UI for WU, so the documentation sets for these two products are stored within a single documentation site. You can explore those here.

UI for WU vs. UI for UWP—The Difference in a Nutshell

UI for Windows Universal is our suite dedicated to Windows 8.1 app development. Although the core of Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 is the same, the surface part is not, so it’s not generally suitable for apps that should run on Windows 10. UI for Universal Windows Platform is the suite for developing Windows 10 apps, and these apps can’t be run on Windows 8.1.

So, what are you waiting for? Go get a Trial and start making your UI for UWP apps now!

Happy coding!

The Process of Defining a Roadmap

As much as shaping a roadmap may seem quite a trivial task at first sight, it is actually the final outcome of thorough internal discussions between our Engineering, Product Management and Product Strategy leads. It also requires the identification and prioritization of key customer stories ​for which we would like to provide solutions in the next development cycle. The important factors taken into account during this process are as follows:

• Industry research and analysis
• Direct customer surveys and feedback (including our UserVoice portal) 
• Forum posts and support requests
• Input from Telerik leadership

As visible from the bullets above, your feedback strongly influences the decision making process. It​'s a big part of what guides ​our development plans for providing web and mobile solutions with Kendo UI ​for you​ as a developer. When this data is carefully analyzed, correlated and mapped to key deliverables, the roadmap clicks in and is published on our site.

Given this insight, here are the main deliverables which we plan to pack into our Q1 2016 installment. 

Spreadsheet Goes Official

More Kendo UI App Templates and Visual Studio Project Templates

Angular 2.0 and Web Components Integrations

Northwind Dashboard App - AngularJS version

(with downloadable source code) right in our online demos.



I'll also give you a hint​—you can even review the sample app implementation ​right now. It's freely accessible in our github repository here.
​

Grid Features

Extended Widget ​Functionality

• Option to disable calendar/date pickers dates (#2 voted item on our UV portal)
• Support for a child member being a root with multiple axis dimensions for the PivotGrid

Documentation Improvements

ASP.NET MVC Server Wrappers

ASP.NET vNext Support

New Visual Studio Dashboard Project Template

Beyond Q1 2016

Your Thoughts?

Knowing what's coming in the first major release of Kendo UI in 2016 and onward, I can't wait to hear what you think about our plans. Be the first to share ​your opinion in the comments. Also ​keep in mind that we operate in a dynamic environment, and our preliminary plans might undergo some changes going forward.

You can find the Color Theme Generator here, or easily launch it from the WPF demos application home screen:

The Color Theme Generator for WPF supports all of the current Telerik themes with dynamic resources, including the brand new Green theme. In the future we plan to keep it up to date by adding new themes to the application.



We have included a few predefined palettes for each of the themes, making it easier to choose the right colors for your application.

The source code of the application can be found in the downloads section of your Telerik account.

We hope that the Color Theme Generator for WPF will help you to nicely style your application built with Telerik UI for WPF,and make the color selection process a lot easier. If you have ideas for any features you want to see in the application please let us know, either through our Feedback portal or posting a comment below. 

Happy styling :)

Learn what to expect from Kendo UI in 2016 in terms of new development—features, integration with other JavaScript frameworks such as Angular v2 and React, and more.

As my colleague John Bristowe posted recently, Kendo UI and Angular have been a potent duo from quite some time now. We were among the pioneers to support the first version of the Angular framework starting back in 2013, and providing official supported integrations as part of our Kendo UI product from mid-2014 onward.

Angular has been progressively rising since then, with no indication that this is going to change in the foreseeable future. And it is one of the rare examples where an open source framework is so broadly adopted not only by SMBs, but by enterprises too. This can probably be justified by two main reasons:

1. Angular provides answers to most, if not all, burning questions about client app development and semantically structured code for developers coming from the world of structured languages, such as C#, .NET or Java.

2. Backed by Google. Provided that there’s a dedicated team of very experienced developers which fuels and drives the Angular train, this strengthens credibility and guarantees this is a supported growing framework which is here to stay, and won’t fade in oblivion as other JavaScript frameworks dominating in the past.

How Will Angular 2 Affect This Picture?

Angular 2 is a big step forward for the Angular framework, in terms of revamped and improved core architecture, observer pattern and data binding model, faster performance (up to 10x times in some cases), and concepts for (UI) components. The guys on the Angular team learned their lessons from Angular 1, and made changes accordingly for v2. All this comes with the price of major modifications and breaking changes compared to what we are familiar with in Angular 1.x.

There are also significant efforts from the Angular team focused on improving tooling, documentation and migration experience from Angular 1.x, the latter provisioned by the ng-upgrade and ng-forward Angular projects. 

Presently Angular 2 is in Beta, and has been since the second half of December 2015. There is speculation that the official release is expected to be in 2016, but so far there’s no official statement or evidence from Google about it.

Will Angular 2 be a hit? There are people who believe it will be, and there are others who think it may not be as successful as Angular 1 or other JavaScript frameworks. What is certain though is many developers are already looking into test-driving the new major version of Angular, and will most likely begin to adopt it in production around the end of 2016, or early 2017.

What’s Kendo UI Plan For Angular 2?

Kendo UI was one of the first major UI frameworks, if not the very first, to announce experimental support for the Angular 2 Preview back in September 2015. When the Angular 2 Beta came out in December of 2015, bringing a fundamental shift in the UI components paradigm, we realized that our experimental support for Angular 2 is no longer relevant, and will lead us to a dead end. That’s why we decided to abandon it and choose a radically new way to approach the Kendo UI integration with Angular 2.

Our ultimate goal is to rebuild the Kendo UI widgets and make them true UI components by the Angular 2 definition, with no jQuery dependency. This would basically result in a new subset of Kendo UI components, tailored to Angular 2, which can be integrated natively into Angular 2 applications.

As you might expect, the process of building Angular 2 UI components from the ground-up will require a considerable amount of time and engineering power to be done right.

1. First, we’ll start with components essential for building forms and collecting user input, such as dropdowns and comboboxes, calendar, date and time pickers, buttons and so forth.

2. Then we’ll continue with more complex components for building business UIs such as grid, charts, scheduler, spreadsheet, etc.

3. Next we’ll invest in creating internal infrastructure for continuous delivery, leveraging the popular NPM channel for package management and distribution. This way we’ll be able to easily publish what’s completed in each of our dev iterations and make it available to you right away.

To make our plan even more transparent, I can disclose some preliminary milestones and ETAs for deliverables with you (have in mind that these are subject to change and by no means final):

May 2016 (1st Wave)

• Dropdowns
• Date and Time Pickers
• Buttons
• Other Form Widgets (TBD)
• Tabstrip & Panelbar

September 2016 (2nd Wave)

• Chart/DataViz Preview
• Additional Form and Navigation Widgets

End of 2016 (3rd Wave)

• Chart/DataViz Beta
• Grid Preview
• Upload
• TreeView
• Other Widgets (TBD)

2017 (4th Wave)

• Rest of Remaining Kendo UI Widgets

Naturally, the development will be aligned with the current state of Angular 2 and upcoming versions of the framework in 2016, when at some point it is expected to reach RTM stage.

What About Other JavaScript Frameworks?

We won’t limit our focus on the integration with Angular 2 only. In parallel with the effort for removing the jQuery dependency and putting the basis of our UI components factory, we are also  going to deliver UI components for ReactJS in 2016. The roster for this ReactJS suite will pretty much follow the timeline for Angular 2 specified above, so if we can combine both into one visualization, here’s how it will look like:

How About The Existing Kendo UI Based On jQuery?

The existing jQuery-based Kendo UI widgets will continue to get our love (read: new additions) going into 2016. You can expect:

• Many Major Additions for the Html Editor widget
• New Features for the Grid, Chart and Spreadsheet
• Support for Bootstrap 4 and Visual Enhancements
• More App Templates and New Widgets
• Support for ASP.NET Core 1.0 RTM in our ASP.NET MVC server wrappers + Tag Helpers

I've highlighted only the biggest goals in our 2016 plan, and there are many other features to be developed which I won’t unveil in this post. Stay tuned for our future roadmap blog posts for further details.

The Path Forward

A very exciting journey lies ahead of Kendo UI in 2016! We can’t wait to see how the most popular JavaScript and HTML UI library will evolve to conquer new worlds and the hearts of Angular and React developers around the globe. You’re welcome to join us in this journey and open new horizons in front of you for creating amazing experiences for the mobile web!

• New Spreadsheet features
• Updated documentation
• The new “disable dates” feature for the Calendar and DataPicker widgets
• Cross platform development and deployment of MVC apps
• A look at MVC 6 TagHelpers
• An update on the future of Kendo UI widgets

The webinar will be hosted by Burke Holland, and the topics will be discussed by T.J VanToll, Cody Lindley, Jen Looper, and Ed Charbeneau. Make sure you sign up to attend.

Why Attend the Kendo UI Webinar?

Typically we keep the excitement under wraps until the webinar, but this time we're not going to make you wait. We have some exciting news to share today. In 2016 we’ll start releasing new Kendo UI Angular 2 & React components built from the ground up with no jQuery dependency. This will be the next evolution of Kendo UI. We’ll fill in some more details during the webinar. So attend! Attending will allow you to pepper us with questions at the end.

If finding out about the evolution of Kendo UI and interacting with us isn’t enough to motivate attendance, consider that just by showing up (and living in the U.S.) you could end up winning one of the following prizes:

• A XYZprinting Da Vinci 1.0 3D Printer
• A LEGO Mindstorms Programmable EV3 Customizable Robot with Sensors
• A Roku 4

What you can do Before the Release/Webinar

If you are uninitiated in the ways of a Kendo UI release, allow me to explain what is available for consumption before the official release:

• Consider watching the previous webinar just to make sure you are already caught up on Kendo UI changes and features.
• Review the questions and answers from the previous webinar.
• Read the Q1 release blog post, so you have a general idea of what is new in the upcoming release.
• Take the new Kendo UI code for a test drive in your own code context. If you are an active Kendo UI trial or commercial license holder, you can find the beta bits in your Telerik account for download. Or, if all you need is the minified code, you can pull the pre-release code from the official Kendo UI CDN.

Set a Reminder

We’ve heard your demands for a time span picker and we’ve answered them. No more using two date time pickers to setup your time intervals. We are happy to introduce the brand new RadTimeSpanPicker.

Default Components

We provide five default time span part components so you can easily set up the time intervals you wish to pick: DayTimeSpanComponent, HourTimeSpanComponent, MinuteTimeSpanComponent, SecondTimeSpanComponent and MillisecondTimeSpanComponent.

Each default component has three properties that determine the values available for picking: Minimum, Maximum and Step. When these properties are set the component’s ItemsSource is populated with decimal values that start from the Minimum value and end with the Maximum value, each time incremented with the Step value.

For example, if we wish to be able to pick intervals of time by day, but no more than 20 days, we should just add a DayTimeSpanComponent to our RadTimeSpanPicker and set its Maximum property:

Below you can find a sample definition of a RadTimeSpanPicker:

When we set the GenerateDefaultComponents = true we set up our RadTimeSpanPicker to include three components: one HourTimeSpanComponent, one MinuteTimeSpanComponent and one SecondTimeSpanComponent with their default values for Minimum, Maximum and Step.

The five default components make the setup of a regular RadTimeSpanPicker very easy and fast.

Custom StepTimeSpanComponent

However, there might be more custom scenarios that require custom time span components. We’ve provided a way to handle that too.

For example, let’s say we want to be able to pick week intervals. To achieve this we would need to create a custom StepTimeSpanComponentand override its GetTicksForItem() method that returns a TimeSpan as ticks value corresponding to the passed item from the ItemsSource:

Then just add it as component for our RadTimeSpanPicker:

The default components as well as the custom WeekTimeSpanComponentrely on their Minimum, Maximum and Step properties to generate their ItemsSource. 

Custom TimeSpanComponentBase

However, there might be scenarios when we would like to set the ItemsSource of our custom component ourselves.

For example, if we wish to create a composite component that accepts TimeSpan values that can be any size of time interval: 1 hour, 5 days, 1 week, etc. We can achieve that by creating a custom TimeSpanComponentBase:

Then just add it as component for our RadTimeSpanPicker:

For more details about RadTimeSpanPicker you can visit our online documentation and take a look at our demos.

Go ahead and try it out, create your custom components and let us know what you think about it.

This post provides an overview of our recent webinar for the R1 2016 release of Telerik DevCraft. If you missed it, you can also watch the video right here.

Earlier this week, Ed Charbeneau and I hosted webinars that provided an overview of all the latest and greatest features we shipped in the R1 2016 release of Telerik DevCraft. From the new spreadsheet control in Kendo UI and UI for ASP.NET MVC to the official release of our UI controls for Univeral Windows Platform (UWP), we covered a massive amount of content that highlighted everything that is awesome in Telerik DevCraft. Other highlights included:

• More templates, sample apps and better documentation for the web UI suites
• Official release of AutoCompleteTextView for iOS
• Windows Universal (8.1) support for SideDrawer for Xamarin.Forms
• Desktop UI improvements including a new control and theme for WPF
• Report sharing and improved scheduling logic in Report Server

Relive the Webinar

If you were unable to watch the webinar, don't worry. We posted the recording of the webinar up on YouTube for you to watch in its entirety and in high definition!

Prize Winners

Of course, it wouldn't be a webinar by Telerik without some cool prizes. This time around, we decided to give a prize to the attendee with the best question. We also picked a lucky attendee-at-random just to make things fun. Here are your winners:

Session 1: Robby Dyson (Microsoft Surface 3) and Scott Horrocks (Apple Watch)
Session 2: Brick Baldwin (Microsoft Surface 3) and Chris Barber (Apple Watch)

Congratulations to all our winners!

Questions and Answers

We received over 200 questions in total during the webinars. Unfortunately, we weren't able to answer all of them during the webinar. We're currently working on a blog post that will provide a rundown of the top questions that were asked during the webinar. We'll be publishing this blog post next week so stay tuned for that. In the meantime, take a moment to register for our next big webinar featuring Kendo UI on February 17!

How Do You Define a Roadmap?

As you may already know from past Kendo UI iterations and roadmap prioritization, the outcome from the following areas strongly influences the development direction of the product:

• Industry research and analysis
• Direct customer surveys and feedback (including our UserVoice portal) 
• Forum posts and support requests
• Input from Telerik leadership

With this in mind, here are our objectives and key deliverable for R2 2016, expected in the beginning of May.

Angular 2 and React Integrations (Previews)

As I already elaborated on in an earlier blog posted in January, two major initiatives we are going to execute on this year are to deliver native Angular 2 and React integrations for Kendo UI. This would require removing the jQuery dependency and building Kendo UI components (on top of a common codebase) that align with the Angular 2 and React component concepts. It will also involve supporting a continuous delivery model via npm modules distribution for these integrations. Read more details in the blog linked above.

We see that these two frameworks are already getting great momentum and gradual adoption, and the future of the mobile web will definitely be influenced by the path they set forward.

The so-called 'first wave' of Kendo UI components for Angular 2 and React is expected to be released to the public around R2 2016 (May). Moreover, the npm distribution might also allow us to disclose very early pre-Alpha bits even a month or so earlier, so stay tuned for more info in the coming months!

Bootstrap 4 and SASS Support

    

Another major piece of our R2'16 story will be the support for the next major version of the renowned Bootstrap framework (v4), and the introduction of SASS support for Kendo UI with a new Bootstrap 4 theme. With it we'll expose SASS variables as a theming API, and allow the translating of Bootstrap 4 SASS variables into Kendo UI widget configuration variables using SASS imports for this purpose.

As an end result, you'll be able to plug this mechanism seamlessly into your project when using the regular SASS styling workflow, and make the Kendo UI pieces blend with the style definitions of a Bootstrap 4 theme you chose for the project.

HTML Editor Features

With R2 our HTML Editor widget will receive some notable updates. It'll incorporate support for markdown (import and export), URL auto-detection and some other enhancements, which will make it even more flexible for your needs when editing HTML content.

VS Scaffolding Additions

The Visual Studio Scaffolder for Kendo UI widgets will be extended to support auto code generation for the TreeView. This will allow you to apply configuration settings and connect it to data by creating the respective controller-model relation and view from the Scaffolder UI.

Spreadsheet Enhancements

The Spreadsheet widget, officially released in R1 2016 and a cornerstone for building Excel-like interfaces for business web apps, will also receive updates and enhancements in the R2 timeframe. It'll become even more powerful and friendly to Excel-savvy users.

ASP.NET MVC Wrappers

ASP.NET Core 1.0 and MVC 6 Support

The RC2 and RTM releases of ASP.NET Core 1.0 (former ASP.NET 5 Core) and MVC 6 are coming in 2016, with no definite ETAs from Microsoft yet, as you can see from the public ASP.NET Core 1.0 Roadmap page. Regardless, our Telerik UI for ASP.NET MVC product already supports ASP.NET Core 1.0 RC1, and we'll extend this support to the upcoming RC2 and RTM updates.

Furthermore, a set of Tag Helpers for the ASP.NET MVC server wrappers of Kendo UI widgets (where applicable) are also within our scope towards R2'16. See how their syntax will look here.

New Visual Studio Dashboard Project Template

We'll also be expanding the set of predefined Visual Studio Project Templates for UI for ASP.NET MVC with a new Dashboard-like template, based on the Kendo UI App Template definition shipped in R1 2016. This template will become available with the R1 2016 SP1 release of the product, due in March.

VS Scaffolding Additions and More

With R2 our MVC Scaffolding utility will incorporate scaffolding capabilities for the TreeView MVC server wrapper. This will save you the hassle of manually generating boilerplate code for connecting a view (which hosts the treeview) to a controller and the corresponding model definition.

In addition, we'll introduce the option to assign a share data source among several MVC server wrappers, which is one of the most requested new features voted on our feedback portal.

How'll This Work for Me?

Wanna tell us how you are going to make use of these planned new additions for Kendo UI in your existing or future projects? Be the first to share in the comments section below. Also keep in mind that we operate in a dynamic environment, and our preliminary plans might undertake some changes going forward.

Got Feedback?

If you have suggestions or feature requests, visit our Feedback portal and submit them so they can be reviewed and voted on by the community, and prioritized for future development.

With every official release we introduce a bunch of features and improvements, and as a rule suggest you use the latest version of our controls in order to get the most out of them. Although we are doing our best to avoid introducing changes that affect the public API, sometimes the product has to be changed in order to improve.

We have been reviewing your feedback regarding the upgrade process and noticed that in some cases upgrading is not a straightforward task. This inspired us to create the Telerik Upgrade API Analyzer tool and to make upgrading easier for you.

This tool could help you determine a problematic area when upgrading your WPF, WinForms or ASP.NET Web Forms application with a newer version of our controls. It analyzes your project, notifies you when a mismatch is found and points out the exact piece of code that should be modified. But, let’s start from the beginning…

How to Get It?

The Telerik Upgrade API Analyzer has a pretty simple interface. All you need to do is:

1. Choose the platform
2. Select the current version of Telerik assemblies you are using
3. Select the version you would like to upgrade to

Keep in mind that the items of the three combo boxes are generated on the fly depending on your choices, and you should select the desired values consecutively.

When you are ready with this, open the solution you are planning to upgrade. The tool will start analyzing automatically and will show the differences between the selected versions, which affect the code used in the particular solution.

The result shows you the exact places in the code which should be modified if you upgrade to the new version of our controls. It pinpoints the exact line and character where a modification would be required. 

From the report you can also see what the change is (Deleted/Modified/Obsoleted) and which node of the code has been modified (i.e., is it a class, a method or a property). For some of the cases a “What to do now?” message is displayed. We are planning to expand this functionality to cover all changes with a user-friendly message.

The Telerik Upgrade API Analyzer uses our RadGridView for WPF for presenting the results and you can take advantage of its grouping, resizing, sorting and filtering in order to arrange the data in the most comfortable way.

Save it for Later

You have the ability to save the gathered information for a later moment through the Export button in the upper right corner. The data will be arranged and exported to an HTML document.

Stay Tuned for More

The Telerik Upgrade API Analyzer is a subject of current and future development and in its next versions you’ll be able to take advantage of even more handy functionalities. The tool will check for updates automatically and will notify you with a dialog when a new version is available so you are always up-to-date.

We Really Appreciate Your Feedback!

We have created this analyzer based on our customers’ feedback. Now, we are publishing a prototype version of Telerik Upgrade API Analyzer to our community and will be very happy to hear your feedback about it. Sharing your thoughts will help us in finding what features you need most and how to prioritize our plans for adding more features for you. Please, don’t hesitate to send us any comments you may have at UpgradeApiAnalyzer@telerik.com.

During our Telerik DevCraft R1 2016 release webinar, we received far too many questions to answer at the time. Today, your questions are answered!

Last week, we hosted the Telerik DevCraft R1 2016 release webinar, featuring everything that's new in the Telerik DevCraft suite of tools. Overall, the webinar was a huge success. We had over 200 questions asked in about 60 minutes. Now, I don't know about you, but my typing speed isn't at the rate it needs to be to answer that many questions in that short of a time period. So naturally we decided to answer your questions in a blog post. As promised, here they are!

We had a lot of questions about the (new) spreadsheet control and Telerik UI for ASP.NET AJAX and Telerik UI for ASP.NET MVC. We also had a lot of questions covering our other products as well. I’ve tried to summarise the top questions we received in this blog post. Hopefully, your question is answered here. If it isn’t or you have a question about any of our products, please feel free to submit a question below!

Questions about the Spreadsheet

Is the spreadsheet resizeable?
Yes, the spreadsheet can be set to any size and can shrink/grow with the element container or viewport.

Does the spreadsheet have Excel-like functions such as VLOOKUP?
Yes! Check it out on our list of formulas page.

Is there Excel provider in Telerik UI for ASP.NET MVC or Kendo UI similar to the one for Telerik UI for ASP.NET AJAX?
No, this is for Telerik UI for ASP.NET AJAX only. The spreadsheet in Telerik UI for ASP.NET MVC is easily saved, imported, and exported using JSON.

Can we create multiple sheets and toggle between them?
Multiple sheets per document are supported. A tab strip at the bottom of the UI is used to toggle between sheets.

What is the maximum number of rows you can load into the spreadsheet control?
In general, the spreadsheet does not have any restriction for the number of rows or columns it can hold. We grow the spreadsheet in terms of memory usage as it’s needed. It’s more a constraint of your available memory for the browser. Be aware that loading massive amounts of data into the spreadsheet may take some time.

Can we pull out the spreadsheet data and do other things with it other than just save back to the same file? Like looping through the cells and stuff? We’re looking for an OWC replacement so we’re wondering if it will be able to do most of the same things.
The spreadsheet control has a robust API for managing data. You can import data into the spreadsheet as well as export it out through JSON. The spreadsheet features a built-in export-to-Excel functionality which is also fully actionable in the browser.

Is it possible to import data from Microsoft Excel and use the new spreadsheet to make the changes then save the data into SQL Server?
Yes! Please watch our previous webinar for a similar example.

Is the Excel style filtering also available in Kendo UI or is it limited to Telerik UI for ASP.NET MVC?
Excel filtering is available for Kendo UI, Telerik UI for ASP.NET MVC, and Telerik UI for ASP.NET AJAX.

How easy is it to load data from the Kendo UI Grid control into the spreadsheet control?
VERY easy. Seriously.

Does the spreadsheet provider respect any restrictions (i.e. editable cells) that are in the original document?
Please refer to this discussion.

Would you be able to save the spreadsheet directly into a back-end database (e.g. Oracle)?
Of course. You could export in-memory and push to a remote endpoint that would persist the data to an underlying database.

Can you have a spreadsheet where you have the basics set up including formulas and have some fields locked out so that the user can only make some changes and save them?
Please refer to this discussion.

Is there a way to have a hybrid of the spreadsheet control and a GridView control where you just have the cells from the spreadsheet without the Excel-style header, but you get the formula processing of the spreadsheet?
Currently, there is not. Please visit feedback.telerik.com and submit a suggestion if you would like to see a feature added.

Can we control the mode of the spreadsheet (read-only vs editable)?
Please refer to this discussion.

The spreadsheet import process doesn’t persist data validation list rules when imported. Would that be a future supported functionality?
If there is a specific feature like this one that you would like to see added to the spreadsheet then please visit feedback.telerik.com and let us know. We use this portal to gauge our customers needs and to prioritize our road maps.

Are all Excel formulas included in the spreadsheet control? Where can we find a complete list of available formulas?
We have published a list of formulas that we support in the spreadsheet control.

I’ve found that colors aren’t preserved when importing spreadsheets with conditional formatting. Would there be future support for conditional formating validations?
The import function doesn’t preserve everything at the moment. The original goal was to get the data imported correctly. Our plan is to improve it over time. We are working to improve this aspect of the spreadsheet control.

Can you do SQL Server CRUD integration with the ASP.NET MVC spreadsheet control?
Yes, this is done through the DataSource component that’s bound to the spreadsheet itself.

Is it possible (out-of-the-box) to use SQL Server as the backend data source? Then, allow the user to edit the data in the spreadsheet control and save the data back to the SQL Server. Basically, letting the user do their CRUD operations through a spreadsheet. That is where a lot of users are used to doing CRUD.
Is this for UI for ASP.NET MVC? If so then it’s a yes and no answer. The spreadsheet is bound to the DataSource component, which is a fundamental aspect of our framework. This DataSource needs to be bound to some backend data. However, most database admins that I know would NEVER expose SQL Server (or any other database) directly and publicly. So, in order to get around this, why not create a simply CRUD-oriented service endpoint? That would totally meet your needs.

Are there plans to SharePoint enable the spreadsheet control?
Not explicitly, no. However, why not host it inside a Web Part? That should work.

Is there some support for Power Pivot functionality in spreadsheet control in Telerik UI for ASP.NET AJAX?
Pivots are not available. Please request this feature at feedback.telerik.com!

Is there an equivalent SpreadsheetDocumentProvider for Telerik UI for ASP.NET MVC?
No, this feature is for Telerik UI for ASP.NET AJAX only. The spreadsheet in Telerik UI for ASP.NET MVC can be easily saved, imported, and exported via JSON.

Questions about Telerik UI for ASP.NET AJAX and Telerik UI for ASP.NET MVC

Can we export data bound to a DataGrid directly to the new spreadsheet control, as opposed to forcing the user to download the XLS?
Yes, almost any scenario can be resolved using either AJAX callbacks or the Document Processing API.

How extensive is the enabling of lightweight rendering?
You can enable lightweight rendering per control or per project. Lightweight rendering emits HTML5 and CSS3 and you will see proper semantic tags throughout.

Does the Kendo UI grid filter allow you to filter to null values?
Yes, it’s now supported in the latest release.

We have a legacy web application built on an earlier version of Telerik. We have upgraded to the current Telerik library. The app was pre-MVC but is an ASP.NET app. Can we integrate the new stuff with our platform?
ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC can run side-by-side so you should be able to do this. Of course, that’s a very “it depends” answer. It’s best to build your new stuff on the latest and greatest and then migrate everything over part-by-part.

Which has the more developed controls, Telerik UI for ASP.NET MVC or Telerik UI for ASP.NET AJAX? And, if Telerik UI for ASP.NET MVC is more developed, will it always lead Telerik UI for ASP.NET AJAX?
Our ASP.NET AJAX controls have been around longer. However, they target different environments and have difficult dependencies.

Are there any useful extensions/plugins you’d recommend for Visual Studio Code for helping when using Kendo UI?
We’re evaluating our list of extensions for Visual Studio to see what we can move over to VS Code. Mind you, VS Code has a lot of great extensions for JavaScript development.

Does Telerik UI for ASP.NET MVC auto-scale for mobile devices? Or, are there mobile-specific controls you need to use?
Our controls are responsive and adaptive. Of course, you need to use a grid system and our Responsive Panel.

Is RenderMode="Lightweight" supported with Microsoft Edge?
Yes. Lightweight rendering is ideal for modern browsers. However, legacy browsers like IE6–7 could present some challenges.

I know there is tight integration for Angular2 but has anything considered AureliaJS?
We’re are exploring support for Aurelia. Please check this blog post for extra info.

Is there some SharePoint 2013/SharePoint 360 support for the spreadsheet control in Telerik UI for ASP.NET AJAX?
You could host the spreadsheet in a webpart. However, out-of-the-box support isn’t available at this point in time.

Is it possible to search nested grids? Is it possible to search the child elements as well inside the filter seach?
Yes, the built-in filtering is separate and isolated. That means that filters applied on nested girds won’t impact their parent. Also, if parents are filtered and that filter takes out a child grid then the filtering is preserved.

Is the full text search available in grid for Telerik UI for ASP.NET or Kendo UI?
See this forum post.

Where is the line drawn when choosing either a simple .NET vs a MVC website?
Well, that depends on your requirements and your skill set. I’ll assume you’re using ASP.NET MVC. If that’s the case then ASP.NET MVC gives you more control over your markup. At the end of the day, I would go with whatever your team is more familiar with.

Is the material theme available in Telerik UI for ASP.NET MVC?
Yes! Check it out through our Theme Builder tool.

Will Telerik Theme Builder for ASP.NET AJAX allow us to chose between Bootstrap 3 and Bootstrap 4?
Currently, the Telerik Theme Builder for ASP.NET AJAX supports Bootstrap 3.

Does Kendo UI use and/or support Sass?
Currently, Kendo UI has .less support. However, with Bootstrap 4 moving to Sass we are considering .sass for future releases.

What’s the best way to integrate ASP.NET AJAX responsiveness with Bootstrap?
First, enable the Bootstrap theme on the project. Then, set the rendering mode to auto; this will enable responsive/adaptive behaviors on all controls.

Would we see Sass templates support in addition to Less?
Since Bootstrap 4 will be based on Sass, this is something we are considering for future releases.

When will you add the Excel-like filtering for the RadGrid in Telerik UI for ASP.NET AJAX?
It’s already there as part of the R1 2016 release.

Microsoft has confused me to no end with this name change to ASP.NET Core 1.0. What does that mean for MVC 6? Does that mean MVC 6 is still only a part of core? Or, will it also be part of the full 4.6 stack?
Recently, the ASP.NET team changed the name of its framework from ASP.NET 5 to ASP.NET Core 1.0. For more information about this change, please refer to Scott Hanselman’s blog post entitled, ASP.NET 5 is dead - Introducing ASP.NET Core 1.0 and .NET Core 1.0.

Where can we sign up for Kendo UI webinar?
The Telerik Kendo UI Q1’16 Release Webinar takes place on February 17 at 11AM EST. Sign up today!

Will Telerik UI for ASP.NET AJAX support ASP.NET Core 1.0 with DNX and ASP.NET AJAX soon?
ASP.NET Core 1.0 does not currently support ASP.NET Web Forms. Microsoft would need to add Web Forms support to make this possible.

We are planning on migrating our applications from Silverlight. What are the functional gaps between the Telerik’s Silverlight UI controls and the ASP.NET MVC controls?
That’s a difficult question to answer since they target very different runtimes. Currently, 70+ controls are available with Telerik UI for ASP.NET MVC. I would recommend having a look and see where the gaps are based on your requirements.

Will future versions of Kendo UI implement the current Web Components standard?
We announced support for Web Components back in July 2015. Since that time, we’ve shipped support for Web Components in Kendo UI. Please check out our documentation on the subject for more information.

How does one migrate a project with an older version of Telerik UI for ASP.NET AJAX to the latest version?
First, back-up your project. (Always do this. Source control helps here.) Next, right-click on the solution in Visual Studio and use the configure/update project wizard.

Do the Telerik UI for ASP.NET AJAX themes support the W3C accessbility standard AAA, by default?
Telerik ASP.NET controls are Section 508-compliant and follow the W3C Web Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 for level A, AA, or AAA compliance. Also, all components strictly follow W3C specifications to be XHTML1.1-compliant and most of them are HTML5-compliant.

Is the Touch Manager you’ve released for WPF planned for ASP.NET MVC?
We have no plans at this time.

Does changing the hosting platform affect the output of the UI in any way? Or, is the hosting on Ubuntu as seamless as it is on Windows?
Kendo UI is built around a combination of front-end resources like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Hosting shouldn’t be an issue. That stated, the server wrappers we’ve built for ASP.NET MVC are a different animal. The good news is that our latest version of Telerik UI for ASP.NET MVC supports ASP.NET MVC Core, allowing you to run cross-platform.

Is there a similar theme builder for Kendo UI with AngularJS?
I’m not sure how to answer that. Our themes are based on CSS. So, it’s what you emit as markup that’s important.

Is there a plan to support a export to DOCX functionality from the Kendo UI Editor similar to what the spreadsheet control can do with export to Excel?
PDF export is available since Q1 2015. DOCX export is set for future consideration.

Does the spreadsheet control for Kendo UI support live integration with Kendo UI charts?
Yes, this is facilitated through the DataSource component. For Kendo UI charts, you simply need to respond (accordingly) to the changes that are made through it.

Does the spreadsheet control for Kendo UI support tab/enter and shift+tab/enter for keyboard navigation between cells (like in Excel)?
Yes, this behavior is the same.

Does the spreadsheet control for Kendo UI provide formulas to calculate values across other cells (like excel)? Is there a mechanism to add custom formulas to this list?
Yes, you can simply reference cells in your formulas. It’s just like Excel. Custom formulas are done through configuration.

Does your date picker have a time picker as well?
Yep. Check it out here!

Miscellaneous Questions

What is a XAML?
eXtensible Application Markup Language

I like the searchable GridView in Telerik UI for WPF. However, it seems too simple to use. There are any boundaries to just turning it on?
It’s customisable if that’s what you’re asking.

Does ShowSearchPanel default to false for the GridView in Telerik UI for WPF?
Yes, it does.

Are the XAML declarations created for me when I drag the controls on to my Xamarin.Forms page?
This depends on your development environment. We have controls for Visual Studio that support the visual designer.

Can the gesture manager be used to create your own gestures? For example, using two figures in a swirling motion to change values in a gauge.
Our touch support is listed here.

Does code interoperability exist besides iOS, Android, and Windows 10 with your UI controls?
That scenario is supported through Xamarin. And yes, we have controls for Xamarin: Telerik UI for Xamarin.

You have shown some great resources for native mobile development. In your opinion, how does the Telerik Platform fit into the overall mobile development strategy?
We have a number of great backend services available. It’s a peanut butter and chocolate combination!

What’s the best way of using an entity data source and CRUD on procedures in the database server? I’d suggest checking out the numerous articles on MSDN relating to this topic since it’s outside the scope of Telerik’s products. There’s also a number of courses covering this up on PluralSight.

When developing for ASP.NET Core 1.0 to run on any server, is the .NET code the same as if developing for IIS? In other words can I decide to move it to a non-Windows server at a later time and expect it to work the same?
Generally-speaking, yes. That’s the goal.

As changes are made to UI is there any consideration to updating the existing demo projects on the forums?
Some of them that are highly visited don’t necessarily function for current versions of UI or were built on older versions of visual studio and take additional work to get to a usable state for reference. We try very hard to keep the demos up-to-date. However, they aren’t always updated entirely because parts of each UI library change from release to release. If you do spot something that’s broken then please let us know!

Have Another Question?

We've tried to answer some of the most common questions here. However, if you have a question that's not here or a feature request that isn't addressed, please feel free to leave a comment below or over in our Feedback Portal.

See what's coming in the second major release of UI for ASP.NET AJAX for 2016, including new skin effects and enhancements.

Building on the changes we released in R1, some great skin effects and enhancements are coming in R2 2016 for Telerik ASP.NET AJAX. They will not only improve the look and feel of the controls, but also unify their rendering and make them more customizable—features requested by all of you!

Let me begin with the lovely and multi-functional Theme Builder, followed by a list of the most valuable improvements.

Theme Builder and More

The Theme Builder is going to become more powerful and allow you to create, improve and/or customize the Material, Silk, Glow and MetroTouch skins.

Along with them, you will be able to style all currently missing controls—Cloud Upload, Gantt, Media Player, Image Gallery, Light Box, Site Map, Spell, Spreadsheet and Wizard.

In addition, we will be looking into the possibility of including support for Bootstrap 4 Themes. This will allow you to import Twitter Bootstrap themes and convert them to Telerik skins that the controls can be styled with.

And that‘s not all! You’ll be able to take advantage of a number of underlying or visible improvements in the controls’ appearance, such as:

• Ripple effect for the Material Skin—yes, we know that this theme is very trendy and we will continue to enhance it.
  
• Silk and Glow skin refactoring and improvements.
• Remove font family and font size from the controls—this is pretty handy, because the controls will inherit the default font settings of the page where they reside. Due to the high flexibility of the controls’ rendering and you can always tweak them further and apply your own font settings.
• Font Icons enhancements to make the icons crisper and nicer looking, with unique identifiers.
• Focus and Active States of the controls.
• Primary buttons will be included in more controls to enrich their usability.

That’s not all, folks—the benefits for you are even bigger. They concern some of the most popular controls, including Spreadsheet, Grid and others. 

Spreadsheet

With the upcoming R1 2016 SP1 release, we are going to provide the full set of skins for the spread. Additionally the R2 release will bring you built-in import capabilities from the popular XSLS file format.

Grid

RadGrid will become more useful, with the following new features that we know the community has been anticipating:

• Built-in Print button
• Ability to hide the context button for some columns
• KeepInScreenBounds functionality for the Edit popup
• Persisting checked items in the check list filtering of the grid (Persistence Framework)

RadEditor

The Table Wizard and Management experience will be greatly enriched through the new context menu and redesigned Table Wizard.

New CheckBoxList and RadioButtonList Controls

The new lightweight and easy to use RadCheckBoxList and RadRadioButtonList controls will be of help in your everyday work.

Useful How-To Articles and Advanced Tutorials

We do appreciate your valuable feedback from the annual AJAX survey 2015. We'll do our best to make the support resources—especially the "How-To" articles—more visible and accessible by search engines, and will produce even more useful tutorials. You can also expect a new Outlook-inspired Visual Studio project template as well as redesigned and modern looking Sales Dashboard sample app.

We take you quickly through the most interesting additions in the R2 2016 official release. 

Based on our research and your feedback, we've put together a list of the most interesting additions in the R2 2016 official release for UI for WPF and Silverlight. Let's walk through them together.

New Controls

Layout for WPF

We will introduce a new addition to our UI for WPF suite—the Layout control. It will streamline the way you arrange all other components in your WPF project.

New Integration Demo

ERP System

This time we’ll join the forces of our components and will show you a simplified implementation of one of the most popular business scenarios in modern business—an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. It will use the data from the popular Adventure Works database.

New Features

Docking for WPF

We are working on introducing the option to implement custom logic for saving and loading the layout of Docking component.

GridView for WPF

Pinned (Frozen) rows will allow you to anchor rows to the top of RadGridView.

SpreadProcessing

A new API which will allow the generation of XLSX documents with minimal memory consumption and excellent performance. Export large datasets to XLSX in a matter of seconds.The cells are created, formatted, written to the XLSX file stream and disposed consecutively one by one, which significantly reduces memory consumption.

PivotGrid

Based on some feedback we are going to add the option to exclude the null values from the Aggregate functions.

We Value Your Opinion

We're always cooking up new enhancements, like our new Upgrade API Analyzer, newly exposed TouchManager, and lots more.

Your feedback plays a key role in planning the development direction of our controls and features. Please, do not hesitate to share any thoughts, opinions and ideas on the WPF Feedback portal, where they can be liked and prioritized by the community. 

There are many choices when it comes to building SPAs with AngularJS. We've asked our developers to share the best tools they love to get the job done.

So you’re starting a new project and want to build a single-page application (SPA) using AngularJS. Being one of the most popular JavaScript frameworks today, there are dozens of tools that can make your work easier. The question is, which ones to choose.

To help you get a running start, we asked our developers to list their most precious AngularJS (1.x) dev tools based on several months of evaluation and experience. It is only natural that the front-end stack has overtaken much of the article. Still, we have added their choices of back-end and testing tools for completeness:

Back-End Tools

Express Server Running on Node.js

Express is the most common choice for application framework when it comes to Node.js development. We use because it is very easy to get started with and there are tons of support resources on the web.

Open API Initiative (Formerly Swagger)

Open API Initiative is our developers’ favorite specification for kick-ass RESTful APIs. The implementation is usually done with express and swagger-node-express. The new generic name is a little unfortunate, though.

Build Tool/Task-Runner

Now, we know that a lot of developers prefer not to use a task-runner or any build automation tool at all, but it saves a lot of time and repetitive effort, and we’re sold on them. While we started with Grunt, we switched to Gulp because it allowed us to write our build file in pure JavaScript. No need for complex configurations, as was the case with Grunt. Plus, we found Gulp to be faster and the better performing of the two.

UI Components

You guessed it—we walk the walk by relying on our own Kendo UI HTML5 and JavaScript framework for its integration with Angular via built-in directives. It has a vast number of highly evolved UI components; the Grid widget alone has over 100 features. One of the best things about using UI components is the amount of time and effort they save from having to build (often complex) elements from scratch—ours have taken us literally years to develop.

CSS

We use Sass for writing the CSS. It is far more powerful than writing vanilla CSS as it provides useful abstractions to avoid repetition and save time. Compared to LESS, it is more verbose, which in our case is a good trait.

We have the following Gulp plugins for Sass-to-CSS complilation:

• gulp-sass plugin, which is unequivocally described as a "very light-weight wrapper around node-sass, which in turn is a Node binding for libsass, which in turn is a port of Sass"
• gulp-autoprefixer for automatic injection of browser prefixes
• gulp-sourcemaps for, well, source-maps generation

Development Time Productivity Tools

Browser Sync

Browser sync helps you test your app browser support by cutting repetitive manual tasks. “It’s like an extra pair of hands. Customise an array of sync settings from the UI or command line to create a personalised test environment,“ reads its webpage.

Wiredep

All SPA applications have an index page, which often includes many scripts and styles tags. It is very tedious to maintain them manually and add a new script/style tag whenever there is something new. Wiredep solves this problem by adding scripts/styles tag whenever a new dependency is added to a preset folder(s).

Gulp-inject

gulp-injectis a “stylesheet, JavaScript and webcomponent reference injection plugin for Gulp.” Its creators proclaim, "No more manual editing of your index.html!"

Linting Tools

JsHint 

JsHint is “a tool that helps to detect errors and potential problems in your JavaScript code,” and is probably the most popular code-quality tool. We use it for sanity checks of our JavaScript.

JSCS

JsHint used to support coding-convention checks as well, but the authors of the tool decided to offload that functionality to another tool—JSCS. We use it to enforce coding conventions across the team.

The combination of JsHint and JSCS is very important if your team wants to write consistent and clean code. And which team doesn’t?

Testing Tools

Jasmine vs Mocha

Jasmine and Mocha are the two most famous frameworks for writing unit tests in the Angular world. One would usually go with Mocha if they want more freedom for the assertion framework and mocking frameworks used. This is exactly why we chose to go for the combo Mocha + Chai + Sinon.

Chai

Mocha is usually used with Chai as an assertion framework. Chai supports notations for both test-driven development (TDD) and behavior-driven development (BDD). It also goes well with a fresh blueberry muffin.

Sinon

Sinon is the usual choice for a mocking/stubbing framework when one goes the Mocha + Chai way.

Karma

Karma is the de-facto standard for test runners. One can write and run tests with Mocha/Jasmine only; however, Karma is what provides the spawn browser support and the tons of integration tools with other frameworks.

Build-Time Optimization Tools

UglifyJS

UglifyJS is a “JavaScript parser, minifier, compressor or beautifier toolkit.” Each JavaScript application contains HTML, JS and CSS that should be processed in some way before shipping to production. We use Uglify to minimize the JavaScript and CSS because of its superior performance when it comes to file size. The fact that it was developed by a colleague of ours at Telerik, Mihai Bazon, is an extra benefit.

CSSO

CSSO is pretty much the same as UglifyJS but for CSS.

HTML Min

HTML min optimizes the HTML and is used together with templateCache.

TemplateCache

templateCache can be seen as the "hub" where Angular finds its view templates.

Show Us Yours

All the tools in this list help developers move their application from the idea to the production stage faster and, arguably, more smoothly. They’ve helped increase our team’s productivity and performance and we hope they do the same for you.

Let us know in the comments what AngularJS dev tools you’d add or remove from this list and whether you use some of the same ones!

Related Articles:

• What To Expect From JavaScript In 2016 – Frameworks
• What to Expect in 2016 for Kendo UI with Angular 2 and More
• Speed Up Your AngularJS Development
• Will Angular 2 Be a Success? You Bet!
• All About AngularJS
• AngularJS Directives For The Rest Of Us