By Popular Demand, Control Panel introduces Installing other Versions of Products

You’ve asked and Telerik has listened. The Telerik Control Panel has been updated and introduces the ability to install, repair, remove and turn features on and off for multiple versions of the same product on your PC.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU

Most organizations deal with large volumes of custom in-house developed software. The time commitment to upgrade and test newer versions of Telerik controls with these applications can be daunting as the systems are so numerous. The ability to install multiple versions of the same control suite will allows you to plan out staggered updates to your applications, all the while moving forward using the current version of the product for new development.

Telerik Reporting is another case where running parallel versions will come in handy. As you’ve seen from the Q2 2013 webinar, Telerik Reporting is now being built on .Net 4.0. If you have Reporting Libraries that you are not ready to upgrade yet, this is the solution for you. You are able to run the older versions of Telerik Reporting to support and maintain those libraries, and at the same time you can take advantage of the newest features of Telerik Reporting leveraging .Net 4.0!

LOCATING AND INSTALLING PARALLEL VERSIONS

For this example we will install multiple versions of the WPF control suite located in DevTools. Open Telerik Control Panel and click on the WPF item in the DevTools section. You will be presented with a slide-out that displays the current version of the control suite. In the colored stripe above the documentation label, you will see a label to “View All Versions”.

By clicking this label, you will be presented with another screen that will list versions of the product that you are able to install.

This screen provides you with the ability to turn features on and off, repair and remove any versions of the product that you have installed. It will also provide you the ability to select other versions to install in parallel on your machine. You will notice that major builds and subsequent service packs are available for install. If for instance you wish to install a service pack version, the original version will gray out as they are not compatible to be run in parallel (service packs always supersede original installations and cannot be run in parallel).

For this example, let’s choose to install the April 3, 2013 release of the WPF control suite. To install, simply check the Install checkbox, and click the close arrow.

Next click the Proceed button at the bottom of the Control Panel screen, set your installation preferences, accept the license terms and click Proceed. The installation will continue as you would normally expect. Once completed, if you revisit the WPF section, you will now see that you now have two versions of the WPF controls installed.

When we open Visual Studio and create a new RadControls for WPF Application, you will also see both versions available in the drop down.

CONCLUSION

Telerik Control Panel certainly makes a developer’s life easier. The ability to install and remove parallel versions of Telerik products gives you additional flexibility and freedom to do the work you need to accomplish.

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