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If there’s one thing I like on par with end-of-year holidays and Christmas spirit, it’s the third major Kendo UI release in mid November. Coming just in time to fulfill the web developer’s wishes and make the holidays “software” gift sack perfectly round and dandy.  What more you can want?

But enough fantasizing, and let’s cut to the chase as everything in the Kendo UI Q3 2014 is real and tangible, and you can experience it NOW!

What’s in the Gift Sack

With the explosion of operating system and devices, inevitable in the era of the mobile revolution and the modernized web desktop we entered, the inherent fear of the web developer is how to preserve, manage and export user data on-the-go. Being online or occasionally connected, and using different devices and screens.

Kendo UI gives you the weapon to defeat this fear! Powered with:

  • offline storage and syncing support for the Kendo UI Data Source
  • client export to Excel and Pdf for all data management widgets
  • and the first official drops of the TreeList and PivotGrid widgets

you have everything you need to make sure your end users will always be able to store and get data either online or offline, manipulate it in any way they want and export it for distributed viewing.

And that is merely one of the presents in the bag!

Raw Stats First

To give you a head start, I’ll share some plain numbers about what’s been accomplished in this release:

  • 1 new widget and 1 moving into RTM in Kendo UI Professional
  • 29 enhancements made for Kendo UI Professional
  • 110 issues closed for Kendo UI Professional
  • 3 major new features in Kendo UI Core
  • 51 issues closed for Kendo UI Core

Read on to learn what else you can find in the Q3 2014 release of Kendo UI.

Offline Storage and Sync (Core)

In addition to the existing rich functionality our Kendo UI DataSource already provides, now you don’t have to worry about whether your user is online or disconnected when operating with data. The modifications will be saved locally and automatically synced when the user is back online, saving you the hassle to code these operations manually and preserving the state of the data with your custom logic.

Here you can find the demo presenting this feature.

DataSource_offline_support

Client Export to Excel and Pdf (Professional)

We all know that sharing app data does not necessarily happen online all the time. In a variety of cases users would like to be able to export what they have as data and visuals in their web or mobile app, to forward or discuss it with colleagues or higher management in their organizational hierarchy. Sometimes they may even like to dump it in an MS Excel sheet for further processing. This is where the new client export of the Kendo UI framework fit into place. In Q3 2014 we deliver client export capabilities to Excel and Pdf for our grid and treelist widgets (read below for the latter), as well as Pdf export for all DataViz widgets (chart, diagram, gantt, gauges, barcodes, etc.) and the scheduler. Moreover, you don’t have to worry about server backend or server export processing configuration, since the client export solution is server platform-agnostic.

KUI_Export
See Demo

TreeList and PivotGrid Widgets (Professional)

These are the new entries to the extensive set of Kendo UI widgets. 

The TreeList (#1 voted item on our feedback portal, also oftentimes dubbed as TreeGrid in the JS world) is a supercharged hybrid combining treeview and grid features into one, i.e. hierarchical presentation coupled with data columns with sorting, filtering and data editing capabilities, plus aggregates. Indispensable when you want to display and manipulate self-referencing/homogenous hierarchy structures.
 
TreeList

See Demos

Introduced as Beta in Q2, the time has come for the PivotGrid widget to evolve further and move into RTM with Q3. Most notable new features available with this release are support for KPIs, sorting, templates and more styling customizations. These additions put more power in the developer’s hands to visualize and operate with your multi-dimensional data via its UI representation.

PivotGrid_KPI

See Demos

iOS8 and Android L compatibility + Theme (Core)

Being on top of the mobile innovative designs is something Kendo UI is known for. The new major versions of iOS and Android (Lollipop) are already here, and you can find they are fully supported by our Kendo UI framework. Furthermore, in Q3 we integrated a new modern UX theme across all widgets – web, dataviz and mobile – inspired by Android Material Design. Don’t shy away and try it now, as you will be pleased!

MaterialTheme

Improved AngularJS Support for Mobile Widgets (Core)

Starting Q2’14, Kendo UI has inherent integration with AngularJS, being part of our Kendo UI Core offering. Thanks for the positive feedback about it! To make you even happier when using Angular and Kendo UI together, we are shipping AngularJS improvements for our mobile application framework and views, giving you the same smooth experience when using mobile layouts and transitions in Kendo UI-powered Angular mobile apps.

See Demo

Drawing Engine Utilization for All Dataviz Widgets (Professional)

Leveraging our DataViz drawing engine API used “behind the scenes” by our widgets for rendering, our charts get a significant energy boost in terms of performance and visual perfection. And not only that, but this paves the way for additional charting customizations which were not possible before, as well as delivers performance improvements to all DataViz widgets.

See Demo

And More

Let’s not forget the existing widgets in the suite which get some major additions with this release. Below are a few key enhancements I would like to draw your attention to:

  • Grid - multi-column headers and save/restore settings. Features which give you greater flexibility when visualizing table data or would want to persist grid settings for different users/page visitors.
  • Scheduler – Timeline view. Frequently requested view variation that delivers another means to display your appointments and events.
  • Diagram – CRUD support. Don’t be limited only to diagram visualization, as now you can perform data editing to modify the structure of your diagrams in real time.
  • Gantt resources, allowing assignments or distribution of resources required for tasks completion.
  • Multiple pointers support for gauges, OData v4 support for the DataSource component, etc.

Grid Save/Restore settings
Grid__SaveRestoreSettings

See Demo

Scheduler Timeline View
Scheduler_Timeline

See Demo

Diagram CRUD


Diagram_CRUD
See Demo

Gantt Resources
Gantt_Resources

See Demo

Note that these highlights are by no means everything packed in this major update, hence I suggest you resort to the complete release notes log below for a comprehensive list.

Server wrappers

As with each Kendo UI release, all new widgets receive server-side wrappers for ASP.NET MVC, Java (JSP) and PHP to facilitate developers who feel more at home with server-side instead of client-side development. This means that the widgets (and features) listed above are directly available in our UI for ASP.NET MVC, UI for JSP and UI for PHP products.

Release Webinar

Join us for the Kendo UI November Release Webinar on November 20 at 11 a.m. ET to have a first-hand experience with the newest Kendo UI release, which facilitates you manipulate data with the following features:

  • New Export to PDF in all data visualization widgets, and Excel export for the Grid and TreeList
  • Offline support in the DataSource to enable your app to work in both online and offline mod
  • New TreeList widget enabling you to display and interact with hierarchical data
  • New functionalities in the Grid, Scheduler and Gantt to help you execute complex data scenarios

KUI_Q3_14_blog_banner

Quick Links

To explore and try yourself everything that’s packed in this third major Kendo UI release in 2014, and I encourage you to visit the official 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. I am sure you’ll find it exhilarating as much as I do.

And one last thing – let us hear your feedback either in the comments of this blog post, or in our public forums. We want to find out what modern web and mobile experiences you are going to create with Kendo UI!


rahnev
About the Author

Stefan Rahnev

Stefan Rahnev (@StDiR) is Product Manager for Telerik Kendo UI living in Sofia, Bulgaria. He has been working for the company since 2005, when he started out as a regular support officer. His next steps at Telerik took him through the positions of Technical Support Director, co-team leader in one of the ASP.NET AJAX teams and unit manager for UI for ASP.NET AJAX and Kendo UI. Stefan’s main interests are web development, agile processes planning and management, client services and psychology.

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