VS2012 Express & Telerik Controls

[Robert]

I have been using VS2008 Pro for several years now.  Today I installed VS2012 Express [for Web] on my computer.  I would like to be able to do 3 things with my Telerik subscription:

1. Install the Telerik controls in the Toolbox so I can use them with a New Project.
2. Load my existing app into VS2012 and rest assured that the Telerik controls (ie. Treeview, Slider, ListBox, etc.) will just work.
3. Install and use JustCode, if possible.

#1 & #2 are absolute requirements.  #3 is optional

Further to #1, I right-clicked in the Toolbox area of the VS2012 IDE and chose "Choose Items".  On the ".NET Framework Components" tab of the dialog box I chose Browse.  I navigated here: C:\Program Files (x86)\Telerik\RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX Q3 2012\Bin45
Three files appeared:

1. Telerik.Web.Design.dll
2. Telerik.Web.UI.dll
3. Telerik.Web.UI.Skins.dll

I tried clicking on the first two.  It said "Loading the selected file(s)"  Then later, when I pressed OK this message appeared: "The following controls were successfully added to the toolbox but are not enabled in the active designer:"  After that, no Telerik tools appeared in the Toolbox.

While I had hoped I could save the cost of buying VS2012 Professional, this is not a very good start.  Time is Money.

I would like a definitive answer from Telerik Support to my 3 questions above.  Can I do all of that with the Express version of VS2012: Yes or No?

Robert

[Andrey]

Hi Robert,

I will go straight to your bullets:
#1 - I just tried doing the same and managed to do so successfully. Here's what I did:
    1. Created a new web app targeting .NET 4.5
    2. Opened the default page in design mode
    3. Opened the toolbox, clicked "Choose Items...", browsed to the Bin45 folder (the version of our controls should match the version of our projects - .NET 4.0 - bin40, .NET 4.5 - bin45) and selected Telerik.Web.UI.dll (that is the only assembly actually containing controls)

After that, both the toolbox and design surface worked perfectly. I was able to drag controls onto the design surface, tweak them through the smart-tags and they ran perfectly at run-time.

#2 - As you might imagine, our controls have no dependency on Visual Studio, so there is no reason for them to require a particular version of Visual Studio. Loading your project in VS 2012 should work (if it is a simple web app - database, architecture and various other project types are not supported), but will upgrade it in the process and make it useable only through VS 2012.

#3 - You will not be able to use JustCode in VS Express, as it supports very limited third party extensibility.

Let me know if that helps.

All the best,
Andrey
the Telerik team

[Robert]

Audrey,

Thank you for this.  I just followed your instructions precisely and it now works as you've said.

Unrelated to anything to do with Telerik, I'm now experiencing major incompatibilities related to upgrading VS2008 Crystal Reports report templates to VS2012.  Hundreds of hours were invested to create these templates so they're an absolute requirement.  I'm now weighing my options but may be restricted to upgrading only to VS2010 until the owner of of Crystal Reports gets their act together.  Ughhh!

As for all of you at Telerik, THANK YOU!!!

Robert