Visual Studio Extensions for RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX

The Telerik Visual Studio Extensions package introduces a new level of developer productivity with a simplified and fast way to develop your RadControls Website/WebApplication. The product helps you work smarter with streamlined features and increased control of the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and minimizes the learning curve for new users.

The Extensions automatically create, upgrade and configure your RadControls projects in seconds, eliminating the need to set any assembly references, handler/module definitions, tagprefixes, etc. manually. Additionally the Visual Studio Extensions Package includes a set of ready-to-use Visual Studio templates that cover common application scenarios for RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX.

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Quick access from the Telerik Menu

The Visual Studio Extensions wizards for creating/upgrading projects and all ready-to-use templates can be accessed through the Telerik Menu.

Create new Telerik project (WebSite or a WebApplication)

RadControls Visual Studio Extensions resemble the standard Visual Studio project templates and contain all the preliminary set of items needed for your application with RadControls– RadControls assembly references and RadSpell dictionaries, web.config (to support any RadControl), RadCompressionModule (enabled or disabled through the wizard), a global site-wide skin for the RadControls. You can also choose whether your web form will use the embedded jQuery support or will use the AJAX functionality. You can automatically configure all these settings through an intuitive wizard.

Convert your existing project to Telerik project

You can easily convert any website or web application to Telerik project in which you want to jump-start using RadControls. The Visual Studio Extensions automatically upgrades any external web application to become RadControls application with its necessary settings - skin properties, references, http handlers and http modules, configurations for IIS 6 and IIS 7, etc.

Additionally, you can do the same for your existing Telerik Web apps –configure the global web settings and/or upgrade the RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX it uses.

Upgrade your Telerik project to the latest RadControls version

An Automatic Upgrade Wizard to the latest RadControls version comes as part of the Visual Studio Extensions Package. You will no longer have to check if upgrades of ASP.NET AJAX components have been released. When you open a new or existing Telerik project in Visual Studio the wizard automatically checks for the latest available versions and prompts an update. This functionality facilitates you in converting or setting up a new project with the most recent RadControls without extra effort on your side. Your project is automatically reconfigured to use the update version of RadControls.

Web.Config Configuration

From the web configuration point of view the extensions help manage the RadControls-related configuration settings easily without the need to manually edit your web.config.

These include:

• Adding references to the RadControls assembly
• Enabling/Disabling RadCompression module depending on your preference
• Registering the HttpHandlers/HttpModules required by RadControls for both IIS “Classic” and IIS7 Integrated Pipeline
• Setting a global site-wide default skin for RadControls
• Modifying the web settings regarding RadUpload and large file uploading

While performing the above mentioned web configuration changes, RadControls VSExtensions keep your existing (non-Telerik-related) web.config settings intact. The product gives you a seamless conversion to a Telerik web.config

Create RadControls application/web form

To shortcut your development we have isolated the most common scenarios with major controls from the Telerik AJAX suite (Grid, Editor, Scheduler, Treeview). Now you can choose from a library of predefined page templates and eliminate your work from scratch. You can easily configure your control settings directly from the Telerik wizard without the need to know the extensive structure of the control and the need to write any code.

For example, with just a few clicks you can add a TreeView with client-side enabled drag and drop to your page. You don’t have to set any properties, or understand the Treeview drag and drop behavior to configure your page: simply follow the VS Extensions wizard, which automatically does it for you.

Some of the scenarios the template set covers are:

• Performance Optimized RadEditors

• RadTreeViews configured for Drag-and-Drop

• RadGrid configured to export its content as PDF/Excel/MSWord/CSV

• Blocking thread execution with RadWindow’s radalert/radconfirm

• Shared RadCalendar or RadTimeView between RadDatePickers or RadTimePickers respectively

Keep your Toolbox in sync with your project references

With Telerik’s Q3 2010 release the Visual Studio Extensions Package adds a Toolbox Configuration Utility which allows you to keep the Toolbox and the project references in sync. Thus, you will have the RadControls in your toolbox referring a Telerik distribution of your choice.

When dragging a toolbox item to your page/form assemblies might get accidentally replaced. Due to loading two assemblies in the Visual Studio AppDomain various design-time errors might happen (InvalidCastException, Error Rendering control, etc). The new Toolbox Configuration Utility guarantees that no such design-time errors occur.