Q1'09 release brings important improvements and additions to the RadControls for WinForms suite. We have focused on adding vital new features for the major controls (RadGridView, RadScheduler, RadRibbonBar), optimizing memory and theme management, as well as adding a new component (RadGroupBox) and a new theme (Breeze) to the suite. Q1 2009 also comes with a completely revamped Quick Start Framework, for better and more interactive experience of the WinForms examples.
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Full Release Notes
New Controls, Components and Enhancements
RadGroupBox
A new addition to the suite that supports footers and extended title positioning. The control offers the same functionality as the standard toolbox GroupBox, but adds extra coolness through Telerik’s remarkable styling mechanism:
- Support for all themes that come with Telerik RadControls for WinForms: Office2007 Blue, Office2007 Silver, Office2007 Black, Desert, Telerik, Aqua, and the new Breeze theme
- Support for images in the header and footer, as in the standard GroupBox container, but extended with text-to-image relations
- Support for header positioning (Top, Right, Bottom, Left) and header alignment (Near, Center, Far)
- In addition to the standard GroupBox style, RadGroupBox offers Office 2003-like style text
- Footers are also supported via FooterVisibility
Controls Optimization
RadRibbonBar
The new version of RadRibbonBar addresses all shortcomings of the previous versions. It comes with the latest Telerik layouts, meaning faster loading and operation speed, greatly enhanced design time support, many API improvements and overall ease of use. The new RibbonBar version also delivers support for the few remaining guidelines it did not support from the Microsoft Office 2007 UI Guidelines.
RadScheduler
The new RadScheduler version offers numerous improvements, related to:
- Data-binding improvements - we have added automated conversation of unique mapping IDs, i.e. there is no need to code the conversion any more. The new version of RadScheduler also permits not only basic, but advanced properties to be saved in the data source, such as assigned resources and recurrence rules (the recurrence rules are saved as an iCal formatted string)
- Recurrence rule improvements, related to iCal support
- Current date highlighting
- Import from iCal format
- MultiDayView, which allows you to show an arbitrary set of consecutive or non-consecutive days
RadGridView
In addition to the many small bug fixes, the new grid version arrives with significantly optimized memory footprint for sorting/grouping operations, better memory disposal management, and new virtual sorting/grouping/filtering operations.
Memory management
Q1 2009 brings optimized memory disposal across the entire suite. There are numerous fixes in the Telerik Presentation Framework (TPF), which positively impacts all controls. In addition, we have updated the memory disposal in following controls: RadDock, RadDateTimePicker, RadCalendar, RadToolStrip , RadContextMenu, RadDropDownButton, and RadSplitButton.
Theming and UI
We have gone to great extends to ensure that themes have a better and more consistent look and feel among all controls, by polishing the Office2007 Blue theme, as well as the Desert Theme. A new high-contrasting Breeze theme has been added to all controls as well.
We have also addressed issues where the same control is used in other controls (for example the scrollbars), but had inconsistent look, because they required separate themes. Now you will need to create just one theme for the common control, and it will be reused in all corresponding controls.
Version change
The assembly version annotation of the suite has been changed from being version-based (v8.2.0.0), to being release-based, i.e. v2009.1. With this change we are unifying the assembly versions across all Telerik suites (ASP.NET, WinForms, Silver light, and WPF). This version will also match the release mentioned on www.telerik.com, i.e. Q1 2009.
Another thing you will notice in the assembly version is that it now contains the release date (v2009.1.Y.Mdd). This will ensure that you know when the version has been released by simply looking at the assembly’s version. It will also help you in comparing your version with the ones that are available on our site.
Upcoming releases
RadDock
For the past couple of months we have also been working on the new RadDock version. In case you are interested in finding more on RadDock vNEXT, please review this blog post: RadDock for WinForms in Q1 2009 and beyond.