Announcing the Kendo UI Q3 2012 Roadmap!

2012 has been a year of big things for Kendo UI. To date, we’ve shipped two major releases, including our first official release of Kendo UI Mobile in Q1, as well as our first set of server wrappers with Kendo UI Complete for ASP.NET MVC in Q2. We’ve also continued to evolve Kendo UI with additional widgets, framework features and capabilities, not to mention performing a complete overhaul on our documentation site and launching the Kendo UI Dojo, a free and interactive learning resource.

We’ve been busy, for sure, but there’s no time to slow down now! We’re already hard at work on our Q3 release, slated for the fall of this year. This one, like Q1 and Q2, is jam-packed with good stuff, and now that we’ve solidified our plans internally, I thought I’d take a moment and share the major themes for this release, as well as pointers to living roadmap docs on our site.

What makes a roadmap?

Before I dive into the details of the Q3 roadmap, I thought it might be helpful to set the stage with a little background on how we arrive at our roadmap, in the first place. I shared this information as a part of our Q2 roadmap, but thought it would be helpful to re-emphasize for new and existing customers alike. UserVoice is our public forum for customer feedback, of course, but the data contained therein is only one piece of a much larger puzzle to fit together when it comes time to plan for a release. When planning for a release, we gather all of your feedback from UserVoice, as well as relevant data from these sources:

• Industry research and analysis
• Direct Customer surveys and feedback
• Forum and support requests
• Input from Telerik leadership

With all of this data in hand (and there is a lot of it!) the team gathers to prioritize all relevant requests, create a roadmap for the next few quarters, and establish themes for the current release. Themes categorize much of our focus, while also clearly defining the value we plan to deliver to customers in a given release. Though each release of Kendo UI is full of new features and fixes in our Web, DataViz or Mobile suites, we feel that it’s important to focus our release planning around broad themes that represent the “big rocks” of value we want to provide. Many of these themes align to a single suite, while others affect the framework as a whole. Our key release themes for Kendo UI in Q3 are:

Financial Charts and Interactivity for Kendo UI DataViz

In addition to adding new chart types in Q2, we performed a lot of work behind the scenes to set up a big drop of DataViz features in the Q3 release. For DataViz, Q3 is all about offering the robust set of financial charts and indicators many of you have been requesting for some time. That includes new chart types like the Candlestick and OHLC. Q3 for DataViz will also include some additional chart interactions, like panning and zooming across all chart types. What’s more, all these interactions will support both mouse and touch out of the box.

Accessibility and RTL for Kendo UI Web

Accessibility on the web is a HUGE topic and, depending on whom you ask, might mean ARIA, WCAG, Section 508, all of these things, or something else entirely. As a provider of developer tools, we recognize that we can better enable accessibility in the sites and applications you create by providing robust, out of the box accessibility support, including reasonable defaults and simple configuration options. As such, Q3 marks our first step towards making Kendo UI the most accessible JavaScript library on the web, starting with ARIA for Kendo UI Web, Keyboard support across all Web widgets, RTL support and a high-contrast theme. Beyond these, we’ll be spending some time this fall doing additional research into Section 508, WCAG and ARIA to determine what additional features we should adding in 2013. Stay tuned to the blog for more information.

Java (JSP) Server Wrappers

We stated last quarter that our server wrappers for ASP.NET MVC were the first of several planned wrapper sets. Next up, we’re targeting official Java wrappers for Kendo UI Web and DataViz via a set of JSP server wrappers. Since the JSP framework is popular and compatible with popular frameworks like Spring and Struts, we expect that these wrappers will come in handy for a large segment of our Java customers. We’ll release a Beta of our Java Wrappers with Q3 this Fall.

ThemeBuilder Support for DataViz and Mobile

We know that many of you have been chomping at the bit for ThemeBuilder support for both DataViz and Mobile, and we’re happy to announce that both will be coming this quarter. Kendo UI Mobile support for the ThemeBuilder will be added as an out-of-band release prior to the official Q3 release, with DataViz supporting coming as a part of the official release.

Enhanced Mobile Gestures, Transitions and Animations

The big Kendo UI Mobile theme for Q2 was the addition of tablet-capable UI widgets and controls. Our focus for Q3 shifts a bit to the framework side, where we plan to provide some cutting-edge gestures, transitions and animations that will enable you to build Mobile web and hybrid apps that feel even more smooth and native than they do today. We’re already hard at work on these features, and there’s not much more I can say at this point, but do stay tuned to the blog for more information in the future.

In addition to these themes, you can expect that we’ll deliver a number of other requested widgets, features and enhancements for Q3 (including the oft-requested Destroy Method on all widgets). For additional information about additional features we plan to deliver, head on over to the Roadmap page on KendoUI.com.

The Kendo UI roadmap is a living document. Even though we’re focusing our efforts around the themes I shared here today, we’re always looking to deliver maximum value to our customers with each release. With that in mind, you should consider the public roadmap published at KendoUI.com to be a living document, as well. There’s always a chance that other key and requested features will find their way into our Q2 release, so keep an eye on that space over the coming months.

And as always, we want your feedback! If you’re interested in weighing in on the roadmap moving forward, head on over to our public UserVoice forum to view, comment and vote on ideas, or even add your own. We watch this forum regularly, so don’t hesitate to let us know what you’d like to see in a future release!

Our Q1 and Q2 releases have been jam-packed with a ton of new features and fixes, but there’s still plenty to be done! Thanks to your feedback, the team has arrived at a roadmap that will make our Q3 release this fall even more exciting! Stay tuned as we work to make the best toolkit for building applications with HTML, JavaScript and CSS even better.

Links

Main Roadmap Page

Kendo UI Web Roadmap

Kendo UI DataViz Roadmap

Kendo UI Mobile Roadmap