Answering Telerik Kendo UI Suite Q3 Webinar Questions

The last Kendo UI webinar had a record-setting number of attendees. As such, we also had a record-setting 800+ questions asked during the webinar. Now, one does not need to be a scholarly mathematician to know that a few people can’t answer 800+ questions in a couple of minutes.

So, I decided to read all 800+ questions post-webinar and select a handful of them to be answer in this blog post. After reading the questions, I believe many of them will be beneficial to the entire Kendo UI community and not just the individual that posed the question during the live webinar.

• Questions About the Kendo UI Webinar
• Questions About Telerik
• Questions About Learning Kendo UI
• General Questions About Kendo UI
• Questions About Offline
• Questions About Export to PDF & Excel
• Questions About TreeList
• Questions About Angular and Kendo UI
• Miscellaneous Questions

Q: Will the webinar be available online to watch on demand?

A: No need to set your VCR.  All Kendo UI webinars can be watched online and on demand. Look for them after the live airing at:

http://www.telerik.com/webinars/kendo-ui or https://www.youtube.com/user/TelerikInc/videos

Q: Where can I find previous webinars?

A: You can find previous webinars at telerik.com or on the Telerik or Kendo UI YouTube page.

Q: Will all questions be answered and made available after the webinar?

A: No, not all questions. We’ll try to filter a handful to the top and answer them in a blog post, like I am doing now.

Questions About Telerik

Q: Was Telerik acquired?

A: Yes, it was. The deal was final on December 2, 2014. Telerik is now a Progress company. You can read all about it in this press release.

Q: Is the Progress acquisition affecting the Kendo UI direction/objectives in any way?

A: As of today, Telerik and Kendo UI suite are headed in the same direction, with the same objectives as it had before the acquisition.

Questions About Learning Kendo UI Suite

Q: How do I learn Kendo UI suite?

A: I suggest learning Kendo UI suite in the follow ways:

1. Read the online documentation and API docs
2. Dissect the demos or a sample application
3. Read a book
4. Watch a video
5. Attend an instructor-led class
6. Scavage the forums
7. Follow the tutorials in the Kendo UI Dojo

General Questions About Kendo UI Suite

Q: Where can I find release details?

A: Around each release we have detailed blog posts talking about release details before and after the release. Once a release is official there are also release history notes available.

Q: Can I use Kendo UI suite with React, Backbone, Meteor and so on?

A: Yes. Kendo UI widgets can be operated as stand alone jQuery-like plugins agnostic from any flavor of application structure. In their most basic form, Kendo UI widgets are simply jQuery plugins.

Q: What browsers are supported?

A: 

Q: What makes Kendo UI suite better than other UI platforms (or worse)?

A: If I had to pick one attribute that rises above all the rest, I think it would have to be Telerik developer support. The Telerik Kendo UI technical support is in a league of its own. The actual developers who developed Kendo UI also support it through forum engagement, official support tickets and Github tickets, not to mention the amazing documentation and demos they generate.

For a more in-depth answer to this question, I’d suggest the following resources.

The Case for Kendo UI and http://jqueryuiwidgets.com/

Q: Is there an evaluation period for the Professional offering?

A: Yes. You can start a fully functional 30-day trial today, for free.

Q: Couldn't the controls be framework agnostic?

A: The controls/widgets are framework agnostic. Kendo UI widgets are simply jQuery plugins that can be instantiated in a standalone manner, with no coupling to a specific framework--not even our own.

Q: Is jQuery a prerequisite for using Kendo UI suite?  If so, is there a plan to decouple Kendo UI suite from jQuery in the future?

A: Yes. jQuery is a prerequisite. And, no, there is not a current plan to decouple Kendo UI suite from jQuery.

Q: Do you have a direct link to the open source or nuget repo?

A: Yes.

https://www.nuget.org/packages/KendoUICore/

and

https://github.com/kendo-labs/bower-kendo-ui

Q: Are you replacing your MVC with AngularJS?

A: No. We want to help those who use Angular, but not restrict those who don’t. Kendo UI suite is not tightly coupled or dependent on any particular flavor of application development.

Q: Does kendo.data.datasource work only with Telerik data services, or I can use my web services?

A: DataSource is not tightly coupled with Telerik BAAS solution. However, by using Telerik services as a backend, integration becomes rather trivial (for example, when you use DataSource with Telerik Backend Services, many will just work with very little development or configuration).

The Kendo UI DataSource is an abstraction for using local data or remote data from any services that can return JSON, JSONP, OData or XML. You can read more about it here.

Q: Can we use JQuery 2?

A: Yes, it’ll work. As of Kendo UI version 2013.3.1119, jQuery 2.0.x is used in the test suites and should work just fine.

Q: Any examples of Kendo UI apps using Bootstrap frontend framework?

A: Yes. Check out http://demos.telerik.com/kendo-ui/bootstrap/

Q: Does Kendo UI suite have its own framework, or should we be nesting it in another?

A: We leave the choice up to you. Kendo UI suite can be used with the framework's own MVVM and SPA tools, Kendo Angular directives or whichever solutions you might bring to it. It can also be used with no frameworks as standalone jQuery plugins.

Q: Was there a Kendo UI plugin for Chrome developer tools?

A: Yes. It’s called the Kendo UI Chrome Inspector.

Questions About Offline

Q: How does offline mode work with non html5 browsers specifically IE 8?

A: Offline works in IE 8 because IE 8 supports localstorage.

A: Yes. The DataSource can be configured to use any JavaScript object (via offlineStorage option) that has a getItem and setItem method. For example, the code below demonstrates using sessionStorage instead of localStorage.

var dataSource = kendo.data.DataSource({
    // use sessionStorage instead of localStorage
    offlineStorage: {
        getItem: function() {
            return JSON.parse(sessionStorage.getItem("products-key"));
        },
        setItem: function(item) {
            sessionStorage.setItem("products-key", JSON.stringify(item));
        }
    },
    transport: {
        read: {
            url: "http://demos.telerik.com/kendo-ui/service/products",
            type: "jsonp"
        }
    }
});

Questions About Export to PDF and Excel

Q: I am curious what you need to set up .pdf and Excel exports besides just the code, to tell it that you want to use pdf and Excel?

A: The Excel Generation requires the JSZip library. Additionally, both PDF and Excel creation will require a server side proxy to serve up the file if it can’t be generated in the client, using the file API (i.e IE < 10).

Q: Do Excel and .pdf export work in mobile?

A: Yes.

Q: Any examples of Excel/.pdf export?

Q: Will the TreeList functionality work on mobile also?

A: Yes. The Web and DataViz widgets are designed to function on both a mouse-driven and touch-driven interface, and many of the web widgets (for example, Grid and Scheduler) offer an auto mobile mode (or mobile adaptive rendering).

Q: Is the TreeList part of the Angular/Kendo UI suite directives yet?

A: Yes. Check out the demo.

Q: Does the TreeList support export to Excel as well?

Q: Do we need to learn Angular to use Kendo UI suite in the future?

A: No. While Kendo UI suite can be used seamlessly with Angular, it’s an optional choice made by developers. We won’t force developers to use it or learn it.

Q: Which version of Angular does the newest Kendo UI release use?  Are they up to 1.3.3 yet?

A: As of the Q3 release, Kendo UI suite supports Angular 1.3.0.

Q: Does Kendo UI suite actually require Angular?

A: Angular is not required for Kendo UI suite to function correctly (in other words, it’s not a hard dependency).

Miscellaneous Questions

Q: Does the maps widget sit on top of Google's API?

A: No. The maps widget is driven by raster maps from popular online providers such as OpenStreetMap, OpenWeatherMap, MapQuestOpen, ArcGIS, Here (Nokia) Maps and others. Dedicated support is available from Microsoft Bing Maps REST Services.

Q: What is your position (commitment) with respect to web components?

A: At this time we have no hard commitment to implementing web components. We are excited about the new standards and are constantly evaluating whether they make sense to implement in Kendo UI suite. If you're interested in seeing web components used in Kendo UI suite, please leave that feedback on our UserVoice feedback forum, as that helps determine what we implement in upcoming versions.

Q: What is material design?

A: Material design is a term used to describe the UI design specification created by Google for the Android OS with the following goals:

1. Create a visual language that synthesizes classic principles of good design with the innovation and possibility of technology and science.

2. Develop a single underlying system that allows for a unified experience across platforms and device sizes. Mobile precepts are fundamental, but touch, voice, mouse and keyboard are all first-class input methods.

I’m assuming this question was posed because in the Q3 release, we shipped two new material design inspired themes (material and material black).

Q: Do all the new features exist in the server wrappers?