Better UX and Performance in Q3 2015 courtesy of IE7 support, or the lack thereof

I am pleased to share with you a bit in advance some important information about the performance optimizations planned for Q3 2015, to be out in the fall. This will bring some great benefits, like:

• Better UX experience and performance for everyone who does not want/need to support IE7
• Stable version for the enterprises and everyone who has to stick to IE7 and classic rendering
• Significantly reduced time for skin creation
• Backwards compatibility in terms of Code APIs
• Force the use of modern technologies and best practices required by them

We will implement the improvements by achieving the following steps:

 
Discontinuation of the IE7 Support

This decision, taken in accordance to the Microsoft’s plans to discontinue the support for IE7 (MSDN: Stay up-to-date with Internet Explorer), will lead to the following performance boosts:

• We will remove the CSS hacks and fixes for IE7 from the base stylesheets, leading to size reductions of up to 30% for some controls
• We will be able to rely more on box sizing, font icons and display modes
• We can improve the CSS selectors which will ultimately provide more human-readable code
• Fewer images and sprites are going to be used because all newer browsers can work with PNGs, CSS3 gradients and font icons

 
Completion of the Lightweight Rendering Story

All controls in suite should become lightweight and output semantic markup.  In addition to that, the reduced amount of images in the skins and usage of font icons will decrease:

• Controls footprint
• Page loading speed and increase its performance
• Time and requirements for skin customization

Separation of the Classic and Lightweight Renderings in Separate Assemblies

UPDATE: The planned Assembly Split operation has been rejected and not implemented. An informative email with information about this decision was sent to all license holders.
Allow me to summarize: To facilitate your upgrade process, we decided to keep the Telerik.Web.UI.dll intact and to cancel the idea to split the ​Classic and Lightweight renderings. The benefits of this decision for you are:

• The upgrade will remain the same as you know it
• ​Any dll split related errors will be avoided
• You will have the entire power to choose which render mode to use

<Rejected>
The separation of the Lightweight from the Classic rendering in separate assemblies is required in order to provide optimal experience in terms of dll size for both choices:

Telerik.Web.UI.dll – it will feature only the Lightweight rendering.
Telerik.Web.UI.Classic.dll* – it will feature both Classic and Lightweight renderings. The Classic rendering will be enabled by default.

Telerik.Web.UI.Skins.dll – it will include only the Lightweight skins.
Telerik.Web.UI.Skins.Classic.dll* – it will include both Classic and Lightweight skins.

 *Telerik will not develop and support the classic assemblies, except for critical security fixes. These dlls are stable and suitable for use by legacy apps that should support older browsers.

You can see the diagram below for more detailed information about what will be included in the classic and standard assemblies:

</Rejected>

 

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Would You be Affected by the Changes?

You will be affected only if you have to support:

• Custom skins build for the classic rendering – the available options to resolve this problem are:
• Migrate the skin(s)
• Use the new Theme Builder tool (to be out in Q2 2015) to create a new skin(s)
• Use the classic render mode and the Telerik.Web.UI.Classic.dll / Telerik.Web.UI.Skins.Classic.dll assemblies
• Internet Explorer 7 – the only option here is to use the Telerik.Web.UI.Classic.dll / Telerik.Web.UI.Skins.Classic.dll assemblies.
   

Your Feedback is Important!

We do know how precious your development time is and we want to make effortless your upgrade to Q3 2015. That’s why I want to ask you fill the following questionnaire that will help us learn how your projects will be affected by these optimizations. You will be able to also share your feedback and help us make the upgrade process easier.