Productivity Boosts and More in UI for ASP.NET MVC R2 2016

The latest release pf Telerik UI for ASP.NET MVC is here, with updates to the Spreadsheet, Editor, Chart and much more.

The second major release for the year is out, and I’m eager to share the new additions that will increase your productivity and make your apps more functional. The highlights below will review the upgrades to the Spreadsheet, Editor and Chart, as well as to some productivity boosters like the new VS Dashboard template and shared DataSource HtmlHelper.

HTML Editor

As of now the editor will receive more attention and we will do our best to make it as good as the famous RadEditor for ASP.NET AJAX. Some of the most voted features from our UserVoice portal are now implemented:

• Markdown Support—The simplicity of Markdown and its restrictive nature makes it the default choice for public-facing content creation scenarios, such as comment forms. The format is also lighter than HTML, which makes it easy on your database:
  

  

• Auto URL Detection—This nice functionality is now available in all browsers. Just start a word with "http://" or "www." and the editor will automatically transform it into a link when you press the space bar.
• Custom Callbacks for Serializing and Deserializing Content—This is pretty handy for everyone that wants to customize the content of the editor, i.e. you can obtain the content as markdown or plain text, or strip certain HTML tags.
• A pasteCleanup Option—The pasteCleanup is yet another great customization option which allows you to pre-process the clipboard contents. For example, you could strip unwanted styles or tags. You can play with its options in this live pasteCleanup demo.

Spreadsheet

The newly introduced features are the ability to hyperlink cell content, the multi-line editing and the ability to show/hide the sheet grid lines—a feature useful for print/export scenarios. You can test all of them in the online demos.

Charts

Among the new chart features is a new series type—verticalBoxPlot, which is useful for comparing distributions between different sets of numerical data, and is well-suited for mobile devices like smartphones in portrait mode. It depicts numerical data by displaying a data distribution summary with six indicators (lower value, first quartile, median, mean, third quartile, upper value) and outliers for each set of data:

Other nice features of the Charts include:

• Support for events when rendering to Canvas
• Pinch to zoom support when using Canvas rendering

Shared DataSource for Multiple MVC Components

Now you can use the DataSource HtmlHelper, which lets you share with other helpers using DataSourceId. This is yet another popular item in the UserVoice portal.

New Dashboard Visual Studio Template

The set of predefined Visual Studio Project Templates for UI for ASP.NET MVC is now extended with a new Dashboard-like template. This is based on the Kendo UI App Template definition, which shipped in R1 2016.

Visual Studio Scaffolding

We extended the VS Scaffolding support to the MVC TreeView, helping you use auto-generated boilerplate code to connect a view (which hosts the treeview) to a controller and the corresponding model definition:

New ASP.NET Core MVC Tag Helpers and Wrappers

I am glad to announce that six of our most popular Kendo UI widgets are now available as TagHelpers. That includes the DatePicker, TimePicker, DataTimePicker, Button, Window and NumericTextBox. You can find detailed information how to configure them in the following help article: Tag Helpers.

And that’s not all—almost all of our UI for ASP.NET MVC wrappers  now officially support ASP.NET Core 1.0 RC1.

Upcoming Support for ASP.NET Core MVC 1.0 RC2 and RTM

As you know, we’re pioneers in supporting .NET Core and ASP.NET Core 1.0. We will also strive to provide support in the Telerik ASP.NET Core MVC components for the RC2 and RTM of .NET Core and ASP.NET Core 1.0 shortly after their appearance.

More details on the future of .NET Core and ASP.NET Core 1.0 can be found in Microsoft's blog post: .NET Core RC2—Improvements, Schedule, and Roadmap.

Additional Information About R2 2016

Visit the links below to read the complete release notes, check out the updated demo app and give it a spin, and learn what’s new in this release:

• Release Notes
• Live Demos
• What’s New page

Release Webinar

If you’re eager to learn more about the R2’16 highlights not only for UI for ASP.NET MVC, but also for other product lines in the DevCraft bundle, join us later today on May 11 or May 12 for a free webinar, with demos of new features and a live Q&A session.

Got Feedback?

If you have feedback about the release, go ahead drop us a line in the comments section below. To share an idea for a new functionality, feature or component, or just to submit your vote for an already requested one, head on over to the Kendo/MVC User Voice portal.