Q2 2011 What's New for Windows Phone Wrap-up

Hey Windows Phone lovers, it has been a busy two weeks since we had release webinar week.  We've seen the release of Visual Studio LightSwitch and the Telerik Hands-On-Labs that I wrote for that release, we've been prepping some really neat content that will start making some waves soon (check back tomorrow!), and of course we have been hard at work on creating learning resources to cover everything that was release during this latest round.  So of course part of that is packaging up the demos and slides from the Q2 presentations as well as covering some of the great questions that came up during the webinar.

Q & A

Q: this might sound like a crazy question for telerik - but would you ever consider creating some of these controls for the droid /   iphone?   obviously these are completely different architectures.  But it would be nice to have common ui controls across all phones.
A: One common denominator across all platforms is the browser, so it we were playing it smart we would probably be thinking about a platform that is pretty hot right now that works across browsers and platform.  Might want to stay tuned on that.

Q: Does the calendar control show the text of your actual appointments (unlike the actual calendar which displays generic text such as ""hello from Seattle"")?
A: The calendar is set by default to display the subject line of a given appointment, which is derived from the IAppointment base. 

Q: When will the documentation be updated to cover Q2 updates and changes?
A: It is updated and online now!  Every release packs a ton of new features into both new and existing controls, so sometimes our website upload schedule doesn't 100% match the day we make the new release bits available. 

Q: Are there any thoughts for a stand alone designer for your components? It is difficult in Blend.
A: A stand-alone designer would be quite a bit of work considering the complexity of XAML, but we have a few ideas in the works that we're running experiments with to try to make styling our controls as simple as possible.  Rest assured that once we're a bit closer to a solution we'll get it out there for people to put through the paces to ensure it works for the broadest range of scenarios possible.

Q: Will the trackball functionality exist in other Telerik Chart control sets (such as WPF or silverlight)?
A: That is a great question!  If you'd like to see this functionality, I'd recommend heading over to our PITS system to submit it as a request so others in the community can vote for it.

Q: Are there more MVVM/best practice  samples & sample apps in the pipeline? 
A: Yup, you should see something else popping up for this around the Friday (8/3) timeframe.

Q: Question - Is Telerik considering HTML5 Mobile and Web app controls in any near future?
A: See the answer to the first question up above. :)

Q: Does the rad calendar have support for performing the zooming in/out on a data animation that's found in the native calendar on the phone?
A: RadCalendar by default has events to correspond to selecting a time slot, but we leave the implementation up to the developer working with the control as we can envision plenty of scenarios in which a developer would not want to zoom in when selection is changed.  In the demos linked down below I have implemented a version of this zooming transition using the RadPhoneApplicationFrame and some RadScaleAndFade animations.

Q: Is there an ETA on when build of the Rad controls build against Windows Phone OS 7.1 will be made avalible? There are performance improvements that require opt-in.
A: ETA is very soon, but we're waiting to get a little closer to the Mango RTM release for the developer tools so we can all upgrade our versions together instead of upgrading to Beta 2 and then RTM.

Q: Mango MultiTasking. Is there any enhancement in this area for Telerik components, like new features or functionalities?
A: Right now the people who benefit the most from multi-tasking are the consumers and you, the developer.  It's a great new feature that should offer a much more compelling user experience in regards to user expectations on the phone and quickly switching between applications.  That being said, we don't have anything specific in mind as this is more a bonus to you when developing applications than anything we can influence framework-wise with controls.  If you happen to think of any, drop us a line and we can chat more.

Q: Is this release compatible with the Mango Beta tools?
A: We do test against the current Mango drops so you can certainly use the tools with the beta that is out there.  Of course that comes with the usual "use at your own risk" associated with a beta, but if you do run into anything that looks like a Mango-related issue feel free to let us know.  It could be a bug or regression in a new build that we need to address or report back to the Windows Phone team at Microsoft to ensure it is addressed on their end.  Kind of like we have a great community that helps us build a better product, Microsoft relies on the community to report issues when they pop up so they can be fixed and addressed quickly.

And that about covers the questions from the webinar.  There was a bit of overlap in some questions so I did a little creative editing to combine some similar thoughts (mainly to avoid typing about the same answer twice).  Otherwise click below to download the slides and code from this webinar:

Q2 2011 Windows Phone Files

And click here to view the recorded version of the webinar.  Once you're set with that, be sure to head over the the RadControls for Windows Phone page to check out the latest and greatest that we have available and download your trial copy today.