Rad Controls for Windows Phone 7 CTP2 is released!

I'm very happy to announce that today we released the second CTP of RadControls for WindowsPhone 7. You can download the new installer and the new binaries now.

In the last month we were working on polishing the existing controls, examples and help, but we also added new features and controls to the suite. Now we have 16 controls for Windows Phone 7 ready for use! Not only this, but you can now optimize the size of your windows phone 7 application by using the hot new version of the Telerik XAP minifier. Did I mentioned that our Demo application is now being tested by the marketplace? It should be live within a day or two ( fingers crossed so that we pass successfully the certification process :).

Here is the full release info below:

New Page Transitions

A new model for the page transitions is now available. Developers can specify animation for the ForwardOut, ForwardIn, BackwardOut and BackwardIn states of the transition. Also, each animated page can specify its own transition, overriding the master transition that is used in the entire application. You can also disable the transitions per page. There are 11 predefined and fine tuned transitions ready for use out of the box that match the transitions used in the WP7 OS:

• Continuum 
• Tile 
• Turnstile 
• Slide 
• Fade 
• Swivel 
• FlipItems 
• ContinuumAndSlide 
• Scale 
• SlideAndSwivel 
• TurnstileAndSlide 

RadListPicker

A brand new control that strictly follows the Metro design guidelines. It represents an ItemsControl that initially displays only  the selected item and can be expanded in two different modes:

• Inline - when the items' count is smaller than or equal to 5 (or as specified by the InlineModeThreshold property) the picker’s height is increased so that all the items are fully visible on the screen.
• Popup - when the items' count is bigger than 5 (or as specified by the InlineModeItemCount property) all the items are displayed in a separate Popup (RadWindow instance). The built-in RadTileAnimation used as Open and Close animation gives the control polished and professional behavior that is fully compliant with the one found in the native WP7 OS. Due to its hybrid architecture the control should be used to display relatively small amount (somewhere between 20 and 50) of items. RadPickerBox with a popup ListBox can be used for larger number of items that should be displayed in a popup manner. 

RadNumericUpDown

A new control inspired by the Windows Phone 7 Metro design that allows selecting numeric values from a predefined range. The control has a convenient API that exposes properties which can be used to fine tune the behavior of the control for a specific application's context. You can:

• Specify the amount which is used to increment/decrement the selected value in the control 
• Define the repeat behavior of the buttons used to modify the selected value, i.e. specify repeat intervals and repeat acceleration amount 
• Customize the format of the displayed value or let the control adjust the format for you according to the specified Change  

The control also exposes ValueChanging (allows cancelation) and ValueChanged events that are fired when the selected value is about to be or has changed.

New Tilt Effect 

The Tilt Effect is a well-known interaction effect that is found in the WP7 OS. The tilt effect for Windows Phone controls provides you with the ability to add additional visual feedback for control interaction. Instead of having standard pressed or un-pressed states, controls with the tilt effect provide motion during manipulation. The result is a “tilt” like response when the control is touched.
Now Telerik releases its own implementation (TiltInteractionEffect) that can be easily integrated (in XAML or programmatically) into your applications. The Tilt Effect can be used to enrich the user experience of your applications by making the interaction between the user and the application more natural.

What's changed

RadWindow

RadWindow no longer needs to be added to the element tree to function properly. However an application that uses RadWindow must contain at least one panel. If the application does not contain any panels, RadWindow will not work. RadWindow now uses its own logic to replace the application bar of the page in which it is opened. When RadWindow is closed, the application bar is restored.

We'll be glad to know your feedback on the controls and as always your requests for new controls will be highly appreciated!