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The brand new RadPageView control is aiming high to provide a full replacement for the currently existing RadTabStrip and RadPanelBar controls by shipping the same functionality with a simpler approach and improved performance. This new control addresses many issues present in the old components, and is based on a very flexible and extensible platform that is fully compatible with the Telerik Presentation Framework, and allows for implementing different layout scenarios as quick as never before.

The architecture of this control is pretty simple. It consists of pages and items where each item is associated with a page and it can be used to display that page. A specific layout strategy arranges the pages and the items so that the end look-and-feel is achieved. The diagram below conceptually illustrates the RadPageView’s structure whereby the names of the diagram elements correspond to the actual Telerik types:

image

Currently, we ship three modes of this control which implement different layout strategies and thus achieve the functionality of the RadTabStrip and RadPanelBar controls all in one:

  • Strip Mode: equivalent to the RadTabStrip control
  • Stack Mode: equivalent to the RadPanelBar’s ListBar mode
  • Outlook Mode: equivalent to the RadPanelBar’s OutlookNavPane mode

View modes

To use this new control, you can simply drag-and-drop it onto your form in the Visual Studio designer and use its Smart Tag to add pages. To switch between the different view-modes, you can set the ViewMode property in the Properties window of the control. To adjust properties of the specific view, you can either use the Smart Tag options or you can use the ViewElement property in the property grid and expand its sub-properties where you can find settings specific to the currently active view. This is the general approach to set up the RadPageView control in the designer without considering the view mode. If you want to adjust view-specific properties through code you may either cast the current view element to the desired type

 

RadPageViewStripElement strip = this.radPageView1.ViewElement as RadPageViewStripElement;
strip.StripAlignment = StripViewAlignment.Right;

 

or you can use the generic SetValue method for the desired property:

 

this.radPageView1.ViewElement.SetValue(RadPageViewStripElement.StripAlignmentProperty, StripViewAlignment.Right);

 

The RadPageView control exposes events common for all view modes like SelectedPageChanged, PageIndexChaged, PageIndexChanging, PagesClearing, PagesCleared etc. There are properties which get the currently selected page, the currently active view element (which represents the view mode) and the pages collection.

This control will be available in the Q2 2010 Beta release for you to test it and see how it would fit in your application context. Also, don’t forget that we will award with up to 5000 Telerik points everyone who sends useful feedback regarding issues, feature requests or anything that might help us improve the new controls.


About the Author

Nikolay Diyanov

Diyanov is the Product Manager of the Native Mobile UI division at Progress. Delivering outstanding solutions that make developers' lives easier is his passion and the biggest reward in his work. In his spare time, Nikolay enjoys travelling around the world, hiking, sun-bathing and kite-surfing.

Find him on Twitter @n_diyanov or on LinkedIn.

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