Resources to the Build Apps for Any Device with .NET Session

Introduction

Hello everyone,

We wanted to thank you for attending the DevCraft Q1 2014 online conference. In our first session, “Build Apps for Any Device with .NET” we covered how the Telerik DevCraft Collection helps you build applications for any screen. From mobile to web to desktop, we have you covered. Regardless if you are starting a new project or wanting to upgrade an existing one, our control suite will allow your users to have a great experience on any device they choose.

We began the session by talking about mobile and how our native controls for Windows 8/8.1 and Windows Phone 8 contain a variety of controls that will help jump start your application. We then took a look at our web controls and discovered the completeness of UI for ASP.NET AJAX and Kendo UI for MVC. We wrapped up with several desktop demos covering our new Document processing controls found in UI for WPF and RadDataEntry and Analytics integration in UI for Windows Forms.

As promised, we’ve included a list of questions and answers from the session below. If you have any additional questions, then feel free to leave a comment below.

Questions & Answers

Before we get into the Q&A, we would encourage you to leave feedback on any new control or feature at http://feedback.telerik.com.

Windows 8 / Windows Phone / Android / iOS

1. So there is a Telerik UI for Windows 8, but is there a Telerik UI for Android or iOS that you could bring into Visual Studio as well?
   You can use the Telerik Platform and download the Visual Studio extension that will allow you to create cross platform mobile apps for Android and iOS. We also have a native offering for both iOS and Android.
2. Is there documentation on how to use Telerik UI for iOS or Android controls with Xamarin? This is currently on our roadmap. Please stay tuned.
3. Can you use the RadDataBoundListBox for UI for Windows Phone with MVVM? Yes, our controls ship with the flexibility to use whichever design pattern you are the most comfortable with.

ASP.NET AJAX

1. When will there be a map control, Gantt chart or Diagrams for UI for ASP.NET AJAX? It is already on our roadmap and coming soon.
2. Regarding UI for ASP.NET AJAX, can you add a zoom sub window for a chart covering a long time? This is like Google finance or Yahoo finance where there are zoom bars? There is a data navigator capability to the charts. Check the demos or last quarter’s webinar to see how it is configured.
3. Is there a control available for voice recording in UI for ASP.NET AJAX? No, there are challenges with browsers supporting the new media APIs in HTML5.
4. Do you have any examples of using Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC side by side? You can find an article I wrote for MSDN magazine covering this topic at http//msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dn198242.aspx
5. Do the ASP.NET AJAX controls have an HTML tag that configure the control to have mobile device behavior or presentation to adjust to the screen? Yes, we do have a new Mobile render mode that will render the AJAX controls in a more mobile friendly mode. Even better than that, our Auto render mode will detect if a mobile device is requesting the page and automatically flip those controls on page that have a mobile render mode appropriately. The cherry on top – put this entry in your web.config <add key="Telerik.Web.UI.RenderMode" value="auto" /> and all controls on ALL of your pages will render automatically in the best format for the browser and device requesting.
6. Can you provide a link to an ASP.NET AJAX sample that uses the new EF 6 support with data binding? We are updating our demo’s site to demonstrate using the new EF6 data source. Look for a blog post in the near future about this topic.
7. When will you have logarithmic charts? This chart type is not planned at the moment. Please vote for raising its priority by voting in the FeedBack Portal located here.
8. How about a more advanced integration with a REST API? Let’s say a REST API can supply images. Can you do the gallery example where instead of a directory path it is an http REST API command path? The requested functionality will become possible after the integration of the ClientDataSource control with the Image Gallery planned for Q2 2014.
9. Is there a data entry control for UI for ASP.NET AJAX? Yes, the implementation of the Data Form control is in our ToDo list for Q3.

KENDO UI for MVC

1. Can Kendo UI extensions be setup in a way to render the scripts in the body not in the head? The controls rendered with the Razor syntax should be appearing in the HTML where you are declaring them.
2. Are all the attributes from the Kendo UI controls being exposed as data- html attributes? Most of them are. If you have questions about specific attributes check the online documentation at http//docs.telerik.com/kendo-ui/
3. My main concern is developing hybrid apps with the Kendo UI Mobile on Android, IOS and WP. Kendo UI library for mobile web applications works great with Android and iOS. Check out http//www.telerik.com/kendo-ui-mobile for more information.
4. Is grouping before paging available in the Kendo Grid? Yes, you can use both grouping and paging in the same Kendo grid.

WPF + Silverlight

1. What updates have been made to Silverlight? Please check out this blog post for updates to WPF and Silverlight.
2. Why are the WPF demos not included in the installers anymore? We wanted to keep the installer footprint small. The demos are still freely available for download http//demos.telerik.com/wpf/
3. For generating the grid to the .docx in UI for WPF, are we able to do some filtering before generating for example select some rows then generate? You have control over what records you want to see in your document and the format providers are OpenXML.
4. Do you have filtering & sorting in the Spreadsheet control like it is available in Excel for UI for WPF? Not currently.
5. Any plans to support rotated text cells in the Spreadsheet control? No plans at the moment.
6. When using multi-screen can the float RadDocking can be maximized on another screen? If by “float RadDock” you mean a Floating Window and this window is situated at let’s say the second monitor, while RadDocking is at the first monitor, then the answer is ‘yes’ - the end-user can maximize the floating window on the second monitor.
7. With the latest additions to the RadDocking control, can we break out the panes into individual windows when WPF content is hosted within a WinForms application? Yes

Windows Forms

1. Regarding UI for WinForms, will spell checking inside a text box be available checked on the fly and giving a context box with suggestions? You can have it check on the fly.
2. Is RadSpellchecker available in other languages besides English? Spanish for example? UI for WinForms ships a dictionary for the English language only. Dictionaries of other languages that you can find at www.telerik.com are community driven. Please refer to the following code Library article for additional information: http://www.telerik.com/support/code-library/dictionaries-for-radspellchecker. Spanish is one of the languages that has already been submitted by a customer of ours.

Wrap-Up

Hopefully, you’ve seen just how quickly and easily you can use Telerik’s UI control suite to build a variety of applications from ASP.NET AJAX, MVC, Silverlight, WPF, WinForms, Windows Phone, Windows 8/8.1 and much more. Also, we’d love to hear your feedback or ideas on what you’d like to see in the future. Whether its new controls or additional features, feel free to leave feedback in our feedback portal. As a friendly reminder, don’t forget to download your own copy of the controls shown in this session right now!

Thanks,

Michael Crump
@mbcrump