Your Questions From the Telerik DevCraft R1 2016 Release Webinar

During our Telerik DevCraft R1 2016 release webinar, we received far too many questions to answer at the time. Today, your questions are answered!

Last week, we hosted the Telerik DevCraft R1 2016 release webinar, featuring everything that's new in the Telerik DevCraft suite of tools. Overall, the webinar was a huge success. We had over 200 questions asked in about 60 minutes. Now, I don't know about you, but my typing speed isn't at the rate it needs to be to answer that many questions in that short of a time period. So naturally we decided to answer your questions in a blog post. As promised, here they are!

We had a lot of questions about the (new) spreadsheet control and Telerik UI for ASP.NET AJAX and Telerik UI for ASP.NET MVC. We also had a lot of questions covering our other products as well. I’ve tried to summarise the top questions we received in this blog post. Hopefully, your question is answered here. If it isn’t or you have a question about any of our products, please feel free to submit a question below!

Questions about the Spreadsheet

Is the spreadsheet resizeable?
Yes, the spreadsheet can be set to any size and can shrink/grow with the element container or viewport.

Does the spreadsheet have Excel-like functions such as VLOOKUP?
Yes! Check it out on our list of formulas page.

Is there Excel provider in Telerik UI for ASP.NET MVC or Kendo UI similar to the one for Telerik UI for ASP.NET AJAX?
No, this is for Telerik UI for ASP.NET AJAX only. The spreadsheet in Telerik UI for ASP.NET MVC is easily saved, imported, and exported using JSON.

Can we create multiple sheets and toggle between them?
Multiple sheets per document are supported. A tab strip at the bottom of the UI is used to toggle between sheets.

What is the maximum number of rows you can load into the spreadsheet control?
In general, the spreadsheet does not have any restriction for the number of rows or columns it can hold. We grow the spreadsheet in terms of memory usage as it’s needed. It’s more a constraint of your available memory for the browser. Be aware that loading massive amounts of data into the spreadsheet may take some time.

Can we pull out the spreadsheet data and do other things with it other than just save back to the same file? Like looping through the cells and stuff? We’re looking for an OWC replacement so we’re wondering if it will be able to do most of the same things.
The spreadsheet control has a robust API for managing data. You can import data into the spreadsheet as well as export it out through JSON. The spreadsheet features a built-in export-to-Excel functionality which is also fully actionable in the browser.

Is it possible to import data from Microsoft Excel and use the new spreadsheet to make the changes then save the data into SQL Server?
Yes! Please watch our previous webinar for a similar example.

Is the Excel style filtering also available in Kendo UI or is it limited to Telerik UI for ASP.NET MVC?
Excel filtering is available for Kendo UI, Telerik UI for ASP.NET MVC, and Telerik UI for ASP.NET AJAX.

How easy is it to load data from the Kendo UI Grid control into the spreadsheet control?
VERY easy. Seriously.

Does the spreadsheet provider respect any restrictions (i.e. editable cells) that are in the original document?
Please refer to this discussion.

Would you be able to save the spreadsheet directly into a back-end database (e.g. Oracle)?
Of course. You could export in-memory and push to a remote endpoint that would persist the data to an underlying database.

Can you have a spreadsheet where you have the basics set up including formulas and have some fields locked out so that the user can only make some changes and save them?
Please refer to this discussion.

Is there a way to have a hybrid of the spreadsheet control and a GridView control where you just have the cells from the spreadsheet without the Excel-style header, but you get the formula processing of the spreadsheet?
Currently, there is not. Please visit feedback.telerik.com and submit a suggestion if you would like to see a feature added.

Can we control the mode of the spreadsheet (read-only vs editable)?
Please refer to this discussion.

The spreadsheet import process doesn’t persist data validation list rules when imported. Would that be a future supported functionality?
If there is a specific feature like this one that you would like to see added to the spreadsheet then please visit feedback.telerik.com and let us know. We use this portal to gauge our customers needs and to prioritize our road maps.

Are all Excel formulas included in the spreadsheet control? Where can we find a complete list of available formulas?
We have published a list of formulas that we support in the spreadsheet control.

I’ve found that colors aren’t preserved when importing spreadsheets with conditional formatting. Would there be future support for conditional formating validations?
The import function doesn’t preserve everything at the moment. The original goal was to get the data imported correctly. Our plan is to improve it over time. We are working to improve this aspect of the spreadsheet control.

Can you do SQL Server CRUD integration with the ASP.NET MVC spreadsheet control?
Yes, this is done through the DataSource component that’s bound to the spreadsheet itself.

Is it possible (out-of-the-box) to use SQL Server as the backend data source? Then, allow the user to edit the data in the spreadsheet control and save the data back to the SQL Server. Basically, letting the user do their CRUD operations through a spreadsheet. That is where a lot of users are used to doing CRUD.
Is this for UI for ASP.NET MVC? If so then it’s a yes and no answer. The spreadsheet is bound to the DataSource component, which is a fundamental aspect of our framework. This DataSource needs to be bound to some backend data. However, most database admins that I know would NEVER expose SQL Server (or any other database) directly and publicly. So, in order to get around this, why not create a simply CRUD-oriented service endpoint? That would totally meet your needs.

Are there plans to SharePoint enable the spreadsheet control?
Not explicitly, no. However, why not host it inside a Web Part? That should work.

Is there some support for Power Pivot functionality in spreadsheet control in Telerik UI for ASP.NET AJAX?
Pivots are not available. Please request this feature at feedback.telerik.com!

Is there an equivalent SpreadsheetDocumentProvider for Telerik UI for ASP.NET MVC?
No, this feature is for Telerik UI for ASP.NET AJAX only. The spreadsheet in Telerik UI for ASP.NET MVC can be easily saved, imported, and exported via JSON.

Questions about Telerik UI for ASP.NET AJAX and Telerik UI for ASP.NET MVC

Can we export data bound to a DataGrid directly to the new spreadsheet control, as opposed to forcing the user to download the XLS?
Yes, almost any scenario can be resolved using either AJAX callbacks or the Document Processing API.

How extensive is the enabling of lightweight rendering?
You can enable lightweight rendering per control or per project. Lightweight rendering emits HTML5 and CSS3 and you will see proper semantic tags throughout.

Does the Kendo UI grid filter allow you to filter to null values?
Yes, it’s now supported in the latest release.

We have a legacy web application built on an earlier version of Telerik. We have upgraded to the current Telerik library. The app was pre-MVC but is an ASP.NET app. Can we integrate the new stuff with our platform?
ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC can run side-by-side so you should be able to do this. Of course, that’s a very “it depends” answer. It’s best to build your new stuff on the latest and greatest and then migrate everything over part-by-part.

Which has the more developed controls, Telerik UI for ASP.NET MVC or Telerik UI for ASP.NET AJAX? And, if Telerik UI for ASP.NET MVC is more developed, will it always lead Telerik UI for ASP.NET AJAX?
Our ASP.NET AJAX controls have been around longer. However, they target different environments and have difficult dependencies.

Are there any useful extensions/plugins you’d recommend for Visual Studio Code for helping when using Kendo UI?
We’re evaluating our list of extensions for Visual Studio to see what we can move over to VS Code. Mind you, VS Code has a lot of great extensions for JavaScript development.

Does Telerik UI for ASP.NET MVC auto-scale for mobile devices? Or, are there mobile-specific controls you need to use?
Our controls are responsive and adaptive. Of course, you need to use a grid system and our Responsive Panel.

Is RenderMode="Lightweight" supported with Microsoft Edge?
Yes. Lightweight rendering is ideal for modern browsers. However, legacy browsers like IE6–7 could present some challenges.

I know there is tight integration for Angular2 but has anything considered AureliaJS?
We’re are exploring support for Aurelia. Please check this blog post for extra info.

Is there some SharePoint 2013/SharePoint 360 support for the spreadsheet control in Telerik UI for ASP.NET AJAX?
You could host the spreadsheet in a webpart. However, out-of-the-box support isn’t available at this point in time.

Is it possible to search nested grids? Is it possible to search the child elements as well inside the filter seach?
Yes, the built-in filtering is separate and isolated. That means that filters applied on nested girds won’t impact their parent. Also, if parents are filtered and that filter takes out a child grid then the filtering is preserved.

Is the full text search available in grid for Telerik UI for ASP.NET or Kendo UI?
See this forum post.

Where is the line drawn when choosing either a simple .NET vs a MVC website?
Well, that depends on your requirements and your skill set. I’ll assume you’re using ASP.NET MVC. If that’s the case then ASP.NET MVC gives you more control over your markup. At the end of the day, I would go with whatever your team is more familiar with.

Is the material theme available in Telerik UI for ASP.NET MVC?
Yes! Check it out through our Theme Builder tool.

Will Telerik Theme Builder for ASP.NET AJAX allow us to chose between Bootstrap 3 and Bootstrap 4?
Currently, the Telerik Theme Builder for ASP.NET AJAX supports Bootstrap 3.

Does Kendo UI use and/or support Sass?
Currently, Kendo UI has .less support. However, with Bootstrap 4 moving to Sass we are considering .sass for future releases.

What’s the best way to integrate ASP.NET AJAX responsiveness with Bootstrap?
First, enable the Bootstrap theme on the project. Then, set the rendering mode to auto; this will enable responsive/adaptive behaviors on all controls.

Would we see Sass templates support in addition to Less?
Since Bootstrap 4 will be based on Sass, this is something we are considering for future releases.

When will you add the Excel-like filtering for the RadGrid in Telerik UI for ASP.NET AJAX?
It’s already there as part of the R1 2016 release.

Microsoft has confused me to no end with this name change to ASP.NET Core 1.0. What does that mean for MVC 6? Does that mean MVC 6 is still only a part of core? Or, will it also be part of the full 4.6 stack?
Recently, the ASP.NET team changed the name of its framework from ASP.NET 5 to ASP.NET Core 1.0. For more information about this change, please refer to Scott Hanselman’s blog post entitled, ASP.NET 5 is dead - Introducing ASP.NET Core 1.0 and .NET Core 1.0.

Where can we sign up for Kendo UI webinar?
The Telerik Kendo UI Q1’16 Release Webinar takes place on February 17 at 11AM EST. Sign up today!

Will Telerik UI for ASP.NET AJAX support ASP.NET Core 1.0 with DNX and ASP.NET AJAX soon?
ASP.NET Core 1.0 does not currently support ASP.NET Web Forms. Microsoft would need to add Web Forms support to make this possible.

We are planning on migrating our applications from Silverlight. What are the functional gaps between the Telerik’s Silverlight UI controls and the ASP.NET MVC controls?
That’s a difficult question to answer since they target very different runtimes. Currently, 70+ controls are available with Telerik UI for ASP.NET MVC. I would recommend having a look and see where the gaps are based on your requirements.

Will future versions of Kendo UI implement the current Web Components standard?
We announced support for Web Components back in July 2015. Since that time, we’ve shipped support for Web Components in Kendo UI. Please check out our documentation on the subject for more information.

How does one migrate a project with an older version of Telerik UI for ASP.NET AJAX to the latest version?
First, back-up your project. (Always do this. Source control helps here.) Next, right-click on the solution in Visual Studio and use the configure/update project wizard.

Do the Telerik UI for ASP.NET AJAX themes support the W3C accessbility standard AAA, by default?
Telerik ASP.NET controls are Section 508-compliant and follow the W3C Web Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 for level A, AA, or AAA compliance. Also, all components strictly follow W3C specifications to be XHTML1.1-compliant and most of them are HTML5-compliant.

Is the Touch Manager you’ve released for WPF planned for ASP.NET MVC?
We have no plans at this time.

Does changing the hosting platform affect the output of the UI in any way? Or, is the hosting on Ubuntu as seamless as it is on Windows?
Kendo UI is built around a combination of front-end resources like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Hosting shouldn’t be an issue. That stated, the server wrappers we’ve built for ASP.NET MVC are a different animal. The good news is that our latest version of Telerik UI for ASP.NET MVC supports ASP.NET MVC Core, allowing you to run cross-platform.

Is there a similar theme builder for Kendo UI with AngularJS?
I’m not sure how to answer that. Our themes are based on CSS. So, it’s what you emit as markup that’s important.

Is there a plan to support a export to DOCX functionality from the Kendo UI Editor similar to what the spreadsheet control can do with export to Excel?
PDF export is available since Q1 2015. DOCX export is set for future consideration.

Does the spreadsheet control for Kendo UI support live integration with Kendo UI charts?
Yes, this is facilitated through the DataSource component. For Kendo UI charts, you simply need to respond (accordingly) to the changes that are made through it.

Does the spreadsheet control for Kendo UI support tab/enter and shift+tab/enter for keyboard navigation between cells (like in Excel)?
Yes, this behavior is the same.

Does the spreadsheet control for Kendo UI provide formulas to calculate values across other cells (like excel)? Is there a mechanism to add custom formulas to this list?
Yes, you can simply reference cells in your formulas. It’s just like Excel. Custom formulas are done through configuration.

Does your date picker have a time picker as well?
Yep. Check it out here!

Miscellaneous Questions

What is a XAML?
eXtensible Application Markup Language

I like the searchable GridView in Telerik UI for WPF. However, it seems too simple to use. There are any boundaries to just turning it on?
It’s customisable if that’s what you’re asking.

Does ShowSearchPanel default to false for the GridView in Telerik UI for WPF?
Yes, it does.

Are the XAML declarations created for me when I drag the controls on to my Xamarin.Forms page?
This depends on your development environment. We have controls for Visual Studio that support the visual designer.

Can the gesture manager be used to create your own gestures? For example, using two figures in a swirling motion to change values in a gauge.
Our touch support is listed here.

Does code interoperability exist besides iOS, Android, and Windows 10 with your UI controls?
That scenario is supported through Xamarin. And yes, we have controls for Xamarin: Telerik UI for Xamarin.

You have shown some great resources for native mobile development. In your opinion, how does the Telerik Platform fit into the overall mobile development strategy?
We have a number of great backend services available. It’s a peanut butter and chocolate combination!

What’s the best way of using an entity data source and CRUD on procedures in the database server? I’d suggest checking out the numerous articles on MSDN relating to this topic since it’s outside the scope of Telerik’s products. There’s also a number of courses covering this up on PluralSight.

When developing for ASP.NET Core 1.0 to run on any server, is the .NET code the same as if developing for IIS? In other words can I decide to move it to a non-Windows server at a later time and expect it to work the same?
Generally-speaking, yes. That’s the goal.

As changes are made to UI is there any consideration to updating the existing demo projects on the forums?
Some of them that are highly visited don’t necessarily function for current versions of UI or were built on older versions of visual studio and take additional work to get to a usable state for reference. We try very hard to keep the demos up-to-date. However, they aren’t always updated entirely because parts of each UI library change from release to release. If you do spot something that’s broken then please let us know!

Have Another Question?

We've tried to answer some of the most common questions here. However, if you have a question that's not here or a feature request that isn't addressed, please feel free to leave a comment below or over in our Feedback Portal.