Documentation Woes

[Dean]

I am a RAD developer (emphasis on Rapid Application Development)

I've purchased Telerik suite for this purpose, but how can I do things 'quickly' when the documentation is so lacking.

I am trying to whip up a quick WPF application.

I've just spent the last hour trying to find out how to apply a theme to my application - I cant find any details about how to do this, and yet this is probably the simplest and most popular task to perform.

I still dont know how to do this.

The documentation is woefully lacking in every sense.

Im finding it difficult to justify to my manager why I begged him to buy these Telerik compnents when I cant even do anything without a deep and arcane knowledge of everyhting before I start.

So much for RAD (lol)

I still dont know how to do this.

Just closed Blend in frustration - will do this one without Telerik

[Hristo]

Hello Dean,

I understand the frustration and the inconvenience you may experience dealing with our documentation. We are aware that it lacks in many ways but we are constantly trying to address the documentation gaps as fast as we can. Nevertheless, since our WPF and Silverlight suites are relatively young there is a lot to catch up to reach the level of documentation completeness of our ASP .NET controls.

Now, straight to you problem: I was not able to fully understand what exactly do you mean by “applying a theme to my application”? Are you trying to switch our built-in themes or you want to set a custom theme which is created outside of our controls? If it is the first case you may refer to our online help articles regarding Styling and Appearance (this link regards using themes with our GridView for WPF), or have a look at our online examples. If it is the second case – unfortunately for the time being it is not possible to port an external theme and apply it to our WPF controls. Or are you trying to restyle one of our themes? In that case you might find useful to take a look at our Styling in Expression Blend help article discussing our GridVIew for Silverlight (there are some differences with WPF but the common principles are the same).

In any case give us some more details about the scenario you are trying to achieve and our developers will do their best to help you out or provide you with a proper workaround.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

All the best,
Hristo
Unit Manager
the Telerik team

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[Dean]

I would simply like to apply one of the telerik built-in themes to my entire WPF application

[Kalin Milanov]

Hello Dean,

I would like to point you to a short article in out online help for applying Office Black theme to standard controls. Note that this technique might not work for every control but should cover the basic controls provided by Microsoft. 

If you are trying to apply a grid theme (for instance) to a grid provided by a non-Telerik vendor it will most surely not work since the theme respects templates and styles which are different for different vendors.  

In case I misunderstood your request and you want to apply one of Telerik themes to a Telerik control you might want to follow this article as a reference Using Themes with RadGridView.

I hope this answers your questions.

Best wishes,
Kalin Milanov
the Telerik team

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[Chris]

You guys might want to find a better way to store your links or review your web server error logs for broken links.

The links listed by your support people go to broken links on your webserver.

[Veselin Vasilev]

Hello Chris,

Thanks for reporting this.

We try to not change the URL of our help topics (or if we change them - to create a permanent redirect to the new address), but it seems we failed in this case.

In case you need to find the information about the styling of our controls I suggest you start from here.
In addition, there is a "Styles and Templates" section of the help topics of the individual controls where you can find detailed information.

We apologize for the broken links.

Kind regards,
Veselin Vasilev
the Telerik team