Fail to Create a 'System.Type' from the text 'telerik:*****'

[Woramin]

Hi there,

At this time, my supervisor ask the support about your Minifier to reduce size of dll. Later, the support team sent back a minified version of dll that we have listed for them. However, there are problems. Any form that contains RadControl will have XamlParseException error something like "Failed to create a 'System.Type' from the" in the InitializeComponent();

Currently I can found only 2 different exception message as below.
- Failed to create a 'System.Type' from the text 'telerik:RadExpander' Line: No.5
- Failed to create a 'System.Type' from the text 'telerikInput:RadNumericUpdown' Line: No.10


the support team said it might relate to the "Style" or "ContentTemplate" that we use in our project. But I have searched through our project and cannot find any style that relate to either RadExpander or RadNumericUpdown. In addition, some form didn't use any said controls but the problem still occurs. Also some forms have exception on NumericUpdown while somes have exception on RadExpander. However, when I tested dll in my own little project, problem doesn't occur so I think dll might not be the problem

Below are the list of controls that we used
- RadButton
- RadChart
- RadColorPicker
- RadComboBox
- RadComboBoxItem
- RadContextMenu
- RadDataPager
- RadDatePicker
- RadDocking
- RadDockPanel
- RadDocument
- RadGauge
- RadGridView
- RadLinearSparkline
- RadMenu
- RadMenuItem
- RadPane
- RadPaneGroup
- RadRadioButton
- RadSlider
- RadSplitContainer
- RadTabControl
- RadTabItem
- ***RadTimeBar (Note that this one also has a problem because we couldn't find this control from the minified DLL)
- RadToggleButton
- RadTreeView
- RadTreeViewItem
- RadWindow

and Here are the list of the dll that your support team has sent back. Its version is 2011.3.1220

* Telerik.Windows.Controls.Charting
* Telerik.Windows.Controls.Data
* Telerik.Windows.Controls.DataVisualization
* Telerik.Windows.Controls
* Telerik.Windows.Controls.Docking
* Telerik.Windows.Controls.Gauge
* Telerik.Windows.Controls.GridView
* Telerik.Windows.Controls.Input
* Telerik.Windows.Controls.Navigation
* Telerik.Windows.Data


I am looking forward for your help to solve these exception problems

Thanks

[Tina Stancheva]

Hello Woramin,

Unfortunately at the moment the Assembly Minifier tool has many known limitations like its inability to minify some of our assemblies at all - like the Metro theme assembly or the Charting assembly. It also cannot find some of our latest controls like the RadTimeBar and this is why it cannot isolate their class definitions from the assemblies.

We are aware of these issues and we will do our best to fix them but due to the many pressing tasks in our to-do list I cannot bind to a specific time frame. This is why until the issues are addressed I'd suggest you to examine this blog post as it lists 5 ways to reduce the size of your XAP.

However, as you said that you're not sure if the XamlParseException is caused by the minified assemblies, I wanted to ask you if you can test the solution using non-minified assemblies. If the exceptions are still raises, it would be best to send us a sample solution where we can reproduce them in order to investigate the case and what might be causing it.

Greetings,
Tina Stancheva
the Telerik team

[Woramin]

Hi Tina,

I have tried non-minified assemblies in our real project and everything works fine, no any exception occurs. I'm still doubt why when I use minified in my test solution, everything works fine, but when I used them in real project, exceptions arises (Also with different controls specified). Thus, I think we might continue using original version of dll.

By the way, about your answer in first paragraph, you mean that if we used minifier to reduce the size of assemblies, we might lost some classes/controls like "RadTimeBar" right? I'm not sure how minifier really works but when I tested and didn't select any thing out, the size of dll still reduced so I wonder whether there were some classes lost during the process. (For example, when I selected only Telerik.Windows.Controls dll and extract it with all controls still being selected, file size is still reduced and some classes such as "ViewModelBase" was gone)

In addition, the assembly minifier really frustrated me. Below are the list of problems for me

-  When I browse assemblies from my computer, no any sign of loading shows up. Thus, I cannot know whether the upload is successful or not. I hope it should have some loading bar or busy indicator for showing some response back to the user.
- Sometimes the list of controls from the uploaded dll might or might not show up
- Select 4 or more dlls (when the combined file size is larger than 1mb), never the list of selected controls showed up for me.
- Sometimes when the list of control appeared from the browsed dll, it might disappeared right away
- Sometimes even the list of control didn't show up, the extract button still works and I can extract minified dll but no any controls were selected
***  (Note that I tested this at my home and my office and never be successful. I tested with i.e. version8, firefox and chrome,  firefox has some problems that when the list of control appear, it will disappear right away with no reason but i.e. and chrome works fine for me).

============= Edit ===================================================

In addition, I would like to know your opinion about Silverlight, do you think Silverlight can still go on because we still need to use your Telerik Silverlight to develop our project. Do you think Telerik Silverlight can still go on? Just for the Opinion, Thanks

====================================================================

By the way again, thanks for your response, please answer the question in second paragraph, and hope that all of you can fix minifier soon

Woramin S.

[Nikolay]

Hello Woramin,

Basically the AssemblyMinifier tool extracts from the assemblies only those classes that are used in the selected RadControls's classes. The tool searches recursively through the main class that describes the selected RadControls and then through every other related to these controls class. This way a set of classes is extracted so that a minified assembly is created. If you haven't selected any controls the assembly can contain only a few core classes, but most assemblies won't contain anything.

Also, I wanted to thank you for listing all the issues that you found while using the Minifier tool, we are aware of most of them and they are added to our to-do list. However, I created a feature request to display a visual indicator while loading the assemblies into the tool. You can track its progress here. I updated your Telerik account for your valuable feedback. Unfortunately at the moment I cannot bind to a time frame when the tool's issues will be fixed.

About your  "In addition, I would like to know your opinion about Silverlight, do you think Silverlight can still go on because we still need to use your Telerik Silverlight to develop our project. Do you think Telerik Silverlight can still go on? Just for the Opinion, Thanks" question - first of all there is a clear indication from MS that they will support Silverlight (5) for 10 years.
We have serious plans for Silverlight. As you can see in the 2012 roadmap there are some major initiatives already started - there are new controls like Diagrams, GanttView and Pivot coming in 2012 and that's just part of it. We believe that Silverlight has a great future in the Line of Business application development that targets desktop especially if you already have the needed skillset and knowledge on the platform.

I would also encourage you to take a look at our Windows 8 page elaborating on the new OS and how we got you covered for it. 

Greetings,
Nick
the Telerik team