Need Clarification between purpose of KendoUI and ASP.NET AJAX

[Deep Ghosh]

To develop an application in C# for Tablets and Desktops now, which platform should one choose?

Need to have this working on iPad as well as MS Surface.

Is it KendoUI or ASP.net AJAX controls?

What are the positive and negative points of each.

Platform is Microsoft IIS ONLY.

[Sebastian]

Hello Deep,

I think the information from this forum thread will help you make a decision which of our two products is more appropriate for your scenario.

Let us know if you have additional inquiries.

Best regards,
Sebastian
the Telerik team

[Deep Ghosh]

So what I get from this is:

My objective is to support HTML5 and if possible support desktop and Tablets with same code and write a Rich UI Business Application using WEB SERVICES. WPF and Silverlight is Not an option.

ASP.NET with AJAX (or MVC) is your future direction and it will support HTML5 once it crystalizes.

In this case I think I should not look into KendoUI while developing a BRAND NEW BUSINESS application and concentrate on ASP.NET AJAX.

Am I right?

[Sebastian]

Hello again Deep,

The scenario you depicted can be supported by our ASP.NET AJAX controls as well as Telerik MVC Extensions, and Kendo UI. It is up to you to decide which of these solutions/frameworks suits your needs best.

Regards,
Sebastian
the Telerik team

[Deep Ghosh]

Hello again,

Thanks for your prompt response.

I think we need to choose between three types below.

What are the factors for choosing each for a brand new application?

For our project we need to support drop down combos with the drop down list being multi column. ASP.NET AJAX support that but KendoUI does not. This is just one case but we fully understand that KendoUI may support this in future.

What do you recommend or at least what are the considerations for choosing each.

Best Regards,
Deep

[Sebastian]

Deep, the factors that should help you determine which product to use is your application concept and foundation. This is what I wanted to stress on with the information and resources referenced so far.

If you do not want to rely or be bound to a specific server-side framework, Kendo UI should be the right choice for you. It is cross-platform, framework-agnostic and utilizes heavily HTML5, JavaScript and CSS3. It is also touch-enabled and optimized for mobile usage. You can use web services to feed data to the Kendo UI widgets or executed some logic on a server.

In case you will be using a certain server framework like ASP.NET AJAX or ASP.NET MVC, the corresponding products of ours - RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX or Telerik MVC Extensions - might be the more appropriate option for you. They take advantage of the server functionality exposed by the respective framework, incorporate HTML5 features and client APIs, and help you create and initialize the controls on the server. Again, you can use web services to communicate with the server and perform some operations. Both suites are touch-friendly and thus you app will be usable on mobile.

Hope this additional explanation helps. The final choice what technology you will use depends entirely on you, though.
 
Kind regards,
Sebastian
the Telerik team