RadToolBarTray use

[Scott Taylor]

Hi,

I'm new to the telerik wpf controls and I want to know if there is a way to make use of the RadToolBarTray and use it in place of the standard notifier control? Does telerik have anything that improves upon the  WinForms.NotifyIcon or the context menu for that control? I didn't see any previous samples or forum posts related to the tray icon.

Thanks,
Scott

[Viktor Tsvetkov]

Hi Scott Taylor,

Could you please be more descriptive in what you exactly want to achieve? What do you mean with this "standard notifier control"?

Regards,
Viktor Tsvetkov
the Telerik team

[Scott Taylor]

I am writing an application that uses a tray icon using WPF. I would like to know if Telerik has any controls that can make that simple or if I should resort to using the standard WinForms.NotifyIcon class.

[Viktor Tsvetkov]

Hello Scott Taylor,

We have no NotifyIcon control or something similar. I have added this issue in our PITS under the name "New control: NotifyIcon control" and it will be ready for tracking and voting tomorrow the latest. I have updated your Telerik account.

All the best,
Viktor Tsvetkov
the Telerik team

[TonyG]

I was looking for something like this myself.
- PITS is difficult to search and wasn't returning results so I abandoned it.
- Update notes say RadScreenTip has been improved but there are no links to anything that indicate what it is.
- Firing up the WinForms demos was useless.
- I searched and found references to the ScreenTip but finding documentation on this was impossible.  There is no control called a screen tip.  OK, I found a page that described how to add a ScreenTip to the ribbon, but I needed to know that it was a ribbon property to find that.

Extremely frustrated on this one - I don't care about the control, I can use NotifyIcon.  I just got upset with this website, trying to find out if something exists.

From an otherwise very happy customer, about to renew support for another year...

[Viktor Tsvetkov]

Hi TonyG,

Please accept our apologize for the caused inconvenience. Could you please clarify if there is something you want to know, so I will pleased if I can help you?

Sincerely yours,
Viktor Tsvetkov
the Telerik team

[TonyG]

Viktor - no, I don't have any questions. I understand that Telerik does not (yet) offer a component to replace NotifyIcon.  That's fine.

I was just expressing frustration regarding my attempt to find a solution on this site.  There is a lack of indexing, related links, and documentation to related to RadScreenTip.  If I had been able to quickly find that object, and a description of how and where it's used, I would not have wasted so much time.

Further, my frustration is not simply with that one component.  I've been expressing similar frustration for over a year now in this forum, with your site admins, and with your documentation people.  Again, I love the tools, but sometimes it's very difficult to find the right tools to solve specific problems.  So much engineering has been put into these tools and yet sometimes the website hides functionality and makes it difficult to use (and enjoy) the the tools.

I wish people at Telerik would be assigned to specific components.  For each individual, make it a challenge, an obligation, to ensure that your specific component is documented better than anyone else's.  Whenever you find that NotifyIcon may be confused with RadScreenTip, for example, check the docs to make sure that there is some reference between these components, and links to forum postings.  The problem now is that some people are responsible for code and others for documentation.  But individual components suffer with general purpose documentation.  There are details revealed in these forums that never make it into the docs, and no one is charged with creating those links from "public wisdom" to "official documentation".  If some individual(s) kept an eye on specific components then all of us would benefit - and of course we'd find out quickly who wasn't paying attention to their components...

Sorry for the soapbox speech.  Thanks for your time.

[Tina Stancheva]

Hi TonyG,

Thank you for the constructive feedback. I agree that there is real value in your words and that we should definitely take them into account to facilitate people attempting to find the needed resources, pages, etc on our site. This is a constant effort on our side and we will always be trying to better organize the enormous amount of information we want to share with our users.

Any other comments you have will be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely yours,
Tina Stancheva
the Telerik team

[TonyG]

Over two years ago I made a number of suggestions, and while they were well received, few of them have been implemented. Telerik is very "responsive" but not very "active" when it comes to improving access to information resources. Everything gets acknowledged and then dumped into the queue of things that might be done - you guys are great at that.  But not with follow-ups.  Sure, a multitude of changes have been made to the website, but not much to improve usability for those of us who actually use the software - almost all site changes are for marketing to new sales. Hey, what about the people who already made the purchase?  We come back here almost every day.  We need fast access to answers.

Despite such things, my only other comment is that Telerik remains an excellent business partner. We are renewing another year of support this week, and purchasing another license as well.

(This is the wrong forum for this sub-discussion and it might be best to move it to another area ... if  you can. :)  )

Thanks!

[Nikolay]

Hi TonyG,

We can definitely commit to the following improvement that I know can be done for sure right with the next release. We can place links in the update(release) notes to the onlione documentation and/or demos (or other appropriate online resources) to make the items more understandable. 

As for the rest of your commnets/suggestions - they will need another discussion and then I will be able to provide more details.  

Sincerely yours,
Nick
the Telerik team