Silverlight 5.0 RC

[Glen]

Hi,

We're having a look at the RC for SL 5.0.

The previous 5.0 beta worked fine with the Telerik controls however we're getting some very basic issues with the RC.

For instance creating a new SL 5.0 project from scratch and adding a RadTabControl with a RadTabItem with content causes an exception.

<telerik:RadTabControl>
    <telerik:RadTabItem>
        <telerik:RadTabItem.Header>
            <TextBlock Text="Reference" />
        </telerik:RadTabItem.Header>
        <TextBlock Text="test" />
    </telerik:RadTabItem>
</telerik:RadTabControl>

This will throw the following error:
System.Windows.Markup.XamlParseException occurred
  Message=Set property 'System.Windows.Controls.ContentControl.Content' threw an exception. [Line: 15 Position: 33]
  LineNumber=15
  LinePosition=33
  StackTrace:
       at System.Windows.Application.LoadComponent(Object component, Uri resourceLocator)
  InnerException: System.ArgumentNullException
       Message=Value cannot be null.
Parameter name: element
       StackTrace:
            at MS.Internal.XcpImports.ItemsControl_GetItemsOwner(DependencyObject element)
            at System.Windows.Controls.ItemsControl.ItemsControlFromItemContainer(DependencyObject container)
            at Telerik.Windows.Controls.ItemsControl.ItemsControlFromItemContainer(DependencyObject container)
            at Telerik.Windows.Controls.RadTabItem.get_Owner()
            at Telerik.Windows.Controls.RadTabItem.get_HasOwner()
            at Telerik.Windows.Controls.RadTabItem.OnContentChanged(Object oldContent, Object newContent)
            at System.Windows.Controls.ContentControl.OnContentChanged(IntPtr nativeTarget, CValue& oldContentValue, CValue& newContentValue)
       InnerException:

This also occurs if we specifically set the content:

<telerik:RadTabControl>
    <telerik:RadTabItem>
        <telerik:RadTabItem.Header>
            <TextBlock Text="Reference" />
        </telerik:RadTabItem.Header>
        <telerik:RadTabItem.Content>
            <TextBlock Text="test" />
        </telerik:RadTabItem.Content>
    </telerik:RadTabItem>
</telerik:RadTabControl>

Additionally attempting to run the demo site with version 5.0.60818.0 of the SL plugin also throws this error with some controls.
The ones we've tested so far that fall over are:
RibbonView (If there arebackstage items)
RabTabControl

The RadBreadCrumb works.

[Jonathan]

We are having some of the same issues on various controls with Silverlight 5 RC. I guess there will have to be an update for the RC to work.

[Glen]

This is the response from the support ticket I raised. Just a matter of time then...


Hello Glen,

We are currently testing our controls against the Silverlight 5 RC. There are some issues that we found and some of them are major like the one in the thread you send. We will definitely work on resolving them, but in the moment I can't give you a specific time frame when there will be stable version compatible with Silverlight RC. But I can assure you that we are tightly following Microsoft releases and will try to provide compatible controls as soon as possible.

Don't hesitate to contact us if you have further questions.

Kind regards,
Boyan
the Telerik team

[Thomas]

Any news on that?
Our RadOutlookBar seems to be broken since upgrading from beta to SL 5 RC.

cheers
Thomas

[Petar Mladenov]

Hello Thomas Mutzl,

 The problems with our controls with SL 5 RC are reported to Microsoft and they will try to address them for the official Release of Silverlight 5. Please let us know if you need more info.

Greetings,
Petar Mladenov
the Telerik team

[Glen]

Is this now the official response from Telerik?

'You will not be able to test any application using Telerik Silverlight controls prior to the actual release by Microsoft'.

That is completely unacceptable and has dented my faith in Telerik's ability to be at the bleeding edge for Silverlight.

Very disappointing.

[Hristo]

Hello Glen,

I can confirm we have some issues with most of our controls working properly with the official SL5 RC drop. However, I can assure you that we are actively working on fixing all the issues and we will not stop until this goal is achieved.


Best wishes,
Hristo
the Telerik team

[Glen]

Ok so we should see a release of the Silverlight controls prior to SL5 RTM?

Are there any dates at all on when you expect this to occur? Would be nice to be able to give an answer to management!

G

[Nikolay]

Hi Glen,

At this time, we cannot commit to an exact date when we will launch native controls built against SL5 RTM. We will be targeting a short timeframe after the offiicial announcement of SL5 RTM to release controls built on top of that RTM version. I want to again stress on the fact that all our Silverlight 4 controls will be fully compatible with the forthcoming SL5 official release. We are closely working with Microsoft to ensure that.

All the best,
Nick
the Telerik team

[Thomas]

Hi Guys,

I am in the same situation as Glen (and assumingly many others).

Good to know, that you are "targeting a short timeframe after the offiicial announcement of SL5 RTM to release controls built on top of that RTM version".

But at the moment the Telerik Silverlight controls have serious issues with the current RC version.
That means, we are (more or less) blocked in our development cycle until

• either Microsoft releases the RTM
• or Telerik provides a fix for the current RC version.

Not a big deal, if it is just a question of days.
But currently we have no information about any dates and can't continue our development!!!

Regards,
Thomas

[HDC]

I can only second Thomas his oppinion.

RTM could still be months away... our development is also seriously interupted by this.  A week has passed away en still no news about Supporting the RC or even a hint on when "or if" the RC will be supported!!!

Telerik may boast that "our investments are safe"... but we are becoming seriously discouraged by the lack of transparency regarding Silverlight5 RC.

May I ask Telerik to give us a definate answer about when or if the RC will be supprted?

[Heli]

Hi,

Same situation over here. All progress blocked due to the RC incompatibility.
Please provide an update for SL5 RC version.


Regards,

Heli.

[Devon]

Hi,

Same situation here, a timeframe would be awesome, even if it's a month away just let us know so that we can work around it accordingly.  Give us some transparency here.

[Thomas]

Anybody from Telerik still monitoring this thread???

[Ryan]

Hi i am in this boat as well i have since uninstalled SL5 RC but that doesnt change the state of the error, does anyone know a work around besides reinstalling VS2010 ? (ill prob take this op to reinstall my whole box if it is required)

I dont think it is quite fair that Telerik is getting landed with so much blame as it looks like SL5 RC is an enormous steaming pile of code that steps across boundarys that no one expected. (if installing SL5RC can affect my SL4 apps someone in MS land is doing it wrong)

What i would like is a hotfix resolution result where i can hack my registry or something to make this problem go away...

look forward to resolution, thanks for your time telerik team.

[Juliana]

Hi Ryan,

For me it turned out that Telerik controls produce errors both with SL 5 RC and without SL 5 at all. So I uninstalled SL 5 RC and installed SL 5 beta. Thereafter my SL 4 projects with Telerik controls works without weird exceptions.
Yes, I also find so so wrong, but at least it's helped.

HTH,
Juliana

[Nikolay]

Hi there,

I completely understand the situation you are in. We are absolutely serious when claiming that we will address all the currently existing issues. The fact is that we are  working really closely with MS on this. As a close partner we have an access to the latest internal drops and we can confirm that all the issues have been successfully resolved when running tests against these latest internal builds.

Our timeframe remains to launch a SL5 offering together with or shortly after Silverlight 5 RTM.
 
Greetings,
Nick
the Telerik team

[Glen]

Wow. That is the response we were hoping we WOULDN'T get from Telerik.

You have now put all your customers at a competitive disadvantage to other SL shops who don't rely on Telerik controls.

We can't test or even use any of the features of SL5 RC until it is released has now made me seriously question whether I will recommend Telerik as a provider ever again. When I sold the Management on Telerik here it was based on your fast turn around on issues with bug fixes \ support.

Now I have to go to them and state that we can't test our application against SL 5 RC because our 3rd party control provider doesn't work.

This gives our competitors months of advantage over us which might as well be years in our space.

I have to now go and look at your competitors offerings and put a plan together to convert.

Thank you very much.

[ben]

We are in the same boat here.

Hopwever this is one of the risks we understood when we started developing against Preview/Beta/RC code bases. You have to take the good with the bad. If your manager is giving you a hard time because the RC doesn't work the same as the beta, I'd point out that the business decision to start to produce code on a developing platform has caused the delay.

Until the actual release ships, no one knows what the code will look like. It's worth remembering that the actual release may cause additional problems to both your code and your 3rd parties.

While it's great that telerik now has access to internal microsoft builds, it's a shame that they didn't before hand so we could run and test against the RC now. At least we can be confident that a telerik release alongside the Silverlight 5 release will be fully compatable.

I've managed to uninstall all the RC stuff and reinstall the beta. I'm running fine as I was before, and I'll avoid using the RC and as a company we will be moving directly to the release as and when telerik ships working code.

I'm also expecting that when the release arrives I'll have to rework some of our code to work with it.

In case it helps anyone, I've removed everything in Add/Remove Programs with Silverlight 5 in the name, Ria Services and blend 5 preview. I've then reinstalled Microsoft Expression Blend SDK Preview for Silverlight 5, Microsoft Expression Blend Preview for Silverlight 5, Microsoft Silverlight PRODUCT VERSION: 5.0.60401.0, Microsoft Silverlight 5 Beta SDK and WCF RIA Services v1.0 SP2 Preview (April 2011).

[Mark]

While I understand much of the frustration expressed in this thread by the user community, I thought I might contribute the following additional thoughts.  Microsoft has made a definitive shift away from Silverlight (although they hold themselves out with conflicting dispositions).  This is evidenced in many ways, and the most recent example for me is, IE10 / Windows 8 will not have the ability to run Silverlight in some circumstances as the browser will not support add-ins on certain versions of the OS.  So if you develop an application that would otherwise run on a tablet for instance - a significant area the ENTIRE world is heading, it may well be money down the drain. in respect to SL development.

This (in my view) terrible decision by MS to abandon the devloper community has ripple effects on all third party control vendors and they are scrambling to steer their individual businesses in a manner that both keeps them competitive and their work product(s) marketable while doing their best to keep the customer base happy.  Telerik is squarely in this unfortunately dynamic.

I can say that I have had great response from Telerik on the majority of concerns specific to their Silverlight controls on balance.  Sometimes not at the speed I may have wished or at times too quick to believe there is no problem on their end when there indeed was, but overall they deliver a steady product with (again in my opinion) a support system / team that far exceeds the popular competitors.

My last "2 cents" ... for all those active LOB app-dev folks who are considering the evolution from SL4 to 5, you might otherwise want to consider other options of application maturation because of the Microsoft shift to HTML5. It really is a shame because after the years of evolving SL into a business ready codebase its days are numbered.

[Ryan]

@Mark...

The world ends on December 21 2012 anyway so im guna go out developing Silverlight =P

[Mark]

@Ryan,

Hey I'm with ya, I'll bring the beer.  I'd much rather put $$ to that than a black hole with no reward.

[Ryan]

@Mark

Deal ill bring the steaks for the BBQ and we can watch it all go down in comfort.

As a side note if MS wants us to use HTML5 hadnt they better make a browser that can actually parse HTML and render something useful on screen, IE is always the browser i find myself tweaking HTML for where FireFox, Chrome, Opera all have consistent outputs between them. Anyone else with me on that one?

[Nikolay]

Hi all,

As I said in my previous post - we ARE working on a native RadControls for Silverlight 5 offering as we always did with each new version of Silverlight.

We did not launch a specific build against the RC version as there were certain problems outside our product. It would have been easier for us to release a build of RadControls for Silverlight 5 RC, but that would result in a customer-frustration and a lot of posts and emails due to the number of issues we discovered earlier.
Given the fact that RadControls for Silverlight is the industry leading toolkit for Silverlight development we did not want to lower the high quality-standards of the product and eventually disappoint you.

We want to ship a stable product, to which you will be able to easily upgrade without having to implement any significant changes. To support the fact that Telerik’s plans about Silverlight have not changed at all you can refer to Vassil Terziev’s blog posts on that matter:
http://blogs.telerik.com/vassilterziev/posts/11-09-22/silverlight-is-dead-f-dead.aspx
http://blogs.telerik.com/vassilterziev/posts/11-08-12/our-strategy-has-not-shifted-telerik-html5-and-silverlight.aspx

To be able to ship a stable product that will run as expected against Silverlight 5 we will have to deliver it together with or shortly after the Silverlight 5 official (RTM) release.
 
Greetings,
Nick
the Telerik team

[Kevin]

I feel as though Microsoft is being blamed for the RC incompatibility with the current Telerik Silverlight controls.  Because I'm a curious person, I decided to check other Silverlight controls for compatibility with RC 5.  My test was simple, I installed the SL RC Runtime and browsed through all the sample controls.  My results are below:

ComponentOne - PASS
Infragistics - PASS
Devexpress - PASS
XCeed - PASS
FarPoint - PASS
Divelements - PASS
Intersoft - PASS
Visifire - PASS
Telerik - FAIL

Now I'm curious about what Telerik is doing differently than everyone else?

[bo xi]

Why Telerik team can not fix the 5.0 RC bug(sorry, I have to call it "bug"  and show stopper for us) after almost one month fixing work? Please let us know the reason.

[Nikolay]

Hi there,

We can point you to the specific problems that we reported to Microsoft like:

• Regression with LambdaExpression.Compile() method 
• FlowDirection of TextBock property behaving differently 
• Exception with setting listBox.SelectedItems[0] = null when there are more than one item selected in a ListBox 
• Popup rendering issue when flow direction is changed 

...and many others we reported through official and private channels. The good news is that we have verified most of the issues are fixed in the latest private drops that Microsoft provided. We cannot comment on why other vendors did not hit the same road blocks. We regret that we did not have the chance to influence Microsoft not to release the RC version in the state they did, but this was out of our domain and control. I hope this post sheds some more light on the current state of the Silverlight 5 affairs and I can assure you once Silverlight 5 is officially out, RadControls will work flawlessly as always on this platform.

All the best,
Nick
the Telerik team

[Glen]

I bought into Telerik as they had a fast turnaround on bug fixes and were always first out of the gate when SL beta's \ RC were released.

Back then you seemed like a dynamic company which wasn't mired in release schedules like Infragistcs \ DevExpress were etc.

It meant we could be on the bleeding edge of technology and always ready to use new features as and when MS released them.

We can no longer count on that though which is sad state of affairs.

I notice that your WP7 controlset was updated throughout the beta. I imagine SL took back seat to that focusing on Xaml based controls for Metro.

I understand that there are issues with MS's release candidate. What I don't understand was the lack of transparency from Telerik over what was happening and why your controls won't work with the RC. From a public relations viewpoint it was handled badly and the downside is management where I work have lost faith in Telerik.

I'm currently having to evaluate replacement controls because of this. Had I been able to say from the outset that there were issues and there wouldn't be a fix prior to RTM then I'm sure I wouldn't have been tasked with doing this.

[Ken]

To the whiners on this thread: I've been developing windows code for over 20 years. If you haven't learned to not pin your business model against Microsoft's release schedule, it's time you learn the lesson.

The RC was bad. No one in their right mind would code for regression bugs of a prerelease build, especially an RC that will soon be replaced. How about next time you do your job and advise your management the risks inherent in building against prerelease software. Then you won't get a black eye and we won't have to put up with your bellyaching. Wait for the RTM.

[Øivind]

Comment / possible workaround:

We experience the same problems with the RadOutlookBar and RadTabControl in the RC.
I've however found that these controls only fail if you specify the items in xaml - if you bind the controls to an ItemsSource (dynamically populating the items), they don't fail (at least not for me).

/ Øivind Solberg

[HDC]

@Brubaker:

Not to diminish your 20 years of experience, but you and the rest of the world may have a different definition of the word "soon". We are November now and we still have no support for RC nor do we have any "hard" date for the release of the RTM (although according to Scott Gu it should be this month).

it's nice of you to mock people (NOT!), but what if you are in a situation where SL5 has features (such as P/Invoke) that you really need.

We are in this position and our development has virtually halted for over a month now because of Telerik refusal to actually handle the RC problem. 

@Telerik:

I'm pretty sure that Q3 will not support the RC any more then Q2 does, but before we go through the "pain" of upgrading to Q3... Will Q3 support Silverlight5 RTM when it comes out later this month (if it comes out later this month) or will there be an SP of Q3 that will support Silverlight5?

[Doug]

Same boat, we had planned to purchase Telerik and developed for it, now it looks like we may need to go elseware which is way more expense than just the code, can't even demo to our clients in development because there are no functional beta sl5 releases.

The most most frustrating part is that their demo site and projects don't even run with SL5 and it's been out as a beta for almost a year (and don't get me going about that).

[Juliana]

Actually, controls work properly neither without SL 5 beta nor with SL 5 RC.

[Vlad]

Hello,

 I suggest you to try our demos with the official Silverlight 5 release. 

Best wishes,
Vlad
the Telerik team