Strategy for themeable RIA

[Jani]

Hi

Our Silverlight Application uses controls from various sources:

• Silverlight runtime: Button, TextBlock, TextBox...
• Various Telerik controls: of course :)
• our own domain-specific controls

One of the key benefits of Telerik is the Themes Package, which provides a consistent UI.
We have tested Telerik Themes using the Themes for Silverlight by Telerik Application - and it looks great!
Unfortunately common controls like the Silverlight Button control are not considered.

My Questions:

1. Will the 2009/Q1 release consider controls of the Silverlight Runtime (at least the more basic ones)?
2. How we can ensure consistent Theming of Third Party controls (like SL Toolkit)?
3. Where can I find guidelines to consider Telerik Themes while building custom controls?

Cheers,
Jani

[Ben Hayat]

Hi Jani;
I'm not replying as if I had a formal answer on elerik'd behave.

A while back I had also raised the same question regarding having support for MS STD controls, and I'm not quite sure whether the answer was "Yes, it's supported fully" or "we are adding more and more as we move forward". But I do remember the answer favorable.
However, what makes it more challenging, is with the new Toolkit from Microsoft that has many similar products to Telerik. The question then comes up, is Telerik going to support themeing them as well?

As far as Q1 goes, I'll like to hear what the theme has to say about MS support. But I think where you will run into problem (which I have), is when you introduce other third party controls into the mix and things will not look right at all.

..Ben

[Valentin.Stoychev]

Hi All,

We are making many theme improvements in the upcoming Q1 release:

• We are now supporting consistent themes for the _core_ MS controls - buttons, textbox, listbox - e.g. the ones that are not provided from Telerik so you can enjoy full theme support for your application.
• Blend support - finally you will be able to edit the controls in Expression Blend
• Colors - you are now able to change a bunch of colors and your theme will be 100% re-colored - no need to adjust any XAML content - just change a list of colors that are provided externally from the theme xaml code.

For any other third party controls - you will need to adjust their theme to match ours. The good news here is that we have a OfficeBlack theme, a Vista theme and a more universal theme, so chances are that the third party controls that you are using will match the Telerik controls easy.

Right at this moment I think our theming mechanism is complete.

If you have any other ideas on this topic, or any feedback on what you read, I'll be glad if you share!

Greetings,

 

Valentin.Stoychev

 

the Telerik team

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[Ben Hayat]

Excellent news Valentin;
Thanks!

[Jani]

Hi Valentin,

Great news!

One question regarding the integration of custom controls: do you will provide assistance like guidelines o even themeable layout/container base controls?

Cheers,
Jani

[Valentin.Stoychev]

Hi Jani,

What do you mean by this:
---- qte --
Themeable layout/container base controls
---------

Thanks!

Best wishes,
Valentin.Stoychev
the Telerik team

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[Jani]

Hi Valentin,

For example we have a custom control which contains various panels and headers. It would be interesting to inherit/reuse a Telerik Panel/Container control which supports the application themes.

Cheers,
Jani

[Valentin.Stoychev]

Hello Jani,

There isn't such a mechanism in Silverlight that we can use in this scenario. The only properties that are inherited are the Font styles.

If there is such a possibility with the evolution of the framework we will definitely add support for it.

Thank you for your feedback!

Kind regards,
Valentin.Stoychev
the Telerik team

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[imusic]

Hi Valentin,

Now that Q1 release is out would it be possible to have examples of using themes for core MS Controls and recoloring of the theme?

Is there a way to pickup, for example ContentBackgroundBrush and use it explicitly in the application?

Regards
   Igor

[Dimitrina]

Hello Jani

Thank you for your feedback. You can find the answer of your question at http://blogs.telerik.com/blogs/09-03-17/RadControls_for_Silverlight_Q1_09_Theming.aspx

Greetings,

Dimitrina
the Telerik team

 

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