Took me a while to isolate the problem, but I think your developers will benefit from this information. I'm using the RadControls for Silverlight 2.0 CTP so I don't expect it to be bug free or anything. Just wanted the developers to know where this bug is.
If I so decide to supply the SelectedIndex property of the RadTabControl it will crash Blend, Visual Studio, and the Silverlight control will just stall on preload at 100%. That is, unless you also supply the TabStripPlacement property, which, for some reason, saves the day. I've tested all scenarios and I'm confident that this is exactly how the bug can be reproduced consistently every time. If I have this crashing issue and fix it by supplying the TabStripPlacement property everything mends up nicely.
Let me know if you have any further questions about this bug. Thank you.
Also, I was curious about these controls. You advertise how customizable these controls are but I'm noticing, the RadTabControl for example, I can change the colors here and there, but you guys always have your white glossy highlight in front of the color. Also, I can't seem to change the rounded corners to square and stuff like that. Well, I can't change these things out of the box, anyway. I was hoping the controls would be more customizable without touching anything but the XAML. Am I missing something?
If I so decide to supply the SelectedIndex property of the RadTabControl it will crash Blend, Visual Studio, and the Silverlight control will just stall on preload at 100%. That is, unless you also supply the TabStripPlacement property, which, for some reason, saves the day. I've tested all scenarios and I'm confident that this is exactly how the bug can be reproduced consistently every time. If I have this crashing issue and fix it by supplying the TabStripPlacement property everything mends up nicely.
Let me know if you have any further questions about this bug. Thank you.
Also, I was curious about these controls. You advertise how customizable these controls are but I'm noticing, the RadTabControl for example, I can change the colors here and there, but you guys always have your white glossy highlight in front of the color. Also, I can't seem to change the rounded corners to square and stuff like that. Well, I can't change these things out of the box, anyway. I was hoping the controls would be more customizable without touching anything but the XAML. Am I missing something?
3 Answers, 1 is accepted
0
Ben Hayat
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Rank 2
answered on 11 Jun 2008, 07:08 PM
Jed, as a SL developer (and none Telerik employee) wanted to thank you for the heads up on the findings.
I also agree to give us more control at design time in Blend!
I also agree to give us more control at design time in Blend!
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Accepted
Hi Jed,
Thanks for reporting the issue - we will research and fix it for the next version (that is within less than a month from now).
As for the customization of the UI of the controls - the controls are completely lookless! - you can change everything with just changing the XAML template of the control.
The problem that you are facing right now is that the __current__ version of Blend does not allow customization of the XAML template of any _custom_ control (like the RadTabControl for example). But ofcourse the Blend will be fixed in the near future and you will be able to customize the appearance of the control there.
For the moment in order to customize the XAML template you have to do it manually.
We have an example in our QSF application about how to customize the appearance of the control. Here is the link to the page - http://www.telerik.com/demos/silverlight/#Examples/TreeView/Lookless
Basically what is done there is that a new control template is applied to the TreeView like that:
DEFINING THE NEW CONTROL TEMPLATE
THEN APPLY THIS NEW TEMPLATE TO THE TREEVIEW
you can see the full code in the example.
However this can be a very time consuming process if you want to just change something very small in the control (like your example with the rounded corners). Thats why we are searching for a way to provide you with the ability to change various aspects of how the control looks without the need to change its complete ControlTemplate. In WPF there are DynamicResources that are created for exactly this case. In Silverlight we do not have DynamicResources so we can't go that way. We can expose various styling properties for each control, but we think that this is not the Silverlight way - this was done before in the Winforms programming, but we do not like that concept, because the idea of lookless controls will be gone.
We are still searching the right solution - so If you have any other ideas or any other feedback on about how to make the control style-able with much less efforts - please let us know.
Thanks again for your feedback.
All the best,
Valentin.Stoychev
the Telerik team
Instantly find answers to your questions at the new Telerik Support Center
Thanks for reporting the issue - we will research and fix it for the next version (that is within less than a month from now).
As for the customization of the UI of the controls - the controls are completely lookless! - you can change everything with just changing the XAML template of the control.
The problem that you are facing right now is that the __current__ version of Blend does not allow customization of the XAML template of any _custom_ control (like the RadTabControl for example). But ofcourse the Blend will be fixed in the near future and you will be able to customize the appearance of the control there.
For the moment in order to customize the XAML template you have to do it manually.
We have an example in our QSF application about how to customize the appearance of the control. Here is the link to the page - http://www.telerik.com/demos/silverlight/#Examples/TreeView/Lookless
Basically what is done there is that a new control template is applied to the TreeView like that:
DEFINING THE NEW CONTROL TEMPLATE
| <Style TargetType="telerik:RadTreeViewItem" x:Key="TreeViewItemStyle"> |
| <Setter Property="Template"> |
| <Setter.Value> |
| <ControlTemplate TargetType="telerik:RadTreeViewItem"> |
| <Grid Margin="2" Height="Auto" VerticalAlignment="Top"> |
| ... |
THEN APPLY THIS NEW TEMPLATE TO THE TREEVIEW
| <telerik:RadTreeView |
| ItemContainerStyle="{StaticResource TreeViewItemStyle}" |
| ... |
you can see the full code in the example.
However this can be a very time consuming process if you want to just change something very small in the control (like your example with the rounded corners). Thats why we are searching for a way to provide you with the ability to change various aspects of how the control looks without the need to change its complete ControlTemplate. In WPF there are DynamicResources that are created for exactly this case. In Silverlight we do not have DynamicResources so we can't go that way. We can expose various styling properties for each control, but we think that this is not the Silverlight way - this was done before in the Winforms programming, but we do not like that concept, because the idea of lookless controls will be gone.
We are still searching the right solution - so If you have any other ideas or any other feedback on about how to make the control style-able with much less efforts - please let us know.
Thanks again for your feedback.
All the best,
Valentin.Stoychev
the Telerik team
Instantly find answers to your questions at the new Telerik Support Center
0
Ben Hayat
Top achievements
Rank 2
Rank 2
answered on 12 Jun 2008, 01:21 PM
Valentin;
------quote-------
We are still searching the right solution - so If you have any other ideas or any other feedback on about how to make the control style-able with much less efforts - please let us know.
------/quote------
Although this was an answer to Jed, but I wanted to tell you that it gives us confidence about your product that you have "Active" R&D on this product!
I'll be testing the Tab and TreeView starting today!
..Ben
------quote-------
We are still searching the right solution - so If you have any other ideas or any other feedback on about how to make the control style-able with much less efforts - please let us know.
------/quote------
Although this was an answer to Jed, but I wanted to tell you that it gives us confidence about your product that you have "Active" R&D on this product!
I'll be testing the Tab and TreeView starting today!
..Ben