Upgrade app from VS2005 to VS2010

[Jane]

Dear Support,

We have a web app developed in VS2005 and used Rad Controls by registering assembly of rad control dlls. 
The Rad Control's version is in Q1_2006 NET2 and name space is still Telerik.WebControls.
If we upgrade app to VS2010, what typical issue can you foresee? Will the controls still work? Do we HAVE TO switch to the new Ajax thing?
The rad controls are used heavily on through the app, so the least change of code is preferable without breaking the whole app.

thanks,
Jane

[Marin Bratanov]

Hi Jane,

The version of the controls you have is extremely old and is part of the RadControls for ASP.NET "Classic" era. This suite has been deprecated and has not been supported for over 5 years, i.e., before the advent of VS2010 or any of the modern browsers (It does not support IE8 or above, Chrome, Firefox). Thus, we cannot guarantee it will work with VS2010 (although there shouldn't be issues, it is supposed to be backwards compatible) or with any of the current browsers in use.

You do not have to switch to the current UI for ASP.NET AJAX suite, but I would advise that you do so, because you will get:

• support for the current browsers and VS versions
• probably about 50 more controls than your current version
• a myriad of other features

Such an upgrade will be a heavy task, because there have been a lot of changes, however. There are help articles in the old controls' documentation that can help you with migration, like this one or this one (and other controls have them in a similar place). The online demos and documentation can also help you with implementing the features with the current version of the controls.

Regards,

Marin Bratanov
Telerik

 

 

[Jane]

Marin, thanks for the detailed answer, it does help.
The app used around 20 individual RadControls and almost on every page.
So if I use the new UI for ASP.NET AJAX, I feel I will almost re-write the whole app, right?
There is indeed lots of changes, like the code use RadCallback.Net2.dll on almost every control, but seems not in new version anymore(I could not find it on the list of controls), can you confirm on this?
The control is still working on IE8, now I just hope the old RadControls can still be compilable and working in VS2010.

thanks, Jane

[Marin Bratanov]

Hi Jane,

How much would need to be rewritten greatly depends on the features and properties you use. What I can suggest is downloading a trial and trying to migrate an average page to see how much effort this will cost you. The trial will also provide you with access to the technical support in case you are wondering how something can be implemented with the current version and you cannot find the answer yourself.

For callbacks, I can suggest the following:

• the RadXmlHttpPanel control that is designed to invoke callbacks.
• This blog post that can show you how you can implement them yourself with a few lines of code: http://blogs.telerik.com/aspnet-ajax/posts/13-03-21/different-ways-to-make-a-request-to-the-server. Please examine it for the exact difference between callbacks and partial postbacks.
• using AJAX (a.k.a., partial postbacks) through asp:UpdatePanels, RadAjaxPanels or RadAjaxManager.

I hope this helps you evaluate whether migration will be the better solution for you.


Regards,

Marin Bratanov
Telerik