Will HTML5 be incorporating into ASP.Net Ajax product or ASP.Net MVC?

[Ben Hayat]

Question for the team:
I'm pretty positive that Telerik will be moving towards HTML5. Since your ASP.Net Ajax product seem to be the most mature and complete, I've chosen to use it v.s. ASP.Net MVC. However, as the next generation of ASP.Net is moving towards HTML5, my question is, will you be incorporating HTML5 into your AJAX product or MVC product?

Secondly, when do you expect us to see the first signs of HTML5 in your product?

Thanks!
..Ben

[Sebastian]

Hi ..Ben,

Seems that you are reading our thoughts :) Indeed we contemplate to assimilate some of the HTML5 features once the specification is final (and the majority of the modern browsers like IE 9, FireFox 4, Google Chrome 8, etc.support it) and 'plug' them into our ASP.NET components (AJAX and MVC).

Presently we are having internal talks on the subject and most probably will come up with official statements by the middle of the next year. Stay tuned for more details and keep the secret :)

Best regards,
Stefan Rahnev,
Telerik Unit Manager, ASP.NET division

[Ben Hayat]

Hi Stefan;

Thank you for taking the time; Sounds good and by middle of next year, we should also see how the AJAX and MVC come together as RAIZOR product, and whether it makes sense to just incorporate it into this new platform from MSFT.

But you provided the info that I needed it and I can pass it on to some people who are interested in Telerik product.
Thanks again!
..Ben

[Ben Hayat]

Stefan, I thought I'd refresh this topic after 5 months ago.
What I like to know, are you guys looking into providing controls that are HTML5 specific that provides animations, videos and etc.?

I'm seeing more and more people (who can not install plugin like flash or Silverlight) are getting very excited that they can have Rich content with HTML & JS and are pressing to build solutions who are independent of any plugin.

Above was my first question about ASP.net Controls for HTML5.
Secondly as ASP MVC is emerging (but far from maturity and complete controls), is it safe to think that Telerik is not dumping classic ASP.Net and moving to MVC?

Any roadmap info, would be much appreciated.
Thanks!
..Ben

[Sebastian]

Hello Ben,

It is not in our immediate plans to provide HTML5 video/audio player mainly because there is no common HTML5 media format accepted by the major browser vendors (IE 9, FF 4, Chrome 10, Safari 5+, Opera 11). Therefore, we will stand by to see how things go and when a format is decided and confirmed to be supported by all popular browsers, we will make our decision.

We will definitely not abandon our AJAX controls in favor of our MVC suite - on the contrary, we will continue to develop the AJAX components in parallel with the MVC ones. Both technologies are here to stay and it is up to the web developers to choose on top of which of them is more appropriate to build their solutions (based on specific requirements).

By the way, our newly introduced MVC upload is one of the pioneers which take advantage HTML5 features like drag and drop upload, native progress monitoring, etc. Gradually other AJAX and MVC components will utilize HTML5 more heavily as well - expect the Q2 2011 AJAX and MVC roadmaps which will be published by the end of the next week!

Best regards,
Stefan Rahnev,
Telerik Unit Manager, ASP.NET division

[Ben Hayat]

Thank you Stefan for the well-informed answer. I was recommending Telerik ASP.Net Ajax to a company yesterday and they were worried that MVC will get all the attention. Although I told them the same thing you said, but coming from you will definitely ensure them.

Thanks again!
..Ben

[Hugo Augusto]

I love your controls, but I'm sorry to say that this time, you are sleeping on this issue. Does this phrase tells you something?

"40 styled, supercharged, and easy-to-use controls built on Web standards including AJAX, CSS, HTML5, and jQuery. All of which are available as ASP.NET Controls, Extenders and MVC tools"

I wish I was reading this in Telerik's website. No, this is from component one, and I don't know if you tested these new controls, but I must say they are very fast, support Html5 features including video, ThemeRoller for the themes and work in both client and server side.

I don't quite understand why Telerik created a completely new client side product (Kendo UI) without even thinking that all the asp.net for ajax customers would be very interested in a Kendo UI client/server side version. What is your position on this matter?

Regards
Hugo

[Sebastian]

Hello Hugo,

Our Kendo UI product is a client-side framework for building modern HTML5/JS web applications for desktop and mobile. It contains all the needed building blocks for creating professional HTML5 web apps, including framework components such as data source, light-weight and fast templates, globalization, validation, drag and drop, as well as a set of UI widgets (including grid, chart, combobox, treeview, etc.).

Starting with next major release, we will introduce three separate Kendo UI flavors - Web, DataViz and Mobile. Each of those will serve different purpose:

• Kendo UI Web - for building HTML5/JS, mobile and touch-enabled web applications
• Kendo UI DataViz - rich data visualization chart and gauges, applicable for desktop and mobile
• Kendo UI Mobile - mobile suite targeting the most popular platforms (iOS, Android) and making your applications look native on each of the platforms, automatically. 

All three will form the Kendo UI Complete package, which will be the ultimate bundle for HTML5/JS desktop and mobile development.

Additionally, we intend to introduce extensions for popular server-side frameworks like ASP.NET MVC, PHP, RoR, etc. during 2012 and beyond. Since the ASP.NET AJAX suite contains mature and high-performing controls and already receives HTML5 features on demand, as well as improvements concerning their touch and mobile support, as explained down this thread, we do not have immediate plans for AJAX server extensions for Kendo UI. Of course, our reflections can change at some point when we have matching Kendo UI counterparts for the majority of the controls from our AJAX bundle.

Bottom line, you will probably concur that we are not lacking anything major that the ComponentOne Wijmo AJAX offering currently has, provided that you can use the Kendo UI HTML5 charts and data source components side-by-side with RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX and having in mind what's coming next in Kendo UI. While the Kendo UI widgets can be styled via the ThemeBuilder tool, the AJAX controls appearance can be customized via the Visual Style Builder.

Let me know if you have any additional deliberations on this subject.

Regards,
Stefan Rahnev,
Product Manager, Kendo UI division

[Tom]

I would have to disagree with your response sebastian.  The controls like charts as well as other components are starting to lag behind other products from the overall look. I would love to see you integrate the Kendo UI and Dataviz with the ASP.Net AJAX controls which would provide a killer product.

[Sebastian]

Hi Tom,

Thank you for your feedback. It will be taken into account when we make future plans for our ASP.NET AJAX controls. Still, what had been said by Stefan in this thread is still applicable.

Regards,
Sebastian
the Telerik team

[Henk]

Hi Sebastian,

I am following the discussion about ASP.NET ajax, asp.mvc, html5 and kendo ui with much interest.  I agree with the people which say that asp.net ajax controls should be refurbished i.e. modernized to accomodate html5 and that it should be scalable to be used for the (mobile)web browsers, mobile devices alike phones or tablets. We had to invest in asp.net ajax development, beside Silverlight (which we think is superior for RAD web development ) because the SL plugin does not work in IOS or Android.and the ASP.net rad controls are more rich and versatile than the mvc and kendo ui versions. An important decision is that You dont need to learn other framework or language in more detail than necessary. I think other developers may agree (if you're business is not a component developer) , that the goal should be to invest in only one development environment for targeting multiple platforms or mobile devices. I hope and I'm glad to hear that Telerik will upgraded the asp.net ajax control for running in different environments and mobile devices.

Regards,

Henk

[Genady Sergeev]

Hello Henk,

We absolutely agree with you that the technologies move on and we must stay on the top of the technology wave. On the other side there are the older browsers and the backwards compatibility that not always allows us to design for HTML 5 and modern browsers.

Fortunately we found a solution for this problem and it is called rendering modes. Forth from Q1 2013 we will add new Rendering mode that triggers HTML5 rendering for the given control. Of course, we will start only with a couple of controls and progressively move on. Expect a blog post soon with more details :)

Kind regards,
Genady Sergeev
the Telerik team

[Ben Hayat]

Hi Genady;

Thank you for the new info. on the progress of the Ajax controls. In the upcoming blog, could you also cover what the roadmap is for the Telerik Ajax controls for Mobile? At least a few important ones like grid, Input Textbox, ListView and etc, that generate jQuery Mobile code.
We have to support Mobile soon, so the roadmap will allow us to decide whether to stay with Telerik Ajax or go with MVC Mobile. Thank you in advance!
..Ben

[Henk]

Hi Genady,

Thanks for the update and glad to hear that Telerik listen to their customers. Exciting and promising development regarding the new "rendering" modes.  Keep up the good work ;-)

Regards,

Henk

[Hugo Augusto]

Hi Genady,

Going back to this renderiing mode feature that you talked about, will it provide responsiveness to the controls? For instance, will Rad Menu control be responsive, adapting automatically to the device width, like Bootstraps does with it's own menu? That for itself would be awsome.

Regards,
Hugo Augusto

[Genady Sergeev]

Hi Ben,

Thank you for the feedback. I want to clarify that we are *not* developing mobile version of the Ajax controls but we are progressively enhancing our current offering so that it works smoothly in mobile environment as well as in a normal desktop one. In this sense, we are adding mobile updates in each release and our Grid component is not an exception. Of course, we will cover that topic in the blog post to make sure everyone is aware of our mobile strategy.

Regards,
Genady Sergeev
the Telerik team

[Ben Hayat]

Hi Genady;

Thanks for straight answer on the Mobile direction. Looking forward to the blog!
..Ben

[Das]

I was hoping to see ASP.NET AJAX to move towards HTML5.

We are making decisions on making the choice for our next product.

We want to use HTML5 with ASP.NET AJAX. Please give us serverside HTML5 components.

I checked the ComponentOne Wijmo AJAX the look and feel needs a lot of maturity. they have long way to mature to a telerik level product.

I am hoping to come up with a POC use html5 (kendoUI) for all the rendering components and RadAjax for the data.

[Genady Sergeev]

Hi Narayanadas,

We are continuously working on incorporating HTML 5 features into the AJAX controls. Every single Q we take steps towards moving to more modern and fast rendering/styling.

For example, our new skins Silk and Glow use CSS 3 gradients instead of image gradients. All new skins use border radius instead of complicated rendering plus images for achieving the same.

This is to say that you can rest assured that the AJAX controls are not lagging behind the new trends. We are doing our best to adopt more and more HTML5/CSS3 features with each Q :)

Of course, we are open to all kind of feedback. If you feel that there is a place for improvement in a given control or we not adopting HTML 5 the way you want to see it please open a support ticket and drop us a line.

All the best,
Genady Sergeev
the Telerik team

[Anna]

It can be incorporated in framework 4.0, but I have no idea whether it can be done with framework 4.5.

[Anna]

I have incorporated it in framework 4.0, but I have no idea on how it works on framework 4.5.