Thursday, February 14, 2008

RadControls for WinForms SP1 finally available

This news is a little old, but for those that haven't seen the announcement, the first service pack for the RadControls for WinForms Q3 2007 is now available. This service pack is a little late by SP1 delivery standards (the ASP.NET SP1 beat WinForms by about 3 weeks), but the results are definitely worth the wait. The WinForms team has been feverishly working on improving the performance of all WinForms controls with the goal of making them the most performant and most visually appealing WinForms controls available. With this SP1 release, the RadControls get a lot closer to that goal.

In particular, the RadCombobox and RadListBox have been completely refactored for speed. And the results are pretty telling. With the new UI virtualization in place, a RadCombobox can load 5,000 items in about half a second. Without this support, the Combobox takes close to 15 seconds to perform the same action. If you download the new SP1 Demo Application, there is a great demo in the Combobox section that lets you run these tests yourself to see the difference.

Also new in SP1 is a brand new common theme for all controls called "Desert" (pictured in this post). The theme introduces earthy colors to the controls, drawing largely from an orangish color pallete. If you've been looking for a new skin for your application, feel free to give this one a spin. Otherwise, grab the SP1 bits from your Client.net accounts (as usual), browse the full release notes, and have fun with the improvements!

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