Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Q3 Webinar Week Wrap-up

q310-webinar-week Wow! Q3 2010 was huge by every measure. Tons of updates to the Telerik toolbox. Tons of new demos, blogs, help documents, and videos. And tons of you joined us for the Q3 2010 Webinar Week! Last week we hosted 9 live webinar events to help introduce you to the Q3 2010 bits, concluding with Friday's special event that showcased the Telerik tools working together, highlighting how the toolbox can make you productive at all points in the software development lifecycle.

If you were unable to join the live webinar week, or if you missed an event, don't worry! All of the live events were recorded and are making their way to Telerik TV right now. Catch any of the webcasts on-demand using these handy links:

If you saw Friday's Special Event, you may have seen Evan Hutnick's cool "Ad-hoc Silverlight Reporting" demo done with Telerik's Silverlight data visualization controls and rich text editor. If you want to try the code for yourself, it is available now (direct link to download).

Enjoy the over 6 hours of new Q3-specific video content, enjoy the upcoming holidays, and stay tuned for news about 2011 release plans! We never rest so that you can!

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Quickly update all Telerik product installs using PowerShell

powershell-telerik With the Q3 2010 release now available, the challenge of updating your dev environment with the new versions can sometimes seem daunting. After all, the Telerik Ultimate Collection now represents more than 10 products, and thus more than 10 installers. Add any virtual machines you maintain to the mix, and the challenge of updating increases. Fortunately, all Telerik products use MSI installers, and with a little PowerShell we can easily script the complete system update.

Updating Your Telerik Products in 2 Steps

With a handy PowerShell script I've created (available below), you can easily update any system to use all of the latest and greatest Telerik tools in 2 simple steps:

  1. Download all of the Telerik products you want to install
    • Place the MSI installers in one folder
  2. Download and run my Telerik Installer PowerShell script!

That's it. The script will automatically look for and uninstall old versions (pre-Q3) of Telerik tools and then install all of the products you've downloaded. By default, the script will look for the installers in "C:\Program Files (x86)\Telerik\Downloads\Q3 2010\", but if you'd prefer to use a different location, the script can be easily edited.

Run and done

The cool benefit of this script is that you can download your bits, run the script, and then go about your business while the uninstallers and installers run. No need to "babysit" your machine installing and uninstalling software.

On my primary machine (which has an SSD), the entire process took about 10 minutes: 4 minutes to uninstall everything and about 6 minutes to run all of the installers. On a VirtualBox VM running on an external USB drive, the process took about 35 minutes (15 to uninstall, 20 to install).

Regardless of the exact run time, it took exactly 30 seconds of my time to update my entire Telerik toolbox.

Enabling PowerShell Script Execution

If you've never run a PowerShell script, you may have a problem executing this script due to PowerShell's default security settings. To resolve the problem, you simply need to run a PowerShell command that allows script execution. Here's how:

  1. Open a PowerShell command prompt
    • Can be done via Start > All Programs > Accessories > Windows PowerShell
    • Alternatively, right-click my PS1 script and select "Edit with PowerShell"
  2. Execute the following command: Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted
  3. A dialog will pop-up. Confirm your decision to change the execution policy.

Now you will be able to execute this script by simply right-clicking on the .PS1 file selecting "Run with PowerShell."

What about the Telerik Visual Studio Extensions auto-updater?

The Telerik Visual Studio Extensions (VSX) are awesome for updating your existing projects, or for updating individual projects directly from Visual Studio. The Telerik VSX tools can automatically check for newer versions of the Telerik tools, download the bits, and then update your projects. If you only work with 1 or 2 products, this is a great solution!

If you're like me, though, and you have everything Telerik installed (and, really, you should), it's generally easier to update everything at once with the installers for a major Q release. That's where this script comes in handy. Once everything is installed, you can still use the VSX tools to quickly update your projects to use the latest bits.

Side-by-side Installs

You can install many Telerik products side-by-side with older versions. This is sometimes useful when you have projects referencing different versions of the Telerik tools (though there are other options for "isolating" projects). While this script is configured to uninstall everything old, if you'd prefer to keep old versions, a simple script edit can help you skip the uninstalls. If this scenario becomes common, I'll provide a modified version with easy support of this option.

Download the Script

All that's left: Download the PowerShell script. Remember to edit the script if your installers are saved in a different folder. Otherwise, enjoy the simple system updater and feel free to send me feedback and ideas for improvement!

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Q3 2010 is Live!

telerik-homepage

And just like that, Q3 2010 is live on Telerik.com! A slightly new and improved Telerik.com, at that. Today marks the official release of Telerik's final major update to the Telerik toolbox for 2010, and it is a huge release (as promised). More than 10 products get updated in this single release, so it's no small feat of both coordination and dedicated effort to continue to provide the most aggressive (some might say "agile") release schedule available from a professional software development lifecycle vendor.

By now, you've hopefully seen much of what's new in today's release, either in the pre-release blog series on the Telerik Blogs or in the "Live from HQ" videos here on Telerik Watch. We know it's a lot to absorb, so don't miss next week's Webinar Week, where we'll help introduce you to all of the new timesaving, developer rock-star making features and controls.

At a high level, here are some of the new things you'll find in Q3 2010:

  • AJAX
    • Two new controls: TreeList and Button
    • Improved SharePoint 2010 WebParts (for Grid and Editor)
    • Cool new Coverflow mode in Rotator
    • Built-in OData support in Grid
    • Progress indicator in AsyncUpload
  • MVC
    • Two new Extensions: TimePicker and DateTimePicker
    • RTL support and Section 508 / Level A accessibility conformance
    • Grid improvements (like column reordering and header templates)
  • WinForms
    • New control: CommandBar (replaces ToolStrip)
    • Grid improvements (lazy loading, Excel 2010-like filtering, new hierarchy modes)
    • Scheduler improvements (time zones, in-place editors)
  • Silverlight (WPF)
    • New theme: Expression Dark
    • New data visualizations: SparkLines and BulletGraphs
    • New control (WPF only): ScheduleView
    • RichTextBox improvements (Table support, spell check, export to PDF)
    • ESRI shapefile support in RadMap
  • Telerik Reporting
    • SQL Analysis Services Cube support (with new Cube Data Source)
    • XML Report Serialization (save your report definitions in XML files)
    • Interactive report drill-down
  • OpenAccess ORM
    • New converter: LinqToSql (more coming in the future)
    • Spatial types support, improved Fluent API, PostgreSQL support
    • New OpenAccess ORM SDK browser (very cool. check it out!)
  • JustCode
    • Unit Test Runner: Added MSpec support, improved speed
    • Lot's of NEW:
      • New Refactorings in C# and VB
      • New visual features (like structural highlighting, configurable visual aid size)
      • New quick fixes (like "Create Parameter" or "Create Field)
      • New code templates with quick Shift+Space access
  • JustMock
    • Many additional mocking scenarios now supported, like:
      • Mocking LINQ queries with custom selects
      • Mocking Castle ActiveRecord
      • Raising mocked events
  • WebUI Test Studio (Huge update!)
    • New in QA: Test Scheduling and Remote Execution!
    • Email notifications for test completion
    • New browser support: Google Chrome (and Safari 5 + IE 9)
    • New test step explorer (with support for conditional test step logic)
    • New (pretty!) test execution UI and visual test debugging

Phew! That's a ton- and that's a very light "summary" of Q3 2010. AND that doesn't include the recently introduced RadControls for Windows Phone and next week's updates coming to TeamPulse! Enjoy the Q3 2010 bits and remember to join us next week for the webinars.

Download the Q3 2010 bits

Q3 2010 Webinar Week, Register Now

q310-webinar-week 

Q3 2010 has arrived, and with it, TONS of new features and controls for you to wrap your mind around. If you received today's Telerik Newsletter, you also saw my new challenge for you: expand your horizons and try a Telerik tool from the Ultimate Collection you've not tried before (I'm guessing there's at least one). Telerik helps you be productive at more than just building UI these days, so I encourage you to discover how we can help you save time at the data layer, the business layer, during testing and QA, and even with project planning.

Since there is so much new stuff, and since I know you're taking-up my challenge right away, we're here to help you get started with another info-packed Webinar Week. There are two important things to know about this webinar week:

  1. It starts on Monday, November 15th
  2. There will be 2 webinars per day!
    • On Monday and Tuesday, it'll be the same webinar to help those of you in other time zones (like Australia and New Zealand)
    • For the rest of the week, it'll be two different events. More on that below.

Here's the schedule for next week's webinars. Click a link to register for the event.

  11 AM Eastern 10 PM Eastern
Monday What’s New in RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX, Extensions for MVC and OpenAccess ORM [REPEAT] What’s New in RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX, Extensions for MVC and OpenAccess ORM
Tuesday What’s New in RadControls for Silverlight and WPF [REPEAT] What’s New in RadControls for Silverlight and WPF

And for the rest of the week:

  11 AM Eastern 2 PM Eastern
Wednesday What’s New in RadControls for WinForms and Telerik Reporting  
Thursday What’s New in Telerik JustCode and Telerik JustMock What’s New in Telerik TeamPulse
Friday What’s New in Telerik WebUI Test Studio SPECIAL EVENT! Getting the most out of Q3

Don't miss Friday's special event! After a week full of product highlights, the Telerik Evangelists and Developer Support Specialists will come together and show you some cool integration demos and ways to use the Q3 2010 products together. It's a great way to wrap-up your week.

Of course, there will be prizes for attendees of each webinar. The more events you attend, the more chances you have to win, so register today and join us next week for the Q3 2010 What's New Webinar Week!

Tuesday, November 09, 2010

Q3 2010 Special: Live from HQ with more AJAX

Q3 2010 bits are less than a day away from your Account Downloads, and I know you're now teeming with excitement to get your hands on many of the cool things we've seen in the Live from Telerik HQ video series. I've got one more video to share, and this one is fun! I visit with one of the RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX Team Leads and he shows-off some very cool new features coming to the AJAX tools in Q3, like the new RadButton control and the new Coverflow mode in RadRotator. Check-it out and then make time to download everything Q3 tomorrow!

Watch the Ajax video in full HD on Telerik TV

Did you miss any of the Live from HQ videos? Don't worry! They're all available as a convenient video series on Telerik TV. Check-out all of the interviews and start putting faces with some of Telerik's technical product leaders.

Q3 2010 Special: Live from HQ with Reporting

We are less than 24 hours from the big Q3 2010 release, and I've got two more quick interviews Live from Telerik HQ to share. This time, we visit with the Telerik Reporting team for an overview of cool new features coming in Q3 (like XML Report Serialization, native Silverlight 4 printing, and the new Cube Data Source). This is a big release for Telerik Reporting and a great time for you to check it out if you're looking for basic BI in your .NET apps. Enjoy the video and stay tuned for the last soon!

Watch the reporting interview on Telerik TV in full HD

Monday, November 08, 2010

Q3 2010 Special: Live from HQ with ASP.NET MVC

Q3 is getting closer! We wrap-up today's interviews with a quick visit to the Telerik Extensions for ASP.NET MVC team. In this video, I visit with Senior Front-end Developer Alexander Gyoshev who shows us how the Telerik Extensions make it easy to embrace accessibility standards in ASP.NET MVC applications using the Telerik tools. Come back tomorrow for our final two interviews with Telerik Reporting and more ASP.NET AJAX!

Watch the ASP.NET MVC interview in full HD on Telerik TV

Q3 2010 Special: Live from HQ with Silverlight

Only three days to go 'til Q3 2010 is officially here! I know the wait is excruciating, but to help you pass the time I have 4 more Live for Telerik HQ interviews to give you a glimpse in to what's coming. We kick-off this week's interviews with a quick update from the RadControls for Silverlight, where we see how the new virtualized data source is going to enable new levels of performance when binding to large data sets. Enjoy the video and keep your browsers locked-in here for more Q3 updates!

Watch the Silverlight interview on Telerik TV in full HD

Did you miss one of the interviews posted last week? Don't worry, they're all available in the Live for Telerik HQ video series. So far, there are Q3 2010 interviews with JustCode, ASP.NET AJAX, OpenAccess ORM, WinForms, and Silverlight.

Friday, November 05, 2010

Q3 2010 Special: Live from HQ with WinForms

One more Live from Telerik HQ interview to hold you over the final weekend before the Q3 2010 release bits are available. This time I visit with the RadControls for WinForms team for a very quick overview of what's being prepared for Q3. Meet the Team Lead for WinForms, Tsvetan Raikov, and put a face with another one of Telerik's technical product leaders. Enjoy the update and stay tuned for more on Monday, starting with Silverlight!

Watch WinForms video in full HD on Telerik TV

Q3 2010 Special: Live from HQ with OpenAccess ORM

Q3 2010 continues to draw closer, and with it, more interviews Live from Telerik HQ. This time I visit with the OpenAccess ORM team to learn about improvements in Telerik's data access product for Q3 2010. The team shows-off the new SDK Browser and talks about new things coming to OpenAccess like an expanded Fluent API and improved Visual Studio designer. Stay tuned for more interviews with the technical teams at Telerik! Next up, WinForms!

Watch this video with the OpenAccess team in full HD on Telerik TV

Thursday, November 04, 2010

Q3 2010 Special: Live from HQ with ASP.NET AJAX

Video two in the "Q3 2010 Special: Live from Telerik HQ" series. This time, I visit with Stefan Rahnev, Unit Manager for the ASP.NET AJAX, ASP.NET MVC, and Visual Studio Extension teams at Telerik. Stefan shows-off the new RadTreeList for ASP.NET AJAX and shares some other Q3 details, too. Enjoy the video and stay tuned for more Live from HQ as we continue to approach Q3!

Watch the full HD version of this ASP.NET AJAX video on Telerik TV

Q3 2010 Special: Live from Telerik HQ

Q3 2010 is just around the corner and it's going to be a massive release! More than 10 products simultaneously updated with new controls, new features, improved performance, and all of the other "secret sauces" Telerik cooks-up to help make you a more heroic developer. You've already got betas to check-out, but I know not everyone has time to review beta bits in their busy schedules. So, while you wait on the Q3 2010 What's New Webinar Week, I introduce a new video series:

Q3 2010 Special: Live from Telerik HQ

Over the next few days, leading-up to next week's Q3 release, I'll be posting videos captured at Telerik HQ with the product teams that work tirelessly to build Telerik's amazing tools. This is your chance to meet some of the technical leaders behind the Telerik products while seeing some "sneak peeks" at what will be in various Telerik products in Q3.

We start with the video embedded in this post (also available on Telerik TV in full HD). In this video, I visit with JustCode Team Lead Deyan Varchev to see what's cooking for Q3 2010. Enjoy the quick video and stay tuned for many more as we march towards Q3 2010!

Watch first Q3 2010 Special video in full HD on Telerik TV