RadControls for ASP.NET SP2 released today

Even though there is a lot to look forward to in the big Q1 2008 release in April, there is still plenty of work being done to deliver incremental improvements to your Q3 2007 controls. Along those lines comes today's announcement and immediate availability of the second service pack for the Q3 controls. This round of service packs for both the RadControls "classic" and the new RadControls "Prometheus" is actually full of new features and control improvements and something you'll probably want to download right away. Among the cool new features in SP2 (for "Prometheus") are:

• New export settings in RadGrid that enable you to control CSV column and row delimiters.
• New RadGrid RowHoverStyle that enables you to easily enable custom styling for your grid rows that is displayed when the mouse is over a row. All common skins now supply RowHover styles, too.
  
• Reduced RadScheduler client-side init time helps your page load faster.
• Web Services support in RadTooltip for easy web service data binding.
• New Overlay and KeepInScreenBounds properties for RadWindow.
• Significant script optimizations in RadEditor that greatly reduce the number of script links rendered to the page.

Even bigger than all of these improvements in "Prometheus" SP2, though, is a big change to how the control designers are distributed. As of this service pack, the RadControls "Prometheus" will no longer ship with a separate DLL for the control designers (Telerik.Web.Design.dll). Instead, all designers are now included in the single Telerik.Web.UI assembly.

This change was made to overcome insurmountable problems introduced by Microsoft in VS 2008 that caused the control designers to break when in a separate GAC'd assembly. The impact to you as a developer should be minimal, unless of course you were running in to the problems VS 2008 created, in which case the change should be a welcome improvement. The main point is that the RadControls "Prometheus" (and in turn the RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX in Q1) will no longer require two assemblies. Everything will now exist in Telerik.Web.UI.dll.

Finally, for those of you that prefer to manage the loading of your UI component JavaScript files manually (versus relying on the automatic embedded resource approach), all RadControls "Prometheus" now support the EnableEmbeddedScripts property. By setting this property to false, you can turn-off the use of embedded resources and manage the loading of all RadControl script files however you like. Certainly not the most common scenario, but helpful for those that need it.

Check out the full release notes for more details and then download the new SP from your Client.net page. Enjoy the new bits!

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!