Month of Just Webinars, New Product

In case you missed the memo, April is informally the "Month of Just*" (that's wildcard matching for JustCode, JustMock, Just<something else we'll talk about soon>). This month we're doing a number of things to highlight the benefits JustCode brings to your daily developer life in Visual Studio, and among those activities is a series of webinars.

The three webinar series kicks-off next week (click the links to register):

• Going Beyond Visual Studio with JustCode
  Wednesday, April 13, 11 AM ET
• Test Drive Your Code with JustMock
  Wednesday, April 20, 11 AM ET
• Just One More Thing
  Wednesday, April 27, 11 AM ET

As the names imply, each event will focus on a different Just* tool. The first will show you things that JustCode does to make Visual Studio better (especially if you're working with VS 2005 or VS 2008, which JustCode supports). The second will help you better understand the concept of mocking in unit tests and demonstrate how JustMock gives you all the power you need…for FREE!

The final webinar is special for two reasons:

1. We will be unveiling a brand new addition to the Just* family. (You're free to guess in the comments.)
2. EVERY attendee of the live launch webinar will receive a free license for the new Just* product (when it officially ships later this year)

On top of the huge license giveaway on April 27, we'll also be giving licenses (plural) for JustCode, JustMock, and the Telerik Ultimate Collection ($2000 value) to randomly selected winners from each webinar.

You don't want to miss these three events, especially the product launch. Register today and we'll see you for the kick-off next week!

Register for all webinars

WinPhone Webinar Series in February

Interested in improving your skills (or getting started with) with Windows Phone 7? Then the Telerik WinPhone Webinar Series is where you want to be during the month of February. All month we will be offering special WinPhone focused webinars that help get you familiar with the WP7 platform and Telerik's newest tools designed especially for the new mobile operating system.

To help deliver a well-rounded, world-class set of webinars, we've invited two Windows Phone industry experts to host two of the events: WinPhone trainer extraordinaire Shawn Wildermuth and WinPhone fanatic Mark Arteaga. They will join Telerik Developer Evangelist and XAML preacher Evan Hutnick to host three info-packed, free, online events:

1. Using RadControls to Build Windows Phone 7 Applications
   A primer on Telerik's new tools for WP7
   REGISTER: FEB 10th with Evan
2. Developing for the Third Screen - Windows Phone 7
   A primer on Windows Phone 7 in case you're just getting started with the platform
   REGISTER: FEB 16th with Mark
3. Consuming OData in Windows Phone 7
   A "next level" talk about working with data in WP7 apps
   REGISTER: FEB 23 with Shawn

All events start at 10 AM Eastern (here's a convenient time zone converter) and all will be recorded so you can re-watch them on Telerik TV. Register today so you don't miss-out on our month of Windows Phone webinars!

Baton Rouge SQL Saturday Wrap-up

Only a couple weeks late, I want to loop-back and provide a little follow-up on a few events I’ve participated in as August (and summer) wind to an end. On August 14, I hopped over to Baton Rouge to participate in the Baton Rouge SQL Saturday, an all day event that covered SQL and .NET. While the name is a bit misleading, the great Baton Rouge developer community pulled together more than 300 developers to talk SQL and .NET, and from my observation, the .NET sessions were filled to the brim.

I was late to the game joining the Baton Rouge speaker’s line-up, so I delivered two sessions: Building a Testable Data Access Layer and a quick “power talk” about the Telerik Toolbox. Thanks to everyone that joined the sessions! Hopefully you were able to takeaway some useful tips and tricks.

Meanwhile, I also participated in a Microsoft-hosted MSDN webcast covering the Telerik Toolbox for Visual Studio 2010 and TFS 2010. If you missed the live event, an on-demand recording of the event is available directly from Microsoft. It’s a great introduction (or re-introduction for you long-time fans) to what Telerik is doing these days, and it includes three demos that cover a range of Telerik tools (including WebUI Test Studio, the OpenAccess ORM Data Service Wizard, and the Silverlight Telerik Extensions).

Enjoy the archived webcast and stay tuned for more blog updates. After a weeks of events and some down-and-dirty dev work, it’s back to helping you be more productive .NET developers!

Free JustCode, JustMock licenses for all Thursday webinar attendees (update)

Sometimes people use the saying “Everyone’s a winner,” when in fact everyone is not a winner. If you join us tomorrow for the JustCode, JustMock and OpenAccess ORM webinar, though, you will be a winner! Everyone is truly a winner tomorrow because everyone that attends the Q2 2010 What’s New webinar will get free licenses for both JustCode and JustMock, Telerik’s powerful Visual Studio productivity tools. That’s $500 worth of software just for attending the live webinar event!

To get your complimentary licenses, register now for the webinar, and then join us tomorrow, July 22nd at 11:00 AM Eastern. You must attend the live event to get your license.

If you’ve never worked with JustCode or JustMock, this is your lucky week. Both tools can save you tons of time while coding or testing in Visual Studio, especially with the new features in Q2 2010. JustCode, for instance, includes a built-in Unit Test Runner and powerful solution-wide code analysis, while JustMock makes it easy to mock anything (including LinqToSql or EntityFramework). Don’t miss your one chance to get these tools pro-bono! Clear your calendar and we’ll see you at 11:00 AM.

Register now for JustCode, JustMock webiar

[UPDATE: The emails with the free license codes have been sent. Check your inboxes and spam folders to get your code and claim your free copy of JustCode and JustMock.]

Virtual MVC Conference this Thursday, Join my sessions

As if there wasn’t enough to do online this week with the Telerik Webinar Week, I have another online event that needs mentioning. This Thursday, July 22nd, from 8 AM to 5 PM Central time, there will be a virtual ASP.NET MVC conference. Conducted entirely over Live Meeting, the day long (free, Telerik-sponsored) conference, dubbed mvcConf, will feature 3 tracks with sessions exclusively covering ASP.NET MVC and related topics. There will be some great speakers presenting throughout the day, so if MVC is something you’re even remotely interested in, this is a great “event” to attend.

For my part, I’ll be delivering two sessions (official schedule should be on website soon):

• Creating Rich MVC Views with Open Source Telerik Extensions
  11:00 AM Central Time
  ASP.NET MVC is a great web development platform, but it shouldn’t require you to write all HTML, CSS, and JavaScript by hand. Come learn how the free and open source Telerik Extensions for ASP.NET MVC are making it easy to build rich MVC views by giving you MVC-native reusable UI components. This session will focus on how to add Telerik Extensions to an MVC project, how to use the rich Grid for MVC (including binding to web services), in addition to highlighting additional tools in the MVC toolbox, such as the new rich text Editor for MVC.
• The Four C’s of Web Asset Optimization
  2:00 PM Central Time
  Learn how to leverage the four C’s of web asset optimization- caching, combining, compressing, and CDNs- to deliver higher performance standards-based web sites. By applying one or all of these techniques to JavaScript and CSS resources, ASP.NET MVC applications can improve load-time performance and scalability. This session will  also look at two Extensions included in the open source Telerik Extensions for MVC- ScriptRegistrar and StyleSheetRegistrar- that simplify the actions required to optimize web assets.

So, right after you attend the JustCode/JustMock/OpenAccess ORM Telerik webinar (at 10:00 AM Central), jump over and join me for some MVC fun at mvcConf. If the conference will allow it, I’ll give away a few commercial licenses for the Telerik MVC Extensions and JustMock to attendees of my sessions.

One final note: the event is currently sold out! I know, unusual for an online event, but I’m told it has to do with the event’s access to Live Meeting (or Live Meeting limits, or something…). Fortunately, they are working on streaming sessions via UStream, too, so check the conference website for updates (or check their official Twitter account). Otherwise, I’ll see you- virtually- at mvcConf on Thursday.

Ask the Experts webinar scheduled for August

By now, you should know that the Telerik Q2 2010 release is mere weeks away and that the Q2 2010 Webinar Week registration is open. (You should also be registered for the Webinar Week now, too, so if you’re not, now is a great time to register before you forget.) When mid-July arrives and you download the Q2 bits, you’ll quickly get started by enjoying the “release notes on steroids” (also known as Webinar Week), but what happens if you have questions after you’ve spent some time using the bits in the real world?

To help answer those burning questions that form in the first week of working with the Q2 2010 bits, Telerik is hosting another Ask the Experts webinar on August 5th at 11 AM Eastern.

What is Ask the Experts? It’s a unique webinar format driven entirely by your questions. Telerik MVPs and product experts host the event and spend over an hour answering any questions you have about the Q2 release. The event is full of on-the-spot demos and quick tips and tricks from real masters of the Telerik products. It’s the perfect Webinar Week follow-up.

Register for the Ask the Experts webinar now and then join us on August 5th with your questions!

Another Webinar Week starts Tuesday, License giveaways

As many of you know, at Telerik we like to run “Webinar Weeks” around the time of a release to help you quickly get up-to-speed with all of the new features, controls, and (increasingly) products that are part of a Quintessential release. Most recently, we hosted the Q1 2010 Webinar Week and hundreds of you joined us live to learn. This week, we are hosting another new Webinar Week!

With all of last week’s announcements, April is almost as big- if not equally big- as our “official” Q1 Release Week. That means you’ve probably got tons of questions, and it definitely means we’ve got tons to share. A Webinar Week is the perfect solution.

Everything starts on Tuesday, April 20th at 11 AM Eastern with lots of chances to win free software:

1. Introduction to JustMock, Tuesday, April 20th
   Co-hosted by Josh Holt and Lead Developer Mehfuz Hossain. A great introduction to mocking and how JustMock makes it easy. Everyone attending live will get a FREE JustMock license.
2. Introduction to TeamPulse, Wednesday, April 21st
   Hosted by Joel Semeniuk, EVP Team Productivity Tools. Come learn more about what TeamPulse does for teams and how it creates a planning sandbox for TFS. Everyone attending live will get a FREE TeamPulse license.
3. Introduction to WebUI Test Studio QA Edition, Thursday, April 22nd
   Hosted by Chris Eyhorn, EVP Testing Tools. An introduction to the brand new QA edition of WebUI Test Studio. One Test Studio QA Edition license ($2500 value) will be raffled to live attendees.
4. Introduction to WebUI Test Studio Developer Edition, Friday, April 23rd
   Also hosted by Chris Eyhorn. Learn what’s new in the developer-oriented version of WebUI Test Studio. One Test Studio Dev Edition license ($1500 value) will be raffled to live attendees.

Clearly, you don’t want to miss these webinars. Each starts at 11 AM Eastern, and, of course, we’ll be recording for those that can’t attend live. Register for each using the links above and we’ll see you on Tuesday!

Ask the Experts answers (updated)

This past Friday, Telerik hosted a new “Ask the Experts” webinar where a panel of Telerik experts, including Evangelists, Developer Support Specialists, and Telerik MVPs, answered your questions about the Q1 2010 release. It was a successful experiment, and many questions and answers were exchanged. A huge thanks to those of you that attended and brought questions, and of course, join me in thanking our Telerik MVP experts for their time.

The video recording of this event will be posted to Telerik TV soon, but in the mean time we are providing a complete recap of the major questions with their answers! We hope you enjoy this resource and join us for more “Ask the Experts” events in the future.

Continue reading Ask the Experts Answers

General Questions

1. Are there any limitations or issues in using any of the new Q1 2010 products in VS 2005 such as ASP.NET AJAX, Open Access or Telerik Reporting? OpenAccess ORM, Telerik Reporting, and the RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX all work in VS 2005, VS 2008, and VS 2010. Obviously, some features that are specific to new versions of the framework, such as LINQ, will not be available in 2.0 projects, but otherwise, these are supported IDEs. More information can be found on the “System Requirements” page for each product.
2. You said Telerik Q1 2010 supports the .NET 4.0 framework. Our project is still on 3.5 and we don’t plan to upgrade to 4.0 anytime soon. Can we still upgrade to Q1 2010? The Q1 2010 release did indeed add support for the .NET 4.0 framework but that does not mean that it exclusively targets 4.0. As with our previous releases we still provide support for the .NET 2.0 and .NET 3.5 frameworks. These are offered via different assemblies, which are located in your local installation folder (usually C:\Program Files\Telerik\RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX Q1 2010) under Bin (2.0) and Bin35 (3.5). If you are currently using .NET 3.5 and are looking to upgrade you will have no issues with installing and using the Q1 2010 release.
3. Does the new CDN support SSL? The new CDN does indeed support SSL. When you are using a SLL connection the RadScriptManager and RadStyleSheetManager controls will fall back to Amazon's S3 service. In this case the following hosts are used: Scripts- https://telerik-aspnet-scripts.s3.amazonaws.com Skins - https://telerik-aspnet-skins.s3.amazonaws.com
4. Can you share the future direction of your UI controls, particularly the AJAX and Silverlight controls. Any certain things you will focus on or add? Thanks. The future of our UI controls for both Silverlight is actually heavily influenced by you, our developer community. With the launch of PITS, we have provided a nice and easy way for users to submit requests for our controls and vote upon them. If you see a particular feature that you would like to be included either in an existing control or perhaps a brand new one, vote on it! Through these submissions you can directly influence the evolution of our RadControls and our other products.

ASP.NET AJAX/MVC Questions

1. Any chance of seeing the Outlook Bar from Silverlight in the ASP.NET suite? As always, Telerik’s bases it plans on feedback from customers. If you’d like to see this tool in a future release, be sure to submit a Feature Request in the Telerik Public Issue Tracking System (and vote on other existing requests you want to see).
2. Is there any plan to add more validation controls for ASP.NET? Looking at our release history you can see that we always try to add validation to our controls. If you have not tried the RadInputManager, you will discover that it is a very powerful control that makes it easy to apply basic validation to many textboxes on a page. We are also researching the option to add direct support for Data Annotations to the RadControls to make validation configuration easier. Don’t forget to log your request in PITS so that your votes for new validation controls can be heard!
3. ASP/AJAX question: Is there a way to create a template for exporting RadGrids to Excel, PDF, etc? I've used the built-in export, but the format doesn't look like the Grid. I would like to be able to pass the RadGrid style/look to the different export options. Although there is no exportation template for the RadGrid we do have quite a few events that you can hook into in order to get the exported RadGrid to look exactly the way you want. You might want to have an exact duplicate (in terms of style etc.) of the RadGrid you have on your page, or you might want something different - either scenario can be achieved by using these events. The following links should be able to provide details about specific exportations, and which events you can subscribe to: Exportation Overview - http://www.telerik.com/help/aspnet-ajax/grdexport.html ExcelML Exportation - http://www.telerik.com/help/aspnet-ajax/grid-excelml-export.html PDF Exportation - http://www.telerik.com/help/aspnet-ajax/grid-pdf-export.html

   There are also other formats which you can export to (see the Overview article) and each one has a specific documentation article discussing what you can do in order to achieve the style you are looking for.

4. Are AJAX controls compatible with mobile browsers? Will there ever be a product line that focuses on mobile? Currently our RadControls for ASP.NET Ajax only officially support the browsers found on our Browsers Support page: http://www.telerik.com/products/aspnet-ajax/resources/browser-support.aspx

   Although it is not an Ajax product we can also note that the browser for Windows Phone 7 does seem to support most of our RadControls for Silverlight as some preliminary tests have shown: http://blogs.telerik.com/blogs/posts/10-03-18/mix10_is_in_history_windows_phone_7_is_here.aspx

5. RadAjax Grid: I'm attempting to use a Count Aggregate on a Boolean field. I found on the forums an example - but how can I then use that same functionality - for a field that gets grouped? So, if the user Groups by a column named Flight, how can I get the group footer to count the Skins checkbox - broken out by flight? When it comes to having a Count Aggregate being displayed in the footer of a grouped item there are two approaches you can take. The first would be to declaratively set the text and aggregate which appears in the footer. An example of this, along with further details on the functionality available for a group footer, can be found in this documentation article: http://www.telerik.com/help/aspnet-ajax/gridgroupfooters.html

   Another way of manipulating what is displayed in the group footer is the code-behind approach in which you subscribe to the OnItemDataBound event and customize the footer this way. Although this article goes over the approach for a GridGroupHeaderItem you can actually substitute this for a GridGroupFooterItem and follow the same approach. http://www.telerik.com/help/aspnet-ajax/grdcustomizegridgroupheaderitem.html

   As seen in the above article there is a lot of manipulation that can be done via this approach. If you are looking to do something outside of just a Count Aggregate the later approach is the recommended implementation.

6. How about some more MVC webinars and examples? We will continue to expand our MVC resources in 2010. Make sure you don’t miss the recently posted videos to Telerik TV showing you how to work with the Telerik MVC Grid. You will learn how to setup an MVC project with the Telerik Extensions, how to configure data binding, and how to setup inline data editing.

WinForms Questions

1. Can we use the Telerik themes as a basis for new themes in the new Visual Style Builder for WinForms? The Telerik themes have not yet been converted to the new theme repository format. We plan on updating them all for the Q2 release. You will then be able to use them as the basis for new themes.

Silverlight/WPF Questions

1. How similar can the SL GridView control behave like Excel? You can make the GridView perform similar to Excel, but keep in mind that a GridView is not designed to be a complete Spreadsheet replacement. There is a CurrentCellChanged event, in which you set e.NewCell.BeginEdit(). With this set, every time the cell changes, it instantly enters edit mode. If you subscribe to RowEditEnded, you either save changes or add new records based on EditOperationType. The end result is that every change you make to a row triggers a save in the database. That said, this is still not spreadsheet and you can’t do things like cell referencing, multi-cell selection (coming Q1 SP1), or formulas in the cells from the client-side.
2. How can I fill the DataCarouselPanel in WPF with data from WCF services ? We have a help article for that addresses this scenario: http://www.telerik.com/help/wpf/carousel-data-binding.html
3. Can you post the source for that MVVM sample? The source for the MVVM demo will be made available on Ross Wozniak’s blog. You can subscribe to his blog and catch the update by visiting the Telerik.com Blogs.
4. Silverlight Question: Where can I find the template/code for textbox with search/magnifier icon shown on the Telerik Silverlight demo apps? Thanks. In this specific case, the code is part of the Telerik QSF, and only available as source if you have a subscription license. An easier solution is to use a tool like Silverlight Spy, which lets you dive into styles and XAML by “picking” elements on the screen. With this tool, you can quickly examine the Telerik QSF and see the template being applied to the TextBox.
5. What is the best way to debug performance issues in Silverlight? I’m having a problem where my RadComboBoxes are taking a long time to expand (up to 5 seconds with only 48 items). I am not able to recreate the problem in a basic demo application. Starting with Silverlight 4, you can now use the Visual Studio 2010 profilers to profile Silverlight applications. You should be able to use these tools to get started analyzing your application’s performance. Details regarding VS2010 profiling are available on the MSDN Blogs.
6. Will Telerik create a MVVM framework similar (but better) than Prism and Silverlight FX? Telerik is not currently looking to build another MVVM framework. There are great options available for free today, such as Prism, SilverlightFX, and MVVM Light. We also offer tools like RadCommandManager to make it easier to work with MVVM-like concepts.

OpenAccess ORM Questions

1. I added a new model to OpenAccess and I see the article and video where you show me how to obtain data from database. How can I use the same model to update and insert data to database? Josh Holt will be posting an example shortly that shows insert/update/delete using OpenAccess in windows and web scenarios using the new context object. Follow his blog on the Telerik Blogs to learn more.
2. When will OpenAccess support WCF RIA Services using POCO? OpenAccess ORM will offer support for WCF RIA Services in an upcoming release. As for POCO (Plain Old CLR Objects), we are evaluating the reasons why/when such support should be added. From our perspective developing Data Transporter Objects and Self-Tracking Entities will cover all the scenarios were POCOs would be used, with relatively small impact to performance, so you will see these first. If POCO support is important to your project, be sure to vote for the feature in PITS.
3. Does the visual designer replace the wizard-based "reverse engineer" feature? The answer is yes, but it is a bit complicated at the moment. In Q1, we still don’t have a translation tool between the two formats (pre-Q1 OpenAccess and Q1 OpenAccess). Our advice is to use the new designer for new projects only until we provide support for upgrading complex projects based on previous versions of OpenAccess. In fact, by Q2, the designer will be a “roundtrip” editor (forward and reverse mapping), so you will have a way to alter the database as well.
4. Can you add validation attributes? You will be able in the Q2 release. We are talking Data.Annotations attributes, of course.
5. Are we basically throwing out the old way of OpenAccessing data? Do we still need to create scopes, and dispose of them...etc? The answer is a bit complex. We prefer to say that we are changing the designer experience and the API usage-pattern to better fit the .NET ORM world, where developers are familiar with tools like LinqToSQL and Entity Framework. The underlying OpenAccess “engine” remains the same and continues to provide the core support for features like data caching, object tracking, etc.
6. Will there be a way to create a Domain Model from an existing OpenAccess project in the future? Definitely. We regard this as a “must” for the new OpenAccess designer, and we will be providing a tool to make this type of “migration” easy.
7. So with the Data Context and with no scopes, are all transactions persisted instantly instead of batched till a commit? No you still must call context.SaveChanges() to persist changes to the database. The DataContext provides a more convenient way for working with the OpenAccess API, managing scopes for you internally.
8. I saw you were able to get data from the database without using an ObjectScope. Is that replaced by the new Data Context? Yes, however, in the Q1 2010 release, only when doing reverse mapping. Forward mapping support for the new Data Context and designer will be added in an upcoming release.

JustCode Questions

1. Will JustCode display the Fonts & Colors when printing? Currently, fonts and colors will not be printed. This is a limit of Visual Studio we are actively researching to work around. We will try to provide printing support for custom fonts and colors in an upcoming release.
2. I just moved over from ReSharper. If I forget to include the using library statement or don’t know which library is needed for a type, will JustCode give me a hint to place the using statement in the class? Once you have typed the type name, put the cursor on the statement, hit Alt+Enter, and JustCode will present an option to add the missing reference. Review all JustCode keyboard shortcuts in the online docs.
3. I noticed that there was only one Code Template in the JustCode menu for VB.Net. Is it possible to add more templates? Yes, it’s possible to create more templates, however VB templates cannot be context sensitive in the current version. We will continue to improve VB support for templates in an upcoming release.
4. How changeable are the hotkeys for the JustCode menus? I’m programming on a MacBook without an end key (technically it's there, but its a 2 key combo) JustCode shortcuts can be completely changed from VS -> Tools -> Options –> Keyboard
5. How do you configure JustCode Color Identifiers? VS -> Tools ->Options->Fonts and Colors. When JustCode is installed you will see entries in the list that start with “JustCode” for adjusting fonts and colors.
6. Will there be a unit test runner built-in to JustCode? Yes! This is a feature we are working hard to provide in the Q2 2010 release.

Telerik Reporting

1. I have 3 reports I would like to add to a report book. Individually they have SqlDataSources with parameters which I pass through code. I want to add them all to a single report. How do I pass the parameters? Robert Shoemate will provide example code and a complete explanation for handling this scenario on his blog this week. Follow his blog on the Telerik.com Blogs to catch the updates. [UPDATE: The blog post has been posted.]

Q1 Webinar Week wrap-up

Let me take a quick break from the MIX action to deliver a post I tried to pull together before jumping on the plane to Vegas. Many of you joined us last week for the big Telerik Q1 2010 release and related Release Week Webinars. These daily webinars are your way to “jumpstart” your knowledge of “what’s new” in Q1 and our hope is that they make it easier for you to get started with the new bits.

The live webinars are great, especially with the extended Q & A, but we know not everyone can attend live. That’s why everything is recorded and on Telerik TV! Here are the direct links to all 4 Q1 2010 release week webinar recordings:

• What’s New in the RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX and Telerik Extensions for MVC
• What’s New in the RadControls for Silverlight and WPF
• What’s New in the RadControls for WinForms and Telerik Reporting
• What’s New in OpenAccess ORM and JustCode

Enjoy the recordings and enjoy the Q1 release. More Q1 videos are hitting Telerik TV daily, so stay tuned for more helpful content.

Q1 2010 Webinar Week registration open

It's hard to believe, but the Q1 2010 release is just a few days away! Next week, Telerik will ship updates for all 8 Telerik developer products- RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX, WinForms, Silverlight, WPF, Telerik Extensions for ASP.NET MVC, Telerik Reporting, OpenAccess ORM, and JustCode. It's a big release (as all releases are at Telerik these days) and there are a lot of new and improved features to take-in.

How do you know where to start? The release Webinar Week.

Things kick-off on Tuesday, March 9th and then run every day next week. All webinars will be held at 11 AM EST (full time zone conversion) and all will be recorded for Telerik TV on-demand viewing. To join the webinars, register now:

• Tuesday What's New in Q1 2010 Overview + RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX & Extensions for MVC
• Wednesday What's New in RadControls for Silverlight & WPF
• Thursday What's New in RadControls for WinForms & Telerik Reporting
• Friday What's New in OpenAccess ORM & JustCode

We'll be giving away Telerik Premium Collections at all of the live webinar events (two for the kick-off event on Tuesday). You must attend live to win, so if you can make the live events, join us for extra chances at winning prizes.

We'll see you at 11:00 AM (EST) on Tuesday!

Q1 WinForms Preview this Thursday, New Visual Style Builder

This week’s weekly webinar is special. It will deliver one of your first “sneak peeks” at some of the new functionality shipping in the rapidly approaching Q1 2010 release (scheduled for mid-March). The Thursday Weekly Webinar will provide a complete overview of a brand new tool shipping with the RadControls for WinForms in Q1: the new Visual Style Builder for WinForms.

The new Visual Style Builder is a completely new tool, not a minor upgrade of the old VSB for WinForms. It dramatically simplifies the process of creating custom themes for the RadControls for WinForms, and in so doing unlocks more of the power built-in to the Telerik Presentation Framework. I’m not often a WinForms developer, but when I saw the new VSB, my first reaction was that we had built Blend for WinForms. It’s impressive.

Don’t miss your first chance to see it in action! The webinar happens this Thursday, February 25th at 11:00 AM Eastern (full timezone conversions). Register now to save your seat and get a link to join the live event. More Q1 news and previews coming soon!

Web optimization with MVC webinar this week

This week's Weekly Webinar puts me back in the driver's seat to take you on a tour of some very cool tools in Telerik's open source Extensions for MVC. We'll be taking an extended look at the web asset optimization components, ScriptRegistrar and StylesheetRegistrar. These tools have been around since the beginning of our efforts with MVC, but they have been significantly improved with the evolution of the Extension suite. In this webinar, we'll dive-deep and explore the various ways these two components make it easy to embrace the four "Cs" of web optimization:

• Combine (reducing initial requests)
• Cache (reducing follow-up requests)
• Compress (reducing bits over the wire)
• Content Delivery Network (reducing latency to bits)

If you're working with MVC, this will be an event you don't want to miss. The techniques I will demo will make it possible to optimize your JavaScript and CSS resources as much as technically possible. We'll also explore the new Telerik CDN (with support for MVC), and cover some future-looking topics about the next release of the Telerik Extensions. It will be a fast-paced, info-packed, Todd Anglin signature webinar. If you want to join, register now to save your spot and get a link to the live event. You must attend live to participate in the Q&A, and that is often where some of the best info gets shared. The live event happens this Thursday, February 4th at 11:00 AM EST (8:00 AM PST, 4:00 PM GMT). See you on Thursday!

Join Prism webinar today @ 11 AM Eastern

After a missed week (recovery from WAM), the Weekly Webinar is back at its normal time this Thursday today! Today's topic is Prism, or more accurately, the Composite Application Guidance from Microsoft. Prism is Microsoft's next generation framework for building highly-maintainable, loosely-coupled XAML applications, and almost any Silverlight or WPF application can benefit from using this tool. Our resident CAB expert, Robert Shoemate, will be hosting the webinar this week, and he'll be providing an extra layer of insight for WinForms developers trying to make the switch from CAB and SCSF to CAG and WPF. The event kicks-off at 11:00 AM Eastern (8:00 AM Pacific, 4:00 PM GMT) and, as always, it will be recorded and posted to Telerik TV for those that can't attend the live event. Register now to get your log-in details for the webinar and don't miss your chance to start improving your XAML skills. If you're a .NET developer, these are pretty important skills to sharpen these days! Next week's webinar? I'll be covering web asset optimization with the Telerik Extensions for ASP.NET MVC (and maybe some other cool MVC topics, too!).

First webinar of the New Year this Thursday at LIDNUG

Now that the holidays are winding down and work is starting to wind back up to its modern, frenetic speed, it's time to get back to business. And that means it's time to attend another webinar! But before I get to the details...

Happy New Year! Hopefully by now you've seen the Telerik 'Happy Holidays' video on Telerik TV. If not, check it out for a quick New Year's message. Everyone at Telerik is very excited about the possibilities 2010 presents and I know you are going to be very happy to see some of the new and improved products we're working on. Keep your RSS reader's locked-in to Telerik Watch for all the latest and greatest, and for even faster updates, follow @toddanglin and @telerik on Twitter.

This week I'll be doing the first webinar of the year at the LinkedIn .NET Users Group (or LIDNUG). LIDNUG is one of (the?) largest DNUGs by membership count, and all of their meetings are done virtually through Live Meeting. At this meeting, I've been asked to provide a quick lap around the Telerik developer tools. We're obviously doing a lot these days, so it's easy to miss something that could be saving you time. This webinar/meeting will try to draw your attention to our various tools for developers, highlighting how they save you time. If you're interested in Telerik and ways to save time, this event is for you.

Register for the LIDNUG meeting now and then join us on Thursday, January 7th (tomorrow) at 11:00 AM PACIFIC (1:00 PM Central, 2:00 PM Eastern).

Oh! And I'll be giving away 2 Telerik Premium Collection licenses, too, making this also your first chance to be a winner in the New Year.

Test Studio 2.0 webinar, Lucky license winner

If you missed today's info-packed What's New in WebUI Test Studio 2.0 webinar, you missed a great event with a valuable live Q & A. I was joined by ArtOfTest Co-Founder and CTO, Faris Sweis, who spent the majority of today's time showing-off the new features in the latest WebUI Test Studio release. We saw how the new Silverlight support makes it just as easy and intuitive to do "point and click" testing of Silverlight apps as ASP.NET/HTML applications. We saw how the new test recording tools make it easy to target specific elements in a test. And we got a good overview of how the free WebAii Testing Framework compares to WebUI Test Studio. All available (with the Q & A) on Telerik TV now!

As a reminder, WebUI Test Studio 2.0 is also available for immediate download on Telerik.com! Released today, you have instant access to all of the new features highlighted in today's webinar.

Finally, as part of the official launch of Test Studio 2.0, we're giving away 3 Test Studio licenses (each valued at $2500). Two will be given away as part of our Twitter and Facebook contests- visit Telerik.com for more details. One goes to a lucky winner from today's live webinar audience. And today's lucky winner is....

Cory Hudson!

Congrats to Cory and thanks to everyone for joining today's event. Enjoy the on-demand video and stay tuned for more Test Studio 2.0 content very soon.

Watch the recorded WebUI Test Studio 2.0 video on Telerik TV in full size

WebUI Test Studio 2.0 launches tomorrow (with webinar)

Hello again loyal Telerik Watch readers! It what has probably been the single longest stretch of "silence" on Telerik Watch in the last three years, I'm finally back in the saddle after the busy fall travel season. Good thing, too, because I'm just in time to let you know that tomorrow (Thursday) we're officially launching WebUI Test Studio 2.0!

We released a beta of WebUI Test Studio 2.0 with Q3 2009, but Thursday marks the official release. In case you missed the 2.0 release highlights (and these are truly tip of the iceberg highlights), here's a quick reminder:

• New (industry first) point & click automated UI test support for Silverlight
• Brand new VS UI test recorder "overlay surface" (basically, improved test recording tools)
• New element menu & "per element" testing
• New Translators for the RadControls for Silverlight

To help jumpstart your mastery of the new features, especially those now available for Silverlight, we're also hosting a webinar tomorrow to cover what's new in WebUI Test Studio 2.0. I'll be joined by ArtOfTest CTO Faris Sweis and together we'll show you the essentials of working with 2.0's new features.

The webinar kicks-off at our standard 11:00 AM Eastern, tomorrow, Thursday, December 10th. You can register now to save your seat, and then join us for the live event. With Faris participating, this is a great chance to come have all of your burning WebUI Test Studio (or WebAii Framework) questions answered.

Enjoy the official release bits and join us for the release webinar!

(Oh yeah! I almost forgot. We'll be giving away one WebUI Test Studio license to one lucky attendee of tomorrow's live event! Remember, WebUI Test Studio is not part of the Telerik Premium Collection, so this is a valuable $2500 prize even if you have the Telerik PC. There will be chances to win Test Studio on Twitter and Facebook, too, so don't fret if you absolutely can't make the live webinar. For everyone else, now you definitely need to go sign-up and attend!)

Webinar Replay: What's New in AJAX and MVC in Q3 2009

Another day, another Q3 2009 Release Week Webinar. Today we covered what's new in the RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX and the Telerik Extensions for ASP.NET MVC. Literally hundreds of people tuned-in live to see what we are shipping in this release, so a big thanks to all of you for participating in our Q3 2009 release. The webinar was recorded, processed, and it is now available on Telerik TV for your on-demand viewing pleasure (in addition to being embedded above).

The webinar starts by covering what's new in the AJAX controls, focusing on the three new controls (Rating, SiteMap, and ListView + DataPager) and the major enhancements to the existing controls. After some demos and a look at the ListView design-time, we move on to discuss the Telerik Extensions for MVC. We look at the new demos, go through step-by-step adding the Extensions to a MVC project, and then wrap-up with some follow-up resources.

Enjoy the webinar content and to those of you that attended live, we'll be announcing today's "webinar winner" on Twitter very soon (@toddanglin)! Today's winner will get a Telerik Premium Collection license.

Watch the recorded webinar on Telerik TV (in full size)

Webinar Replay: What's New in Q3 2009

Miss the first of the Q3 '09 Release Week Webinars today? Catch-up now by watching the recorded on-demand version now available on Telerik TV (and above). Today's webinar provided an overview of the Q3 2009 release and took a closer look at the new features in OpenAccess ORM and WebUI Test Studio. This is the first of five planned webinars, so don't miss the next event, which is going to cover the new stuff in the RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX and MVC.

Watch the recorded webinar in full size on Telerik TV

Join Q3 2009 Release Week Kick-off Webinar Today

Get the Q3 2009 Release Week started right with today's kick-off webinar! Hosted by yours truly, today's webinar will provide a high-level overview of the Q3 2009 release, drawing your attention to the major improvements across all Telerik products in the Premium Collection. It's the easiest way to get oriented to the new bits.

Today's webinar will also dive-in and focus in more depth on the new features in OpenAccess ORM and WebUI Test Studio in Q3 2009. Both of these products have some exciting new features in Q3, and today's webinar is your chance to learn about the newness and see some of the features demo'd live in Visual Studio.

It all starts at 11:00 AM Eastern (see timezone conversions below) today!

Register now to save your virtual seat at the event.

Don't forget, by attending today's webinar, you'll be in the drawing for one of two Telerik Premium Collections going out to attendees of this kick-off event!

RadGrid optimization webinar on Telerik TV

Did you miss last week's RadGrid for ASP.NET AJAX optimization webinar? Then don't miss this recorded video. This session covers the basics of optimizing RadGrid for ASP.NET AJAX and introduces a handful of techniques you can use to make your ASP.NET pages with RadGrids faster. Catch the video above and grab the session slides and demo code below. Enjoy!

Watch RadGrid optimization webinar in full size on Telerik TV

[Slides (PDF)] [Code]