FireFox 3 Beta 1 now available

That's right, the next version of the venerable challenger to Internet Explorer is just around corner. Mozilla yesterday announced the availability of the first beta for FireFox 3. For those of you who haven't been following FF3's progress, here are a few release highlights:

• New download manager with integrated anti-virus and resume capabilities
• Full page zoom (a la IE7)
• One-click bookmarking and a host of new tools for managing bookmarks and history
• New graphics and font rendering architecture
• Improved HTML rendering engine
• Tons of performance improvements and fixed memory leaks
• Easier add-on installation

You can review a complete list of what's new on the Mozilla site. After downloading and installing FF3 (which you can do parallel to existing versions as long as you use a different folder), I must say it definitely feels more like an incremental improvement than some big leap forward in the browser wars. The overall interaction with the browser remains relatively unchanged and in the current beta the skin has not changed at all from FF2. Most improvements in FF3 will take time to appreciate, but then again, other than terrible memory performance and slower page loading, I have few complaints with FF2.

Download your copy of FF3 beta 1 today and give it a try. Is this what you expected from FF3 or does it feel more like FF2.5 to you, too? I'm not sure what more (or maybe less) I want my web browser to do in the future, but maybe you have better ideas. Sound off in the comments and let us know what you think of FF3 and how you would change it to be the perfect "next gen" browser.

VS 2008 RTM out? (update: confirmed)

According to the diligent Telerik admins, the VS 2008 RTM bits are live and available for download on the MSDN site. The public MSDN site does not appear to be updated- still saying "arriving this month"- but the bits are being downloaded in the Telerik labs as I type. None of the other "big bloggers" have dropped any word on this yet either, so expect a flood of posts on VS 2008 availability later today or the MSDN download to be pulled. Either way, you heard it hear first, and if you're an MSDN subscriber you should jump over to your downloads and see if you can snag the bits. Drop a line in the comments if you manage to start the download.

UPDATE: The release is confirmed via our good friend ScottGu. Enjoy VS 2008!

Telerik "Best Employer" and "Rising Star"

While you may know Telerik as a reliable partner you can count on to deliver more than expected, we have recently been recognized for a few accomplishments outside of the award winning components we produce.

First, we have been named a "Rising Star" in Deloitte's Technology Fast 50 for Central Europe. The Fast 50 awards recognize the 50 fastest growing companies (based on revenues) in the technology, telecommunications, and media industries headquartered in Central and Eastern Europe. Telerik took 3rd place in this year's awards, but the recognition is a strong testament to Telerik's outstanding success as the "new kid on the block" in the .NET component industry. This award isn't possible without you- the loyal and engaged Telerik community that has helped us grow- so a special thanks to you for helping us earn this recognition.

Next, Telerik has just been named the "Best Employer" in Central and Eastern Europe in the Small to Medium sized business category. This is Telerik's first year to enter the the Hewitt Best Employers Study, so it is a huge honor to come out on top. Needless to say, the award reinforces what all of us at Telerik already know, but it should give you- our customers- some insight in to the company that is building the tools you depend on. Our people love what they do and our company takes great care of them so they can continue to deliver more than expected!

Prometheus SP2 out, Q3 coming soon

Hello again dear blog readers. If there is anything that seems to be universally true about the software industry and end of the year is that it is a very busy time. That's at least the case for me and the reason this blog has had a dearth of posts of late. But fear not, I'll do my best to keep bringing you the latest Telerik news in the midst of it all as we head in to the holidays.

Along those lines, in case you missed it, the official "SP2" release of the RadControls "Prometheus" officially shipped about 12 days ago. After a couple of short delays to ensure a high quality release, the SP2 release shipped with a lot of helpful fixes. Most of the work centered on bringing RadEditor "Prometheus" up to par with the ASP.NET 2 version, and I think that task is definitely complete. RadEditor "Prometheus" is now by far the best rich text editor available for ASP.NET development. You can check out the full release notes for the 2007.2.1107 release to see what else was fixed in this service release.

With no SP2 planned for the regular ASP.NET controls, it's now on to Q3, which is only 4 short weeks away! Hard to believe. What can you look forward to in Q3? Glad you asked. Here are some "public" highlights:

• ASP.NET
• RadGrid, RadTreeview, RadUpload, RadMenu, RadCombobox, and RadSpell are all getting Prometheus'd (leaving just TabStrip, Toolbar, Panelbar, and Rotator for Q1)
• WinForms
• Totally refactored RadGridView with significantly improved performance/stability
• Many new controls, like MaskedEditor, Rotator, StatusStrip, and DateTimePicker
• Significantly enhanced and expanded documentation
  
• Reporting
• ExportToExcel (based on new ExportToExcel engine)
• New table layout feature
• Additional report converters
• Silverlight 1.1
• Previews of RadControls for Silverlight 1.1

Clearly another big release and a great way to end 2007. Watch for more details in the coming weeks and get ready for some early Christmas presents.

DevCon 07 wrap-up

Another conference has come and gone and in its wake is a great week of conversations and meeting Telerik "fans". For those of you that stopped by the booth, thanks again for coming by. It's always fun to put faces with names and we love getting to meet the people that use our controls around the world. And for those of you that missed DevCon, I'm afraid you'll have to wait a while to visit with Telerik. With PDC cancelled, we're settling in to the holiday conference "drought" and that means you'll have to make your plans to see us at any of the many places we'll be in 2008.

I do regret that I didn't get to blog as much as I had hoped this week. The internet at the conference was simply terrible. WiFi for a single computer at the conference cost $500 (and you thought your local hot spot was expensive)! Nonetheless, I will be posting some more follow-up tomorrow and I will finally announce the "exciting" news promised last week.

For now, I've got to catch a flight and jet back to Houston. As a parting note, don't miss the big keynote news that VS 2008 is going to be officially available by the end of November. I'll share more about this news and Telerik's plans for VS 2008 soon.

Telerik at DevConnections 2007

Your next chance to meet and hang out with the Telerik crew is just around the corner. Actually, it's just around the weekend. Next week kicks-off DevConnections 2007 in Las Vegas and Telerik will be there in full force showing-off products on the expo floor and giving away some great swag. I'll be on the floor along with a handful of Telerikers from the home office in Bulgaria, so stop by even if just to say hi. And unlike my last trip out of the office, I don't intend to let the blog go silent next week. Stay tuned for some great updates from DevConn.

If you don't get a chance to make it to this year's conference, don't worry- there will be more opportunities to meet the Telerik crew and hang out in the near future. In fact, if you're in the Houston area I've got a very exciting announcement to make next week. Enjoy your weekend and dial-in Telerik Watch next week for some fun (and don't forget to change your clocks in the US)!

Kazi Manzur joins Telerik team

I don't often blog when new people join the Telerik team, but this new team member deserves a bit of attention. I am pleased to announce that Kazi Manzur, active blogger, .NET community member, and of PageFlakes.com fame will be joining the Telerik Sitefinity development team. Kazi was previously a part of the core PageFlakes.com development team, a team that created one of the first full scale sites built on ASP.NET AJAX. Kazi brings an incredible wealth of ASP.NET AJAX knowledge to the Sitefintiy team along with experience developing for a high traffic portal page. Expect some cool things in future Sitefinity updates that take advantage of Kazi's expertise.

Sitefinity is really moving along at an incredible pace, so if you still haven't given the accelerated web development platform/CMS a look, now would be a good time. We're happy to welcome Kazi to the team and we hope you get excited about what's coming down the road!

Halloween treats from Telerik

Google's logo is different today, which means another holiday is upon us. This time it's the scariest of all holidays that haunts you once a year. If you thought anything other than Halloween, you're a twisted thinker (and I want to know what you thought- leave a comment). To commemorate today's holiday, I've two treats to hand out.

First, for those of you that haven't noticed, the first service pack for Sitefinity 3.1 just dropped and is now available for download. This service delivers a number of stability and bug fixes across the 3.1 release, including improved site search support, better localization support with workflow, a number of medium trust fixes, and fixes for the new forums module. As usual, if you're a Sitefinity developer you'll definitely want to download and run this update. I promise it's not a trick.

Second, and I've saved the best for last, I've created a Telerik pumpkin carving template for all of you carvers out there that decided to wait 'til the last minute to get your carve on. The directions are easy to follow and if you're successful it should look something like the pumpkin featured on this post. Consider this the "easy" template for 2007- maybe next year I'll unleash a more advanced version.

Enjoy the treats and have a safe Halloween!

Todd Anglin on Silverlight

While I generally hate to refer to myself in the third person on this blog, "Todd Anglin on Silverlight" is really the only way to title this post. In between speaking at various sessions during DevReach, a couple of guys from SilverlightShow.net pulled me aside to do a quick interview about Silverlight. The interview covers everything from the current state of Silverlight, how Telerik plans on supporting Silverlight, and even addresses the popular myth about the nirvana Blend/XAML workflow (a popular theme that week). The whole thing was recorded live to video and it is now available online (in a Silverlight video player, of course).

If you're interested in learning more about Silverlight or gaining a better understanding of Telerik's plans for Silverlight, check out the 30 minute video today. And if you're looking to hear more about Silverlight from men wiser than I, don't miss Lino Tadros' or Chad Hower's interivews on the site, too.

New RadEditor "Prometheus" build available

While the official Q2 2007 SP2 won't be available this week as planned, a new build of RadEditor "Prometheus" with most of the SP2 enhancements is available. The new internal build, dated October 25 (make sure you scroll down in the forum thread to download the correct build), delivers almost all of the enhancements mentioned in this week's SP2 post. The only features that are not ready in this internal build are the Table Wizard dialog, a few layout issues with toolbar modes, and a few missing localization points in the dialogs. All of these items will be addressed, though, before the official SP2 ships mid-next week.

With this release, RadEditor "Prometheus" comes very close to duplicating all of the functionality in the original RadEditor. In fact, one of the only features that won't be present is docking toolbars (a feature that currently is not planned for the "Prometheus" version). So if you've been waiting for "Prometheus" to catch-up with the old Editor before giving it a spin, now is a good time to take it out for a test drive. Look for the final SP2 version along with SP2 updates for all "Prometheus" controls next week.

Microsoft: WinForms here to stay...for now

As promised, here is the shocking news that is starting to come to light. When Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 start shipping in a few weeks, Microsoft won't be recommending that companies use WPF to build applications. No, they'll be recommending that people building new LoB (Line of Business) apps (a.k.a. business apps) use the tried and true WinForms technology to get the job done. WPF won't be explicitly discouraged, per se. Instead WPF will be encouraged as the platform for "rich experience apps" and WinForms will get the nod for everything else...from Microsoft.

If that doesn't surprise you, then you've probably missed what seems like at least a year's worth of "WinForms is dead" "don't start any new development in WinForms" discussion in the industry. It will be very interesting to see how this increasingly public position from Microsoft will affect the adoption rate of WPF in business development and how the component industry will react. Microsoft claims this is not a new position and consistent with the messages they've been sending, and based on the details in the WPF paper they promoted technically they're right. In fact, for many months Microsoft has been saying "use the best technology and integrate" (meaning build with WinForms and integrate WPF), it just seems that message is finally starting to sink in.

So what does this news mean? Does it mean the tools in Visual Studio 2008 aren't really ready for full scale WPF development? Does it mean WPF itself (or at least with its current out of the box tools) is not ready for business development? I'll let you draw your own conclusions on those points, but it definitely does mean that WinForms development is here to stay for at least another couple of years. Sound off and let me know what you think of this news in the comments.

"Prometheus" SP2 due Thursday

Another service pack for the Q2 2007 "Prometheus" controls is coming later this week. Service pack 2 will primarily address RadEditor "Prometheus" and will deliver a number of enhancements that the dev team has been busy preparing. Among the features RadEditor "Prometheus" will see in SP2 are:

• Toolbar button tooltips now display in FireFox
• NodeInspector module now implemented
  
• AJAX spell check issues in FireFox now fixed
• Genearl UI improvements
• Table borders in preview mode removed
• New dialogs:
  
• FormatCodeBlock
• ImageMap
• ImageProperties
• PageProperties
• TableWizard/TableProperites
• New toolbar modes supported
• 3 new skins: Monochrome, Telerik, Web20

Clearly, the RadEditor team is hard at work making the next generation rich text editor for the web the best that it can be. Some of these improvements are already available in a pre-release hotfix build if you're interested in giving them a try. The other controls in the "Prometheus" suite will receive minor updates in SP2, and at this time a SP2 date for the other RadControl suites is not available. If you're forging ahead with "Prometheus" based projects, mark your calendars and grab this update late Thursday.

Community 2.0 published on AspAlliance

I've be longing to share this incredible content with you for what seems like months now. After a lengthy review process- most of which was just waiting for an open publication date- my whitepaper on "community 2.0" has been published on the popular AspAlliance website. This whitepaper grew out of an internal effort at Telerik to effectively understand and describe what it takes to build a strong, thriving community. The research in the paper was so compelling, though, that I couldn't resist making it available to the community for broad consumption.

What is community 2.0? I assure you I am not out to create yet another "2.0" version of a common word (Business 2.0, you'll be missed?). Rather, this paper methodically examines the elements of many popular "web 2.0" sites that have thriving online communities. What did Digg and Wikipedia do correctly to grow their communities that others like Netscape failed to do? Through my research, three simple and easy to understand principles emerge that connect the success of online communities, and by these principles you'll have the best chance at creating your own successful online socials.

If you have a site or business and you want to create a community, this paper is a must read. Check it out on the AspAlliance site, tell your friends, and then let me know what you think. Hope you enjoy my latest publication.

WinForms controls on dnrTV

Here's another hot news item that I didn't deliver to you on time. A little more than a week ago I sat down (virtually, of course) with .NET celeb Carl Franklin to film a new episode of dnrTV all about Telerik's RadControls for WinForms. The episode was released late on October 12th, but it is still on the homepage of dnrTV at the time of this writing.

What is dnrTV? For those that have never seen it, dnrTV delivers Camtasia captured screen casts of conversations that Carl has with a vast array of guests from the .NET world. The WinForms episode that we "filmed" comes in a series of dnrTV episodes focusing on various .NET products. But unlike unfettered internally produced web casts on .NET products, dnrTV episodes benefit from the candid and insightful questions that Carl delivers to guests- often the questions you wish you could ask while watching a web cast.

Either way, it was fun to shoot and it is a great way to learn about what Telerik is doing in the WinForms space if you still have yet to check it out. And without giving too much away, I have some pretty big news regarding WinForms learned at VSIP that I'm going to try to share later this week. I guarantee it will surprise you. Until then, check out the dnrTV episode and look for more content like this in the future.

Telerik Watch celebrates 1 year

As I was composing my last post explaining the uncommon week of silence on this blog, I realized that in all the preparation for the VSIP Summit and the recovery from DevReach I missed a very important event: the first birthday of the Telerik Watch blog! That's right, you've been enjoying this fine publication for over a year now. The first post, dated October 11, 2006, set the stage for what has been a very successful blog- thanks in no small part to you, the outstanding and loyal audience.

Time marches forward, though, and I look forward to bringing you another great year of content. When I originally started this blog, Paul Thurott's WinSuperSite was a big inspiration and I aimed to deliver the same in-depth attention for Telerik products that he delivered for Microsoft. Since then, a few things have changed. Most notably, I was hired full-time by Telerik in early 2007. I also started contributing to two additional blogs: Telerik.com Blogs and ASP.NET Weblogs. Needless to say, this blog has adopted a much more casual approach of brining you the latest Telerik and industry news while leaving more in-depth content for other venues.

Is that what you want? I want to know. I'm starting a new poll that will run for the next couple of weeks on the side of this blog asking you to submit your opinion: should Telerik Watch keep on keepin' on or should it start running more in-depth content? With your feedback, we'll build on the success of 2007 and march boldly in to 2008, delivering content you enjoy reading.

Happy birthday Telerik Watch!

The week the blog stood still

Since it's introduction almost over a year ago (can you believe that?!), not a single week has passed where this blog didn't bring you something new. Over 200 posts later with a continually growing audience- thanks as always to you for reading- this blog had it's first week of silence last week. It wasn't to make a point and it certainly wasn't due to a dearth of good news to share. Rather, I was in Redmond, Washington enjoying the annual Visual Studio Integration Partner (or VSIP) Summit and simply didn't have the time I needed to bring you your regularly scheduled, high quality, Telerik Watch posts.

But I am back now and have plenty of news items to share. Much of what we learned at VSIP is under Microsoft NDA, so I'm afraid I can't bring you a lot of news from that event (yet), but there is plenty of fun stuff to share in the meantime. Expect quite a few posts this week as I try to catch-up and bring you back up to speed on the world of Telerik and its surrounding environment. I hope you enjoyed your week off and used the time to catch-up on your "guilty pleasure" RSS feeds- Engadget, Joystiq, you know the ones. As for this blog, it's time to get back to your regularly scheduled content.

.NET Rocks WPF Panel

One of the fun little activities that took place at the recent DevReach conference in Bulgaria was a panel discussion on the current state of WPF. The panel featured Tim Huckaby, Brian Noyes, and yours truly (and the famous .NET Rocks hosts, of course) discussing the merits of WPF, dispelling some of the myths, and clarifying some of the misconceptions about designer tools available for WPF. Tim brought to the table excellent first hand experience using WPF to deliver solutions; Brian brought an incredible depth of technical WPF knowledge; I brought a unique perspective that needs a little introduction.

Ever since joining the "programming world" about 6 years ago, I have been reluctant to mention my "hidden" past as a graphic designer. Yes, that's right. I'm the artist in the room of engineers. For years I did freelance logo design, brand development, and designs for all variety of print projects. I cut my proverbial computer teeth on Corel Draw, Adobe Illustrator/Photoshop, and the Macromedia design products. In fact, in my early hunt for colleges RISD (Rhode Island School of Design or "riz-dee" for the initiated) and similar topped my list of interests.

"What in the world are you doing in programming?!" say you. Glad you asked. I may be an "artist" but I am also thoroughly pragmatic. I had no intention of becoming a "starving artist". With entrepreneurship in my blood, Texas A&M's highly ranked business school replaced my desire to go hang with hippie artists and involvement in the school's Student Council lead me to programming. An ugly (and I mean ugly) ASP application was dropped in my lap one day and I didn't run away. Quite the opposite. The web suddenly became my playground for building things and it gave me a venue to continue to flex my graphic designer muscles.

The rest (as everybody says) is history. I spent much of my own time learning as much as I could about building things for the web- ASP Classic, ASP.NET 1.x, ASP.NET 2, and now about 5,000 different Microsoft platforms. I never left my designer roots, though, so when Microsoft starts touting tools that "designers will love" my ears perk up.

I'll let you uncover my opinions on that marketing message in the .NET Rocks episode. Either way, that's my true background and the source of my unique perspective on this panel. Hopefully you'll enjoy the new point of view.

Silverlight Short Cut giveaway winners

The time has come to announce the two lucky winners of the Silverlight 1.1 Short Cut giveaway. Today our winners will be taking home one fabulous prize...A NEW CAR PDF (so it's not quite as exciting as The Price Is Right). The Silverlight 1.1 Short Cut covers everything you need to know to get up to speed on Silverlight, how 1.0 compares to 1.1, and how to use the tools that are available today for working with this alpha technology. An updated version will also be available soon that corrects a few last minute errors in the copy, so check your O'Reilly downloads page later next week to get the latest version.

And with that, my ability to stall the naming of the winners has run out. The same technique used to select the Learning Guide winners was applied here, so thank the random atmospheric noise if your number doesn't get called. And the winnings numbers are...
Clayton Powell and Asit...come on down. Send an email to todd[dot]anglin[at]telerik.[youKnowWhat] to get your free copies of the Short Cut. Thanks to everybody who took time to play; I promise there will be more fun giveaways in the near future. And don't forget, have your pets spayed or neutered.

Q2 2007 SP1s released

Landing just a few weeks after the original Q2 launch and a day later than planned, the first round of service packs for the Q2 2007 release is now online. Updates have been released for the RadControls for ASP.NET, RadControls "Prometheus", and Reporting; an update for RadControls for WinForms should be available later today. These service packs address a slew of bugs reported across all of the product lines and add a few new features along the way. You can get the complete scoop by reading the release notes for each product:

• RadControls for ASP.NET Release Notes
• RadControls "Prometheus" Release Notes (update coming soon)
• RadControls for WinForms Release Notes (update coming soon)
  
• Telerik Reporting Release Notes
  

Jump over to your Client.net accounts and download the latest bits to get your applications running on the latest Telerik release. There will be one more service pack released for the ASP.NET and WinForms controls before Q3 in December, so keep sending your feedback and we'll do our best to solve any of your issues.

Sitefinity 3.1 released

While a little late out of the gate, Sitefinity 3.1 is now officially available for your consumption. If you've been following along on this blog, then you already know most of what's new in the major Sitefinity update: site search, forums module, new page edit mode, and so on. There are at least 8 new major features by my count, so this should be a no brainer update if you're using Sitefinity 3.0. That said, there are a few issues with some of the new features to watch out for. The release notes clearly identify these issues, so take a quick look over there while you're upgrading to understand what will be fixed in an ensuing service pack.

I know I previously promised some screenshots of the new features, and I still plan to deliver those soon. Travel to DevReach in Bulgaria and VSIP in Redmond is making it difficult to get everything online as fast as I'd like, but the Sitefinity tasks are high on my list. Until then, download your own copy and let us know what you think of the upgrade!