Template Basics

JustCode templates are much like Visual Studio code snippets. They give you a chance to seamlessly generate a piece of code following a predefined structure. In the general case you just have to pick up the real content, i.e. the stuff that actually defines the logic of the code, from a set of possible choices that JustCode computes for you. All the boilerplate code is automatically generated for you.

For example, here is how the C# built-in foreach code template  normally works out:

Step 1 – Expand the template

Step 2 – Choose a collection variable to iterate over

 

Notice how the type of e automatically changes from string to int

 

Step 3 - Choose or type in  a name for the variable foreach loop declares

 

We type in a more descriptive name and get:

 

Step 4 – Accept the template

That is what you get as a ...

The next interesting part of building a Windows Phone 7 DatePicker control is the Date ListBox. That is a ListBox which should meet the following requirements:

• Can display in a human readable manner one of the three Date components: Day, Month and Year
• Should be “Infinite” – as discussed in my previous post.
• Should use data virtualization (to be most efficient).

As you can see our “Infinite ListBox” project now comes in hand. The last two of the upper requirements are already implemented and all we need to do is to implement a special VirtualizedDataItem<DateTime> that provides the needed information to bind to. For a convenience I have built a parallel hierarchy of Data Sources and List Boxes:

• Base abstract DateListBox and DateDataSource.
• DayListBox + DayDataSource.
• MonthListBox + MonthDataSource. 
• YearListBox + YearDataSource

Here is how our special data item looks like:

public class DateItem : VirtualizedDataItem<DateTime> {     private...

Have you heard the good news? Microsoft has just released a SL 4 update addressing some reported issues. Check Tim Heuer’s blog for details.

This update is really important in regards to the Popups/ChildWindow automation. Until now the Telerik Automated Testing Tools required to track your popups manually which was inconvenient for some customers. With the latest official release of the product though and the new SL4 update this is no longer needed. Just upgrade the SL4 runtime on your machine and start automating those popups!

 

Enjoy!

-Konstantin

It is a great pleasure for me to share an exciting news with you. As of today we are opening the source code of Bookvar mind mapping tool. You can find the source on Codeplex right next to other open source initiatives of ours, like Telerik MVC Extensions and CAB Enabling Kit for WinForms.

A few caveats about the source code

There are a few things that you need to know about the source code:

• Most of the code was written when we were quite new to WPF and we were pioneering all those concepts. Looking back at that time I realize there are things that we would have definitely done better if we had the knowledge we have today.
• MAF is used instead of MEF. MEF was not available back in the time, but we would like to see the add-in model based on MEF.
• WF ...

As you may already know we officially released the Telerik Extensions for ASP.NET MVC Q2 2010. In addition to all the new features with this new release we shipped the Telerik MVC Visual Studio Extensions. With the aid of the VS Extensions you will find it really easy to create new Telerik MVC project, convert an existing project to a Telerik one, configure and upgrade your project to a newer version of the Telerik Extensions for ASP.NET MVC. With the release of MVC VS Extensions the VSXTeam@Telerik achieved one bigger goal – we now support VS Extensions for all Telerik UI Components! This in turn means that users benefit the same user experience when they integrate our UI components into their projects :).

I will now give you some more details on how to use the VS Extensions and what they can do for you.

Create New Project

Let’s ...

The Q3 2010 roadmaps for the Telerik ASP.NET AJAX and MVC product lines have just been baked and served to you (fresh out of the oven, as an old saying goes).

Straight to the exciting news:
There will be two long-anticipated new controls added to the AJAX suite - treelist and button - as well as several major new features/enhancements for the AsyncUpload, Calendar, Editor, Grid, Scheduler, Spell and Rotator components. We will also invest some time in improving the mobile browsers support of the AJAX controls. The idea is to dispense better user experience when you browse your sites (developed with our AJAX components) using mobile devices.

As for the MVC Q3 plans - we will be delivering two new extensions (time picker and datetime picker), several major features for the grid extension and better accessibility compliance (in conformance with the section 508 and WCAG Level A accessibility standards). ...

Have you ever spent a large amount of time designing a Telerik Report only to discover that its output is not entirely what you expected? This is the type of problem that can occur if you don't have a full understanding of the Report Life Cycle. The Report Life Cycle defines what happens and when it happens in Telerik Reporting. Understanding the Life Cycle is crucial to effectively using Telerik Reporting, which is why we plan on spending some time explaining it in detail today.

The diagram in Figure 1 provides a high level overview of the sequence of events from creating a report in the Visual Studio designer to having the final completed document. I am going to break down each of these steps and explain them in more detail below.
 

Figure 1: Report Life Cycle

 

Creating the Report Definition (Report Designer to Report Class)

The Report Life Cycle begins ...

One of the coolest things in every new developer platform is the challenge to master the entire framework in a way that enables you to create high quality, greatly optimized controls that behave in exactly the same way a user would expect to. Yesterday Microsoft announced that more than 300 000 developers have already downloaded the WP7 Developer Tools Beta. Based entirely on Silverlight, phone development has never been easier and more fun than in the Windows Phone 7 environment.

With these series of blogs I want to reveal some tricky moments in developing a simple DatePicker control for WP7. The control should mimic the one described in the public Design Guidelines:

At first sight the control should be pretty easy to implement. We have a line of three buttons aligned vertically; when a button is clicked, we display a ListBox which allows a specific date component (Day, ...

For everyone interested in our UI test automation products we’ve just uploaded the new Q2 Service Pack release. This latest official update does not only include bug fixes but it also introduces a number of improvements and some useful features. I’d like to draw your attention to the enhancements in the following areas:

- Silverlight – more updates in the recording and execution scenarios are introduced. We add support for ToolTips in Silverlight (via the ToolTipText FrameworkElement property and built-in translators verification) as well as PopupTracker updates.

- Test logs, Test as Step scenarios, test data-binding improvements in execution.

- Improved Dialog handling support.

- Various UI updates for the QA Edition.

- Updates in the RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX and Silverlight wrappers and translators.

In addition to all the above there is an important update I’d like to mention concerning the project element generation within the Developer Edition. In ...

Yesterday we saw all the plumbing involved to lay a groundwork for RadUpload being used to add files to applicants. Today we actually dive into the code for getting RadUpload working in the MVVM application.

The first step in this is deciding where to add the ability to upload files. Doing this within the main Applicants grid is nice (since we're already using the RowDetails presenter), but that'll clutter up the UI there as I want to switch that into a quick and easy overview of each applicant. So instead we're modifying the AddEditApplicantView to make it tab-based, providing one tab for the regular information and the other for handling the file uploads (and project rating, since we do have a RadRating control now!). I'll spare you the markup, but here is the new UI:

Do you see the RadUpload instances? Neither do I, that's because they have Visibility set ...

Yesterday and today we shipped the official Telerik Extensions for ASP.NET MVC Q2 2010 and RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX Q2 2010 SP1 releases. My colleague Atanas highlighted the new hot extensions and features added to the Telerik MVC components family in this blog post, so I will leave him the glory and the applause :) The fixes and minor enhancements in the AJAX suite can be found in the release notes here. You may also be interested in reviewing the updated versions of the AJAX demos and documentation at the usual locations.

Stand by for the Q3 2010 Roadmaps for both product lines which will most probably be published by the end of the next week. We have more new and existing stuff for you that is already cooking in the Telerik labs...

One of the enhancements that the HR team has been asking for since I first launched this is the ability to attach some of the files that applicants send to the applicants once they are entered into the system.  This way, when looking through applicants anyone can easily view their resume, cover letter, or project (yes, sometimes there are projects!) as well as add a rating value to the project.  Seeing as we have a RadUpload control for Silverlight, I figured this would be a great opportunity to get that running in the application, especially since we have the new RadUploadDropPanel that makes it even easier to get files uploaded in your applications.

Since it always provides for the most *interesting* approach to things, we're first going to implement this in the MVVM version of the application and then we'll move over to the regular code-behind/event driven version for comparison ...

In case you've missed it, the Q3 2010 Telerik Reporting Roadmap has been posted on our site.

Although seemingly short, our plans are quite exciting, because we are to extend the report interactivity we introduced in Q2 2010 with Drill-down (expand/collapse) and Sorting for our crosstab, table, and list report items. In addition, we have started working on a XML Report Serialization Engine which will allow report definitions to be represented in XML and saved as a stand-alone XML file.

Finally, an important note: in Q3 2010 the Silverlight Report Viewer will be build against Silverlight 4 only. The reason is simple: the Silverlight Report Viewer utilizes our RadControls for Silverlight controls and themes, which in Q3 2010 will provide SL4 support only. This is an important change because you will need to use Visual Studio 2010 only in order to use the new Silverlight Report Viewer.

This begs the question whether the SL report viewer ...

 

This week we release a service pack for JustCode Q2 2010. You can get the full details about the release here, but I wanted to point out a few highlights that might be of interest.

New auto-updating functionality

This service pack improves the current auto-updating functionality with the addition of one new option. By now you could get notifications only when a new official release or service pack was available. With this new option you will get notified for available internal builds as well.

By default it is on, but if prefer to stick only to the official released versions you can switch it off from – JustCode Menu | Options | General | Include internal builds when checking for updates

Visual Aid improvements

In Q2 release we introduced the so called Visual aid feature that allows you to access available JustCode commands easier using your mouse. After gathering ...

It’s a fact! The highly anticipated Q2 2010 release has just been pushed. As usual the online demos are at http://demos.telerik.com/aspnet-mvc. You can check your Telerik accounts for the download links.

What’s new

I’ve highlighted the new features and components in a previous blog post. Here are the things which have changed since then:

• Lots of new features for the editor:
• font name and size
• background and foreground color
• block formatting (paragraph, headings etc)
• smart indent and outdent
• predefined styles
• HTML snippets
• support for custom tools
• localization support
• Razor support – we may have to update it once the guys from Microsoft advance with the development…
• Fixes and performances optimizations. We have fixed all bugs reported for the beta.

 

There is one breaking change from the beta. This:

<%= Html.Telerik().Grid(Model)
        .Name("Grid")
        .Columns((IEnumerable<GridColumnSettings>)ViewData["Columns"])
%

should now be:

<%= Html.Telerik().Grid(Model)
        .Name("Grid")
        .Columns(columns => ...

This post starts with a basic introduction of F# and finally ends up writing a simple unit test for an F# member. For those who don’t know what F# is all about, Its a product from Microsoft research and now part of VS 2010 family. Actually from Wikipedia it is described as follows:

F# (pronounced F Sharp) is a multi-paradigm programming language, targeting the .NET Framework, that encompasses functional programming as well as imperative object-oriented programming disciplines. It is a variant of ML and is largely compatible with the OCaml implementation. F# was initially developed by Don Syme at Microsoft Research but is now being developed at Microsoft Developer Division and is being distributed as a fully supported language in the .NET Framework and Visual Studio as part of Visual Studio 2010.

Now, let’s first start by creating an F# project using the built in VS template:

 

Once you ...

After the success Telerik pulled off at this year’s StarEast conference where our automated testing tools were officially introduced, now we are getting ready to attend and sponsor this fall’s premier software testing conference – StarWest, which will take place in San Diego, September 26 –October 1. The event is a great way to get a glimpse of the newest technologies and tools on the market, while networking with industry experts and QA peers.

Make sure to stop by our booth #9-10 in the Sapphire “A” Ballroom to chat with the Telerik crew and learn all the cool new features WebUI Test Studio will add with the next major product release that’s coming up in mid-November.

Being a Platinum sponsor, Telerik is giving away coupons for $400 off the event’s registration fee. Email us and register prior to August 27 to take advantage of yours!

Few days after our blog post about the autocomplete feature, we are now ready to unveil the mystery about two other features we asked you to guess.

The first feature presents the new sorting functionality that we have added. Feel free to sort your search results by both Relevance and Date to get a better match of what you need to find on our website.
The second feature we implemented shows a box at the bottom of every results page on our sites, where we have provided you with related searches. The suggestions are optimized so that the topmost is the most relevant and frequently met against the results. This way, you can narrow your search much easier and quite faster.
We hope you enjoy the new features – your feedback is kindly appreciated. Stay tuned for our next search improvement announcement.

Hey everyone!

Taking a quick break from the updates to the HR Recruiting application to share some information on the Telerik Eastern Canada User Group Tour that is coming up in September.  What is the TECUGT (wow, that is one pretty acronym), you might be asking?  Well, to put it simply...

So not only do you have the opportunity to pick up your RadControls for Silverlight from any stop in TechDays Canada, but I'm also going to be making two trips to eastern Canada in September to present some fresh new Silverlight talks to a user group (hopefully) near you.  So if you're in the Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa, or Toronto areas between September 7th and 15th, your local .Net user group will have a Silverlight presentation that will both educate and entertain.

Dates and groups are as follows:

Tuesday, September 7th - Quebec City .Net User Group

Wednesday, September ...

We uploaded a brand new sample application developed by our senior evangelist Evan Hutnick.

“The Telerik Legal Dashboard demo application was built utilizing real requirements from our customers in order to provide a rich and interactive data display.  This application provides both a managerial view, in which you can slice and dice data with RadDataFilter and get instant results in both RadGridView and RadChart, as well as an executive overview with a dropdown to select pre-defined dashboard views to provide quick access to information with a rich display” says Evan.

You can view the demo at:
http://demos.telerik.com/silverlight/legaldashboard/

It is also included in the Tools and Demos section of the RadControls for Silverlight Online Demos.

The Source Code is available for download at:
http://www.telerik.com/account/free-trials/trial-product-versions/single-trial.aspx?pmvid=2267&pid=0