We live in a world of constant motion. Ideas, aided by the
Internet revolution, rapidly transform from concept to reality and drive the
wheels of progress forward. Stand still for too long and you’re outdated, dull,
and losing to a new competitor that is riding the “2.0” wave. Nowhere is this
reality clearer than in web development, where the oft hyped “Web 2.0” has
become the mythical measuring stick by which all websites are deemed hot or
not. If your website isn’t deemed “Web 2.0,” it’s already considered old
fashioned.
Catching the “Web 2.0” wave, though, isn’t always easy. Most
UI components claim they can help you find your “Web 2.0” Zen, but few actually
deliver on those promises. They entice you with “Ajax-enabled controls” and
components that do everything under the sun, but as you begin to examine the
controls you find they force you to use “heavy” Ajax callbacks and proprietary-
often inconsistent- APIs.
How can you build “Web 2.0” sites with
“Web 1.0” UI
components? You can’t.
To build truly next generation websites, you need UI
components that give you the power and flexibility to harness the speed of Ajax
and rich experience of client-side programming- all without requiring you to
write any JavaScript. Telerik is delivering the UI component suite that meets
all of these requirements with its next generation RadControls for ASP.NET
AJAX.
Built for
the future of ASP.NET
Over a year ago, Microsoft released the “official” Ajax framework for
ASP.NET with the ASP.NET AJAX Extensions for ASP.NET. The new cross-browser
Ajax and client-side programming library finally provides ASP.NET developers
with a Microsoft designed and supported framework that they can depend on to
implement projects of all sizes.
Telerik recognized early in ASP.NET AJAX’s development that
it represented the future of ASP.NET development. Not only does the new
framework standardize the API for Ajax programming in .NET, it also provides a
radically simplified way to write client-side code. By integrating the ASP.NET
AJAX core in to UI components, Telerik realized that it could deliver client
features and performance previously very difficult to achieve.
Telerik’s new RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX, formerly
RadControls for ASP.NET “Prometheus”, is the culmination of over a year’s worth
of work to build the most comprehensive ASP.NET UI suite directly on
Microsoft’s ASP.NET AJAX. The suite delivers incredible performance gains over
previous Telerik UI suites for ASP.NET and it adds many new controls to
developers’ ASP.NET toolboxes.
Among the new controls and features in the RadControls for
ASP.NET AJAX are:
RadScheduler: By combining the proven usability of
Outlook® with the innovative input mechanisms of Google Calendars in a flexible
and easy to configure component, RadScheduler makes it easy to add a rich
scheduling UI to any ASP.NET application.
RadAjax for ASP.NET AJAX: Building on the simplicity of
Telerik’s RadAjax for “classic” ASP.NET, RadAjax for ASP.NET AJAX gives you the
tools you need to quickly and effortlessly add ASP.NET AJAX to your website.
Stop wasting time with UpdatePanels and Triggers and let RadAjax do all of the
ASP.NET AJAX configuration for you.
Rendering on the client: Many of the components in the
RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX suite are now capable of rendering on the client.
That means the controls can use JavaScript to render their UI in the browser,
reducing trips to the server and speeding-up your application’s performance.
Ajax on a
diet
Most UI components that provide out of the box Ajax support, including
Telerik’s “classic” ASP.NET UI components, do not enable you to realize the
maximum performance Ajax can provide. That’s because most ASP.NET Ajax
frameworks, even ASP.NET AJAX by default, execute the full ASP.NET page
lifecycle with every asynchronous Ajax callback. While that makes the
transition from PostBack to Ajax programming easy, it also negatively impacts
the efficiency of Ajax callbacks because “heavy” data fields like ViewState
travel back and forth with every async request.
To truly get the most of out of Ajax, you need to execute
asynchronous calls that are devoid of ViewState data and that don’t labor
through the entire ASP.NET page lifecycle. The solution is Ajax calls to web
services. Even though the solution is obvious, it is often avoided because it
normally requires a lot of tricky JavaScript programming to initiate the web
service call, parse the returned JSON data, and then update the page.
High-speed Ajax is easy with the
RadControls for ASP.NET
AJAX
Telerik’s new RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX make the process
of using “high-speed Ajax” as easy as setting a couple of properties. By
telling controls like RadMenu and RadTreeview where your web service is located
and the name of the method to call, the controls will automatically bind to
your web service and begin delivering incredibly high performance Ajax
operations. No JavaScript required. No ViewState sent back and forth. Just
efficient, compact, optimized Ajax updates.
Performance.
Performance. Performance.
All of the features in the world can’t make-up for ASP.NET UI
components that perform slowly. In fact, components that deliver “all of the
features in the world” are usually the worst performers. Telerik has changed
that equation with the RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX by leveraging innovative
new load-as-needed script resource handlers and optimizing client-side and
server-side code. Telerik’s RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX deliver some of the
highest performing controls for ASP.NET without sacrificing the features you
need to be productive.
For example, the new RadEditor
for ASP.NET AJAX loads up to 4 times faster than the previous non-ASP.NET AJAX
versions. That means you can deliver the industry leading WYSIWYG browser-based
editor without taking a hit in your page’s performance metrics. Meanwhile,
RadGrid will soon receive a brand new data binding engine in ASP.NET AJAX that
effortlessly handles sorting, filtering, and paging hundreds of thousands of
records in mere milliseconds. In side-by-side performance comparisons to other
leading ASP.NET grids, Telerik’s new RadGrid for ASP.NET AJAX performs at the
top.
Finally, new utility controls like RadScriptManager and
RadStyleSheetManager maximize your page optimization by combining all
RadControl script files and stylesheets in to single link references on your
page.
Keep it
clean
One area where Telerik continues to lead the industry with its RadControls for
ASP.NET AJAX is clean, semantic HTML rendering. This has long been a staple of
Telerik’s ASP.NET controls and the dedication to light weight, standards
compliant HTML rendering continues with the new controls. Many UI components
for ASP.NET make excessive use of tables and inline styles when they render,
producing bulky HTML that slows down your page. Telerik’s controls, on the
other hand, use the least amount of HTML possible when rendered and rely on
modern, cacheable CSS style sheets to provide control styling.
Don’t
Compromise
If you’re tired of working with UI component suites for ASP.NET that get in
your way, perform slowly, and don’t provide you with all of the tools you need
for your applications, a clear solution to your problems has arrived. With the
RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX, you can create high performance ASP.NET
applications with rich user interfaces that pass today’s “Web 2.0” standards.
From rich scheduling components to simple color pickers to innovative Ajax
management components, Telerik’s RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX has everything
you need to make your next project a success.
