The release of Silverlight 4 Beta has undoubtedly reflected upon the development plans of major providers of components for Silverlight.
We meet Nikolay Atanasov - Silverlight Unit Manager at Telerik - to learn more on what we should expect from Telerik RadControls for Silverlight for Q1'2010, and how Silverlight 4 will affect the development line for the products they offer.
Q. Hi Nikolay. Telerik has recently launched Q3'2009 release of RadControls for Silverlight with 7 new controls added to the current 31. Could you pinpoint the major controls included with this release, and why they are essential for the development of a LOB application.
A. The fact that our suite offers almost 40 LOB enabled controls means that we developed our controls with the sense for providing our users with all the needed tools for building complete LOB applications. Some of the major controls included in the bundle are the GridView, Scheduler, Chart, Docking, TreeView, DragAndDrop, etc.
This last release not only added 7 new controls, bringing the suite to 38 controls in total, but also introduced significant performance optimizations and productivity gains. Among the most interesting highlights are a RibbonBar, TreeListView, OutlookBar, TileView, Book and Map controls, Visual Studio integration package that simplify the Silverlight development in visual Studio, as well as great new features in RadGridView. With RadControls you have all you need to start building a rich line-of-business application.
Q. How does this release help Telerik stay ahead of competitors? What is your advantage, and how do you plan to sustain this advantage over time?
A. Along with the completeness of our Silverilght offering, the outstanding performance and support for all the latest and most innovative features MS provide, we provide high quality support service, thus assisting each our trial or licensed user to achieve the desired results and stay satisfied with them. We realize that the Silverlight platform is a young platform and it is our responsibility to also contribute to building a stronger and advanced community.
What’s more, Telerik is the first vendor to provide native support for Silverlight 4 and support for the right mouse click feature introduced with the latest Microsoft Silverlight release. We ensure that our customers can always use RadControls for Silverlight with the latest Silverlight version.
Q. You already had the chance to get customers feedback on the new functionalities released. Which functionalities are most appreciated by customers, and why?
A. I believe these are always the performance optimizations we offer, especially for RadGridView. Our latest achievement in this direction was the brand new UI Virtualization we included in the GridView control. There is also an increasing interest in our RadMap control that is still in a CTP stage. We have a lot of customers with different needs. Many of our customers appreciate the visual controls our latest offering includes, such as TileView and Outlookbar. We also receive quite positive feedback on our scheduling control – RadScheduler for its resource grouping and customizable views.
Q. What are the most frequent requests by customers on new features/improvements to current ones that they want to see? Which of them will be taken into account for the coming Q1'2010 release of RadControls for Silverlight?
A. These are definitely improved VS 2010 Beta design time support, further improve performance, documentation and themes.
Q. It seems that Telerik's demo applications (like on this page) showcasing the usage of multiple controls really helps users to put all those controls into practice, and learn more both about the technology and new controls like RadControls for Silverlight. Do you plan to continue building such applications in the future?
A. We certainly do. In the forthcoming months we will focus on building real life LOB applications using Prism, MVVM patterns and of course showcase these apps to guide our users in how to easily achieve the desired results with our RadControls. In the end of the day it is all about rapid application development.
Q. How will Silverlight 4 Beta release affect Telerik's Silverlight development plans for Q1'2010?
A. I am really proud to announce that we already launched our early CTP build of RadControls for Silverlight 4. We are committed to continue strictly following MS release schedule and release builds against the latest Silverlight version.
Q. Silverlight 4-related articles on SilverlightShow get a lot of attention, and feedback. What are your thoughts about this latest Silverlight release? What would you name as critical improvements?
A. These definitely are the new HTML Brush and Right-Click event allowing us to handle right-click in a not windowless mode.
Q. What functionality is still missing from Silverlight 4 but is critical for the development of a reliable and full-fledged business application?
A. I believe that Silverlight 4 provides all the needed features allowing the developers to build fully featured and complete LOB applications.
Q. What would you wish yourself for this New Year?
A. Health and Good Luck
Nikolay - thanks a lot for this interview! We'll stay in touch and keep our community up-to-date with latest Silverlight developments from Telerik. The team at SilverlightShow wish you and the whole team at Telerik a happy and most successful New Year 2010!