Telerik Sitefinity 5.1 Adds Native Support for ASP.NET MVC

New Release Offers Enhanced Tools for Developer Productivity, Plus Radically Redesigned Email Campaign Management for Marketers.

Telerik, an end-to-end provider of software application, lifecycle and content management solutions, today announced several key enhancements to its award-winning ASP.NET Content Management System (CMS), Sitefinity. These include full ASP.NET MVC and Razor support, as well as a redesigned email campaign management tool, continuing Telerik’s commitment to deliver the most advanced Web content management platform to developers, marketing end-users and IT managers, while maintaining an extreme focus on usability and productivity.

Native Support for ASP.NET MVC
In order to accommodate evolving trends in web development, the Sitefinity 5.1 release adds native support for the ASP.NET MVC web application framework, together with its Razor rendering engine. This framework mandates the separation of the three building blocks of an application – presentation (View), logic (Controller) and data (Model) – ensuring clean separation of concerns between application layers, making it easier for developers to organize and manage their apps.

ASP.NET MVC enables developers to completely control the markup of web pages, as the abstractions provided by the Control class are gone. With the explosion in popularity of JavaScript, client-side frameworks and AJAX, this developer control is increasingly critical.

With this release, Sitefinity also becomes the first CMS to let developers switch freely between Web Forms and MVC. Each Sitefinity page and template has 3 modes: Web Forms, MVC and hybrid mode - where MVC controllers and Web Forms controls can exist on the same page. These techniques can be mixed-and-matched within a single Sitefinity project, enabling existing projects to be gradually transitioned to MVC if desired.

Enhanced Tools to Increase Developer Productivity
The Sitefinity 5.1 release includes enhancements to Sitefinity Thunder, its Visual Studio plug-in that increases developer productivity. Using Sitefinity Thunder, developers can now work directly with their Sitefinity website through Visual Studio, enabling them to stay in the tool where they work, and centrally manage connections to all of their projects in one place.

With Sitefinity 5.1, developers can directly access and modify their website’s widget templates and, because these templates contain full IntelliSense-support, developers can spend more time coding and less time reading documentation. Furthermore, developers can fast-track their Sitefinity development by utilizing templates for widgets, widget designers, field controls, layouts and themes. This simplifies the process for developers to create a suite of Sitefinity extensions and then re-use these extensions in multiple projects.

Redesigned Email Campaign Management
The 5.1 release also adds a radically redesigned email Campaign Management Tool to help businesses meet their marketing objectives. The email tool enables marketers to effortlessly launch new email campaigns, then track the effectiveness of the campaign through detailed analytics. Each message can be personalized and then refined through sophisticated A/B testing. Furthermore, because these features are fully integrated into Sitefinity, companies can create effective email marketing that blends seamlessly with their other online marketing efforts.

Telerik Adds Tablet Support to Kendo UI HTML5, JavaScript Tool

Telerik announced that its Kendo UI framework for building HTML5 and JavaScript mobile apps and sites now supports both tablet app development and server-side ASP.NET MVC development.

Telerik, a maker of application development software, has announced a major update of its Kendo UI, a unified framework for building HTML5 and JavaScript mobile apps and sites.

This release includes a set of controls and widgets for creating rich iPad user interfaces, as well as the first in a series of server-side wrappers to enable developers to incorporate and configure Kendo UI via familiar server-side programming.

On July 11, Telerik announced Kendo UI Complete, a collection of Web, DataViz and management tools for professional software developers.

In an attempt to avoid fragmentation, more developers are focusing on Web standards such as HTML5 and JavaScript to build software that can run anywhere and reach the largest possible audience. Kendo UI’s unified framework incorporates adaptive rendering capabilities and leverages the latest in CSS3, HTML5 and JavaScript Web standards to automatically adapt a mobile app’s native look-and-feel on any smartphone and tablet device, while delivering broad support for all major browsers.

“With this release, Kendo UI moves beyond mobile phones to help developers create experiences with HTML5 that look native on the iPad and other tablets,” Todd Anglin, vice president of HTML5 Web and Mobile Tools at Telerik, said in a statement. “In addition, we’ve added important updates across the Kendo UI framework, including the first in a series of server-side wrappers that further equip developers to quickly and cost effectively create advanced apps and mobile sites with HTML5 and JavaScript.”

According to IDC, more than 107 million tablets will ship this year, with nearly two-thirds of those expected to be iPads. By adding iPad-specific widgets to Kendo UI Mobile, the company provides developers with a streamlined way to build native-like apps leveraging HTML5 for the market’s No. 1 tablet.

HTML5 is quickly becoming the dominant cross-platform runtime, with ABI Research forecasting the installed base for mobile devices with HTML5 to grow from approximately 500 million in 2011, to more than 2.1 billion in 2016. Gartner further forecasts that worldwide tablet sales will grow by 98 percent in 2012 to 119 million units.

Kendo UI Mobile already helps developers build HTML5 or JavaScript apps that automatically transform to the native look-and-feel of iOS, Android and BlackBerry. With this update, developers can use Kendo Mobile UI’s adaptive rendering to target multiple phone and tablet platforms with a single UI code base, thus eliminating the traditional challenges that developers face of manually researching and then combining all the plug-ins and frameworks and libraries needed to build mobile apps.

This new release also adds server-side helpers for ASP.NET MVC, enabling developers to incorporate and configure Kendo UI via familiar server-side programming, while still producing apps that benefit from the client-side power of Kendo UI and HTML5. While Kendo UI works with any server-side technology, some developers are less comfortable in JavaScript and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), but feel very capable when working inside a server-side language. These wrappers ensure that developers who prefer to build apps from their own server-side language can do so quickly.

Moreover, developers using the new ASP.NET MVC wrappers can take full advantage of server-side framework features and coding conveniences, while targeting both desktop and mobile devices using the cross-platform power of modern HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript. Kendo UI Complete for ASP.NET MVC is the first of what the company plans to be a collection of server-side helpers for different platforms, including Java and PHP, all designed to maximize developer productivity with HTML5.

In addition to the new iPad widgets and server wrappers, there are updates across the entire Kendo UI framework, including new and improved widgets and charts in Kendo UI Web and DataViz, enabling the presentation of rich, touch-aware visual information on any browser and any device.

There are new Popover and Split View controls, as well as Action Sheet and Modal View widgets for Kendo UI Mobile. Telerik added new Donut (or torus) and Bubble chart types, as well as date axis support and additional arrow types for the Radial Gauge in Kendo UI DataViz. And the company added a combined DateTimePicker widget, column reordering and resizing on the Grid, and support for hierarchical and relational data in the DataSource for Kendo UI Web.

Q2 release for Developer Tools annouces by Telerik

Portfolio of Developer Tools Deliver Broad Array of Enhancements for Mobile, Rich Data Visualization and Interactivity

Telerik, an end-to-end provider of software application lifecycle and content management solutions, today announced the immediate availability of the Q2 2012 release of its developer tools. This latest release from Telerik addresses developers' requirements around mobile, cloud, and the imminent arrival of the touch-driven Metro interface. Telerik's Q2 release is packed with enhancements facilitating web, desktop, mobile and cloud development, adds new data visualization controls for richer interactivity and sleeker visual data effects, as well as the first cloud-enabled flagship Visual Studio productivity tool.

Highlights of the release include:

ASP.NET AJAX

Raising the bar on its RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX, Telerik is shipping three controls, including the eagerly anticipated HTML5 Chart that introduces a new level of data visualizations to developers' applications. Also new are RadODataDataSource, helping developers readily bind controls to OData services, and RadBarCode, enabling them to easily add industry standard barcode formats to their apps. To deliver users a better experience with apps built using Telerik's controls on mobile devices, the company will also ship a new specifically designed mobile skin that features touch-friendly improvements, such as font size and larger clickable areas for elements.

JustCode

Telerik breaks new ground to lead the industry by being the first and only vendor to cloud-enable its Visual Studio extension, JustCode. With this release, developers can simply save their JustCode settings in the cloud. Users can easily access and work with their customized settings from multiple machines or Visual Studio instances. In addition, helping developers stay even more efficient, a nifty "Clean All" feature will instantly organize, label and file everything in production quality files.

Telerik Report Designer

Graduating from beta to final release, the new Telerik Report Designer is a stand-alone Windows application that allows both end-users and developers to create, edit, export, and reuse ad-hoc reports on-the-fly. This tool empowers users to proactively analyze data using a friendly, timesaving report interface.

RadControls for Metro

Announced last week, Telerik is conducting an exclusive preview of industry- first commercial suite for building Windows 8 apps, RadControls for Metro, for attendees of Microsoft's TechEd 2012. The forthcoming toolset will provide key functionality on top of Windows 8 SDK. Interested developers can subscribe to the company's Windows 8 Dev Club or TechEd attendees can visit Telerik's booth (#1841) to obtain a special promo code in order to gain early access to the product.

XAML

Telerik's XAML suites are now more powerful than ever. Rich data visualization takes on new meaning with the official release of RadDiagrams, the beta release of RadGanttView, and the new RadHeatMap. RadDiagrams is a powerful, extensible diagramming framework that enables XAML developers to create a multitude of rich, interactive scenarios within their line-of-business applications. With RadGanttView, developers can import data from Microsoft Project to both visualize as well as manage data in their XAML applications. RadHeatMap is a matrix-like control that broadens data visualization capabilities by using color to encode values along two axes.

Windows Phone

RadControls for Windows Phone suite introduces more than 20 design Metro templates, including page and content templates, saving developers a significant amount of time. A Visual Studio wizard now assists developers in configuring an app's entire infrastructure, allowing them to focus solely on creating the app's core content. Other new features are: Pull to Refresh and Conversation View.

JustDecompile

With this release, JustDecompile unites with Reflexil, the popular open source Assembly Editor plug-in. Now, .NET assemblies loaded in JustDecompile can be directly manipulated, further expanding the power of Telerik's free decompiler for everyone.

TeamPulse

The company's agile project management solution, TeamPulse, introduces time tracking module aimed at teams looking for a simple, frictionless way to record project time. Users can log billable or non-billable time against tasks, user stories, and bugs or against generic tasks like meetings or support. TeamPulse Time Tracking also comes with a public API that allows integration with other systems.

Windows Forms

RadControls for WinForms features a brand new ChartView control that facilitates data visualization, achieving stunning visual effects. Telerik's suite for WinForms is also the first to introduce AutoCompleteBox, a highly-requested, tokenized control that brings to end-users the ability to easily fill-in tokens of text within a textbox, while benefitting from the built-in, auto-complete functionality.

Telerik OpenAccess ORM

Telerik's enterprise-grade ORM for .NET introduces a new Web Services Wizard. This new tool is capable of easily exposing the application data to client applications using various web services, yet without having developers write a single line of code

Q2 Webinar Week

Telerik's upcoming Q2 Webinar week is a 6-day event, packed with hour-long webinar sessions on the coolest new features shipping with the Q2 2012 release for each product. Release Webinar Week will be held from June 18-26. For the first time, Telerik will host an introductory webinar that provides an overview of the entire Telerik tool-box and caters specifically to people who are not already clients.