Overview:

In this post, we will quickly look at the factors that will compel you to consider Telerik RadControls as the framework for all your User Interface layers in your projects. So buckle up and let’s go for a ride with Telerik RadControls.

RadControls Defined:

Rad or RAD – stands for Rapid Application Development and RadControls are nothing but controls which help you in Rapid Application Development. Telerik offers over 10 years of aggressive development which includes a set course of 3 releases per year & the Service Packs, has been able to come out with industry leading UI component suite for Microsoft ASP.NET technology which includes AJAX, MVC and Silverlight. There are nearly 175+ controls under the combined umbrella of   AJAX, MVC and Silverlight. The controls themselves, enhance the framework provided controls with a lot of out of the box features. For e.g. If you consider the RadGridView we complement the framework Grid with features such as Filtering, Grouping, Sorting, Paging and export capability. Imagine if you had the onus of writing the paging and export all by yourself. I have been a programmer for close to a decade and I would say it will be like reinventing the wheel. So, with RadControls you just have to worry about your business need and the control complements your requirement with out of the box features.

RadControls Decision Factors:

Having known about RadControls and what they are, next question will be – Why should you choose RadControls? Lets quickly run through some of the check list before you decide:

• You want to develop a professional web application.
• You want to deliver your application fast to the Client/Market.
• You want to build apps which adhere to certain standards like Accessibility standards.
• You want to meet your deadlines and budgets.
• You want to cut down your development cost and development time.
• You want to rapidly provide custom software for ever changing needs of clients.
• You want to quickly create working prototypes.

If you have answered Yes to the above checklist – then – RadControls is what you need. RadControls will help you to achieve all of the above mentioned points in the check list. So I highly recommend you to download a trial and test drive the following RadControls:

• RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX
• RadControls for MVC
• RadControls for Silverlight

RadControls and Developers:

Developer friendliness is one of the important factors for any UI component vendor. Keeping the developers in mind helps Telerik adopt the highest degree of friendliness when it comes to the UI controls. There are three main factors which we think makes a developers life easy when working with our RadControls. They are:

• Visual Studio Integration – All our suites extend Visual Studio by integrating seamlessly with the Visual Studio toolbox. This allows developers to use the controls quickly by simply dragging and dropping on the working area. Currently we have support for Visual Studio 2012 as well.

• Design Time Wizards – When working with the controls in design time, RadControls provide wizard interfaces on all controls to easily configure the features you need.

• Familiarity – Whole of the RadControls framework mirrors the Microsoft .NET framework. So as a developer if you understand the .NET framework, RadControls is no different. So the learning curve is very minimal and you will be able to get on with it in a jiffy.

RadControls and Themes:

One of the deciding factors we looked at earlier was that of developing a professional looking web application. What we needed to make our application look like a professional app is style sheets. Be it Web app or Silverlight app, styles play a pivotal role in the look and feel of any User Interface. Most of the developers are not designers – which includes me too :). So the RadControls suite comes to the rescue by way of packaging what we call as Themes i.e. a complete style sheet which adheres to one common color scheme across the controls. The Telerik RadControls suite comes bundled with close to 25+ themes under the combined umbrella of ASP.NET AJAX, MVC and Silverlight. So out of the box we ship 25+ themes to use in your production level application. If that is not enough you can always create your own theme and embed the same in your application. ASP.NET AJAX and MVC suites provide a Visual Theme Builder which can be used to create your custom themes. Here are the links for Visual Theme Builder:

• ASP.NET AJAX Visual Theme Builder
• ASP.NET MVC Visual Theme Builder

Summary:

Telerik RadControls for Web provides a lot of benefit to enterprises in not only speeding up the development life-cycle but also cuts down on the cost and time of development. It also is developer friendly with seamless Visual Studio integration and design time wizard to help code faster. As said in the previous sections, there are nearly 175+ controls to play around in the area of AJAX, MVC and Silverlight. If that doesn’t excite you then I don’t know what will :). Download the 30 day trial we have and give it a try. I bet you will fall in love with the RadControls.

Till next time – Happy Coding !!!