On Aug 8 we conducted a webinar “Modern UI in ASP.NET Applications using RadTileList”. This is part of the ongoing webinar series we here at Telerik India are doing targeting the APAC region. We call this the Telerik .NET Ninja Developer Webinar series. You can take a look at the Jun-Jul schedule here: https://telerikhelper.net/2013/05/24/telerik-webcasts-june-july/.

About RadTileList:

Build modern, Windows-8-like navigation easier and faster. With its first version the TileList control supports out of the box:

• Single and multiple selection
• 4 tile types: image, text, image and text, and template tiles
• Peek templates and animations
• Drag to reorder
• Tile groups and more

Slide Deck:

Here is the slide deck from the webinar:

Webinar Video:

Here is the recorded video of the webinar:

Questions & Answers:

As with all the webinars, we too had a bunch of questions in this webinar too. We answered a few and we couldn’t answer many of them. So we will try to answer as much questions as possible here:

Q: Any size restriction for the Image and Text tile?
A: The tiles are of 2 types – – Wide and Square. Wide tiles have a dimension of 350x150px and Square tiles are of 150x150px dimension.

Q: we can use any type of image?
A: Yes. Any image types can be used in the Image tiles.

Q: Difference between ContentTemplate and Text Tile?
A: You can take a look at the Tiles overview here: http://www.telerik.com/help/aspnet-ajax/tilelist-tiles-overview.html

Q: Image and Text Tile, title will always be at bottom or we can arrange the position?
A: The Title is always at the bottom. You cannot customize that.

Q: Can we format text in the image and text tile control?
A: Yes. The content text of the tiles can be customized.

Q: Can the badge be mapped to any other page say a link?
A: No. The linking is on the tile itself. The Modern UI philosophy is all about using the Tiles as a navigational item. The Badge is used as a additional information display.

Q: Whether Tile can be customized to various size?
A: No. The tiles come in two dimension: Wide – 350x150px and Square – 150x150px.

Q: Can these tiles be resized?
A: No. They come in standard dimension as per the Modern UI guidelines – Wide and Square.

Q: can we use effects the way tile appears?
A: Yes. We have the concept of Peek Templates. Peek Templates have settings which control how the template should appear. You can find more info here: http://www.telerik.com/help/aspnet-ajax/tilelist-tiles-peek-template.html

Q: what all languages you support in RAD?
A: C# and VB.NET

Q: We have Telerik license for developers. Do we need to install it on production server also ?
A: No. the app build will contain all that is required for Telerik controls to work. No need to install it on production server.

Q: Can I change the positions of Title and Badge ?
A: No. This is as per the Modern UI guidelines and it dictates that the Title and Badge have to be in the lower portion of the tile.

Q: I am curious about its interoperability along with several other controls in Telerik?
A: You can work with this control programmatically too. You can wrap this control and create your sub classed controls too.

Q: Can I use RadTilelist control in sharepoint 2010/2013 applications?
A: All of our ASP.NET AJAX controls suite is SharePoint compatible. You can use our AJAX controls in custom WebParts and host them in Sharepoint.

Q: If the content exceeds the height of the content tile how we have to control the text flow?
A: As per the design principles, when using ContentTemplate Tile, the text or content you provide should be a short and informational text. You can use CSS to control the overflow – but then it will bring in the scroll bars and the whole tile concept wont look good.

Q: How it works in Desktop app UI design. We don’t deal much with Web app coding?
A: We have Windows Presentation Foundation control suite and Windows Forms controls suite for desktop applications. WPF has TileList control and Windows Forms has RadPanirama control. Both of these controls help you build a Modern UI like navigation using Tiles in your windows applications.

Q: Once Tiles are re-arranged,, whether this can be persist or re-set after page refresh?
A: Yes. The selections can be persisted. You can integrate with the RadPersistenceFramework.

Q: Is this also part of ASP.net MVC?
A: No. This is part of ASP.NET Webforms.

Q: how to resize the tile as in windows 8 using rad controls?
A; At the moment we don’t support resizing.

Q: Can we bind these values to some data source so that frequently that can be refreshed, like we have in Mail tile in Windows 8?
A: Yes absolutely. You can do that certainly.

Q: Am using Telerik controls version: 2013.1.403.40, but this doesn’t contain Rad tile List control in toolbox?
A: This was released as part of our Q2 release. So upgrade yourself to 2013 Q2 release and you will see the control.

Q: do we documentation available for RadTileList ?
A: Yes very much. You can find the documentation here: http://www.telerik.com/help/aspnet-ajax/tilelist-overview.html

Q: Can Tile be created as dynamic as similar to number of rows in Grid?
A: Yes. You can programmatically create the Tiles too. You don’t have to place them on designer like the way I did in the demo.

Q: Why is it called RADControls?
A: RAD stands for Rapid Application Development. We help you build things faster. We help you improve your productivity through our controls. Our controls contains out of the box many features that otherwise you will need to build them by yourself.

Q: can we create a link on image to redirect to another page?
A: All the tile types support NavigateUrl property which when set, clicking the tile will navigate to that page.

Telerik .NET Ninja T-Shirt Giveaway:

We select 2 persons from the audience in every webinar and give away a Telerik .NET Ninja T-Shirt. So from this webinar we have randomly selected the following 2 persons:

• Himanshu Garg
• Kothainayaki Krishnamoorthy

Congratulations to the winners. We will be contacting you shortly to get your postal address. We will ship you your T-Shirt soon. Rest of the folks, don’t worry we have a lot of webinars coming up. So try your luck in next webinars.

Till next time – Happy Coding.