What’s new in RadControls for WinForms 2010 Q1?
This latest release includes the introduction of a completely reengineered Visual Style Builder -- Telerik's UI customization tool that ensures uniform and completely customizable styling. Among the controls improvements is a new Timeline feature in RadScheduler adding even more flexible view options. RadControls Q1 2010 provide support for the latest Visual Studio 2010 and introduce a Visual Studio integration package to significantly improve developers' productivity.

Visual Studio 2010 RC Support - Visual Studio 2010 will simplify the development process from design to deployment and Telerik products will also contribute to improving developers' productivity when working in Visual Studio. Telerik products provide support for Visual Studio 2010 RC and our future development plans are aligned with Microsoft Visual Studio release schedule. RadControls for WinForms support VS2010 RC:

• Full design-time support, including support for all design-time tools, such as property builders, item editors, etc.
• Telerik WinForms Templates
• Toolbox support
• Visual Studio Extensions
• Integrating WPF into WinForms applications

Visual Studio Extensions - With Q1 2010 Telerik introduces Visual Studio Extensions for RadControls for WinForms. This is a Visual Studio integration package for Telerik WinForms controls that resembles the standard Visual Studio project templates. The Visual Studio Extensions introduce a new level of developer productivity with a simplified and fast way to develop your RadControls Applications. The Extensions can easily be accessed through the Telerik Menu in Visual Studio and automatically create, upgrade and configure your RadControls projects in seconds, eliminating the need to set any assembly references manually

What’s new in RadControls for WinForms 2009 Q3?

The main focus for the Q3 2009 release continues to be on optimizations in the overall performance and stability of the toolset, brisk and slicker theming, and improvements throughout major controls.

Telerik Presentation Framework

• Refactorred the RadElement life cycle, which decreases RadControls application’s load and dispose times by optimizing the loading and the disposing of the controls’ element trees. Depending on the controls used, an application/form will launch between 20% and 300% faster. The new RadElement life cycle eliminates the major disadvantages of the previous element tree’s “Lazy” loading mechanism, namely.
• New popup mechanism has been added on framework level (currently implemented in RadComboBox, RadMultiColumnComboBox, and RadRibbonBar). The popup solves all flickering issues (caused by unnecessary activation/deactivation) of the parent form when the popup is opened. It also provides support for fade-in and fade-out popup animations.

RadMarkupEditor - RadMarkupEditor is a WYSIWYG editor which has been added on framework level to simplify the way users and developers edit text in HTML-like markup. The editor provides an intuitive and easy to use. A Ribbon interface and can be used both in design-time and at runtime. RadMarkupEditor is available for all Telerik WinForms controls which support HTML-like text formatting.

RadComboBox and RadListBox - The new version of RadComboBox and its derivative – RadListBox – come with improved data binding through refactoring, which results in faster, more stable binding, support for large number of items, and memory footprint improvements.

RadDock

• DragDropService.DragDropBehavior property added to allow for complete service automation.
• DocumentTabsAlignment property added to control the orientation of tabs for DocumentTabStrip instances.
• ToolTabsAlignment property added to control orientation of tabs for ToolTabStrip instances.
• ToolTabsVisible property added to determine whether ToolTabStrip instances will display a TabStripElement, allowing for navigating among tool windows.
• DocumentTabsVisible property added to determine whether DocumentTabStrip instances will display a TabStripElement, allowing for navigating among document windows.
• Added DockWindow overload, which allows for adding a DockWindow, aligned to any valid SplitPanel instance – being it tab strip or split container.
• Form.Closing and Form.Closed are now explicitly called for child forms when standard MDI is converted to Tabbed Document Interface.
• Added ContextMenuService to centralize the entry point for displaying context menus across RadDock instance. Available are the following events:
• ContextMenuService.ContextMenuDisplaying – allows the user to modify the menu items that are about to be displayed or completely cancel the request.
• ContextMenuService.ContextMenuItemClicked – allows the user to override the default action performed upon a click of a menu item.

RadForm and RadRibbonForm

• RadRibbonForm now provides support for active/inactive states.

RadGridView

• Improved scrolling in hierarchy mode so that a single scrollbar is used for the whole grid (instead of each child view having its own scrollbar).
• New ControlDefault theme
• Ctrl+Home and Ctrl+End navigation
• CurrentView can changed programmatically
• Shift+F10 opens context menu

RadMenu

• RadMenu can now be highlighted via system keys (alt and F10);
• Added a boolean HighlightMenuOnSystemKey property which turns on and off system key highlighting.
• Added a boolean SystemKeyHighlight property which turns on and off system key highlighting.
• Upgraded the control to use the new popup mechanism
• Improved mnemonics support
• Improved navigation and keyboard support

RadTreeView

• RadTreeView now has a localization provider.
• Added keyboard scrolling support via holding down the Ctrl key and scrolling with the arrows.
• Added keyboard scroll to bottom and scroll to top by using the Ctrl + home/end.
• Added keyboard multi-select by holding down the Shift key and pressing the up/down arrows.
• Added two properties to control the horizontal and vertical scrolling speed. They are called HorizontalKeyboardScrollStep andVerticalKeyboardScrollStep.
• Added two new public methods - ScrollToBottom() and ScrollToTop().
• Added a public CollapseAll() method to RadTreeNode. CollapseAll() is invoked by the divide key for keyboard navigation.

RadRibbonBar - RadRibbonBar comes with many small, but important improvements, the most important of which is the addition of new popup behavior, which makes RadRibbonBar fully compliant with Microsoft’s Office 2007 guidelines. In addition, Group Collapse Order (weights) have been added, which give you the freedom to set which group will collapse when on form resize.

RadScheduler - RadScheduler comes with several important enhancements such as improved rendering feedback and better responsiveness in all drag-and-drop operations. The SchedulerBindingDataSource now handles property changes in appointments more efficiently as well. Another important feature that has been added to RadScheduler is Resource grouping, which will allow you to group different resources in a single scheduler instance. The resources in all views can be grouped.

Visual Style Builder

• Added the option to apply predefined themes for the currently loaded control.
• The Visual Style Builder uses RadForm and has improved UI

What's included in Telerik RadControls for WinForms: 

RadCombobox

• Multiline text and styling support - RadCombobox supports two label types in its items - a title and a description. When in sort or autocomplete mode, the combobox uses the title label only, making programming and operation easier. You can style these labels separately for better control over RadCombobox' s visual appearance. Multiline text is supported as well - instead of truncating long text, you can have it on several lines
• Versatile binding mechanism - RadCombobox fully supports binding to collections, tables, datasets, and custom objects. Three properties control data binding:
  • The DataSource property specifies the ultimate source of the data to be bound
  • The DisplayMember property specifies the particular data to be displayed in the RadCombobox.
  • The ValueMember property specifies the particular data to be returned as the value of the RadCombobox
• Flexible autocomplete options - RadCombobox has full autocomplete support - as soon as the user starts typing, the combobox selects or fills-in the first matching entry from the list. The different autocomplete modes of RadCombobox are Suggest, Append, SuggestAppend, and Off. They can be set through the AutoCompleteMode property
• Sorted drop-down lists - RadCombobox supports automatic sorting, based on the Sorted property of the control - simply set it Ascending or Descending to sort in the respective order, or deactivate it to restore the initial ordering of the ItemCollection. Sorting may be case-sensitive or case-insensitive. Capital letters are displayed first in the former case
• Rotating list items on double-click - Double-click on the text box in a RadCombobox, and it will pull up the next item from the list. This timesaving feature allows you to quickly advance through a list without seeing all the items
• Keyboard support - RadCombobox delivers convenience with integrated keyboard support. Once the control gets the focus, you can use the arrow keys to navigate through the items
• Editable/Read-only drop-down modes - You decide whether users can enter free-form data or just select from the entries in the dropdown list. A single property setting switches editing on or off, making the text box portion of the control editable or read-only
• Images in the drop-down list - With the RadCombobox, you can assign an image to each item in the drop-down list. Images can be placed above, below, beside, or behind the text. You can use them as icons, headings, or backgrounds

RadDock

• Full-featured VS2005-like docking system - RadDock ensures you have complete support of the latest user interface standards. The docking system has full drag-and-drop support including the docking compass and docking hints for visual feedback. When a ToolWindow is about to be docked to a docking zone, the zone is highlighted to show where the object will be placed. The way a zone is highlighted can be customized
• Centralized DockingManager -The DockingManager control provides a container that holds dockable windows. This container can fill the entire client area of a Windows Form, or can be limited to any rectangular area you choose to manage. You can mix a docking implementation with traditional Windows Forms or RadControls on the same form
• ToolWindow control and behavior - The ToolWindow control provides a container that can be docked within the DockingManager. You can place other controls (either RadControls or standard Windows Forms controls) within a ToolWindow.
• You can specify whether the ToolWindow object is floating, docked, nested, autohidden, pinned, or tabbed to the current position on the form. In accordance with the specified behavior, the state button of the corresponding ToolWindow will show the possible state choices. You can also get increased ToolWindow functionality with horizontal and vertical splits.
• Docking custom UserControls - RadDock enables you to create your own user controls to dock. The ToolWindow control is the container that can be docked within the DockingManager, and you can place both RadControls or standard Windows Forms controls within the ToolWindow. The ToolWindow, itself, is derived from the standard UserControl class, so you can use the Visual Studio designer to visually develop the contents of your ToolWindows. At run time, it’s simple to instantiate as many dockable windows as you need
• Interactive design-time layout management - The Docking Designer gives you fully interactive design-time control over the number, position, and properties of ToolWindows within a DockingManager. You can visually design the initial size and position of ToolWindows on your form without writing a single line of code. ToolWindow layouts can be saved to XML files for easy loading at run time
• Show content while dragging - The content of a dockable object is rendered semitransparent while it is being dragged for better visibility
• Keyboard navigation support - You can navigate between ToolWindows in a Windows-like fashion by pressing Ctrl+Tab. A notification window will open with all available windows. You can use either Ctrl+Tab or the mouse to select the ToolWindow you need to navigate to, even if is hidden. Additionally, you can use the arrow keys to control the horizontal and vertical splits.
• Save/Load layout state - RadDock supports serialization and deserialization. All changes made to the dynamic page layouts can be stored in an XML file and reloaded when needed. This is an excellent way for portal customization and preservation of user layout settings

RadMenustrip

• Multiline text and image support - RadMenustrip supports multiline text in its items - instead of truncating long text, it is displayed on several lines. This is achieved through a label which RadMenustrip uses for its text field. Images and text can be displayed on menuitems as well. You can customize the image-text relation by setting the TextImageRelation property. Possible values are: Overlay, ImageAboveText, TextAboveImage, TextBeforeImage, and ImageBeforeText
• Support for nested controls - You can nest any RadControl or custom element within RadMenustrip. This feature gives you enormous flexibility in building functionality into applications and allows you to create complex custom user interfaces featuring text boxes, combo boxes, or other custom elements within the menu area
• Full keyboard support - RadMenustrip delivers convenience with full support for Shortcuts, Accelerator Keys, and Arrow-key navigation. RadMenustrip can be assigned shortcuts through the Shortcuts component - the base of the whole shortcuts system implemented for the descendants of RadControl and RadItem. The component serializes InputBinding objects as a collection. Every InputBinding object binds keyboard shortcut used for activation, a valid Command instance, and a command context which is the object that will be the target of the command's execution
• Checked/Unchecked/Disabled menu items - Using the API of RadMenustrip you can have Checked, Unchecked, Disabled, or regular menu items
• Horizontal or Vertical menustrip orientation - You can specify the way the RadMenustrip is oriented on the page, i.e. Horizontal (default) or Vertical. When Orientation is set, its value determines the flow of the root group as well
• Vertical/Horizontal/Arbitrary text orientation - Text within each main item can be angled to fit your particular case, regardless of the orientation. You can have it horizontal, vertical or at an arbitrary angle
• Add/Remove items at runtime - With RadMenustrip you can Add and Remove items programmatically at run time. When adding new Items, they are appended to the existing items in the same menu using the Add(Item) method. Removing items hides them from the menu

RadPanelbar

• Support for nested controls - You can nest any RadControl or custom element within RadPanelbar. This feature gives you enormous flexibility in building functionality into applications and allows you to create complex custom user interfaces featuring text boxes, combo boxes, or other custom elements within the panel area. If you nest another panelbar, you get hierarchal appearance
• Multi-level hierarchical nesting - You can easily build multilevel panelbars with RadPanelbar. Simply put another panelbar in any panel to create a hierarchical panelbar
• Support for Themes - Themes allow for the separation of a control's look from its functionality. Themes can be easily build with the Visual Style Builder. As a result, developers will be able to completely change the look of a windows forms application in an easy declarative manner
• Design-time support - RadPanelbar features full VS2005 design-time support for complete control over the component's functionality
• ListBar, ExplorerBar, Outlook or VS2005 ToolBox modes
• Support for multiple columns - RadPanelbar for WinForms is flexible enough to allow you to organize your navigation in the most convenient manner. You can set the panelbar items in columns to provide menu-like behavior and better organization of your data
• Expanded/Collapsed initial panelbar state - You can specify the initial state of your panelbars. Depending on the design specifics of your application you can have them initially expanded or initially collapsed
• Single expanded option - RadPanelbar can be configured so that only one group is visible at a time. When you click on one group it opens it and collapses the currently open group

RadRibbonbar

• Easily implement MS Office 2007 interfaces - The RadRibbonbar control enables you to build user interfaces similar to the ribbonbar used by Microsoft Office 2007. This feature ensures your applications will have a similar look to the most up-to-date Microsoft applications that users will know. The RadControls suite for WinForms supplies a variety of controls that you can host in the RadRibbonbar including themeable check boxes, split buttons, repeat buttons, drop-down buttons, and more
• Animated collapse/expand of ribbonbar - To save space, you can collapse the RadRibbonbar by double-clicking the selected tab. The entire bottom part disappears, leaving only a single row of tabs across the top
• Support for chunks and button groups - Each RadRibbonbar tab can host one or more chunks. A chunk is a container for the other containers and individual functional elements. Chunks can individually collapse if there is not enough room to display them all. Chunks may contain one or more button groups. A button group is a container that can contain other nested button groups or individual functional elements. Button groups can be oriented horizontally (containing a horizontal row of elements) or vertically (containing a vertical column of elements)
• Collapsing/Expanding tool chunks on resize - When the RibbonBar is being resized, and more specifically when it's getting smaller, it automatically collapses the tool chunks to save space. Respectively when its getting larger it expands the chunks for which there's available space
• Design time support - The RadRibbonbar was built with ease of design in mind. You can build an entire ribbon in the Windows Forms designers by manipulating tabs, chunks, and controls directly, without writing any code. Then customize the appearance with the VisualStyleBuilder to give it the final look and feel for your own application
• Customizable Start Button - The Start Button provides convenient access to the Start Menu of important commands. This button can be customized to fit many needs including to aid in corporate branding
• Quick-Access Menu - The Quick Access Menu above the ribbon tabs can be used for customization or frequently-used commands. This feature is a great productivity boost for users who often need to utilize the same commands in a majority of their work
• Unlimited number of nested controls - With RadRibbonbar, you can organize all of the functionality of your application into a single compact ribbon containing an almost unlimited number of nested controls. The ribbon splits your application’s controls into a natural hierarchy starting with tabs of major functionality. Tabs include chunks, which in turn contain an unlimited number of controls including toolbars, customizable buttons, and combo boxes

RadTabstrip

• Drag and drop support - You can allow users to rearrange tabs at run time via a drag-and-drop. Once dragging begins, the tabstrip will hint where the drop will appear by showing visual pointers in between tabs. You can turn this option off entirely by setting the AllowDragDrop property to false
• Scrolling and Overflow support - If there are more tabs than can be displayed, you can use tab scrolling and overflow management. With tab scrolling, you can use arrow buttons for left and right navigation. Or you can navigate to the needed tab by using the overflow button which lists all available tabs. The buttons can be positioned anywhere around the tabstrip
• Visually customizable tab shape - You can choose from predefined tab shapes matching those used in popular applications such as Microsoft Internet Explorer or Microsoft Visual Studio. If that’s not flexible enough for you, use the built-in Shape Designer to come up with a custom shape using any combination of lines and curves. Shapes can be saved and reused as often as you like. The Shape Designer gives you the extra edge in customizing each tab's appearance by creating curved designs with Bézier curves
• Nesting controls on content panels - You can automatically manage other controls on embedded content panels. Place any control from the RadControls suite or elsewhere on a content panel associated with a RadTabstrip, and it will only be displayed when that tab is active. This is the quick and easy way to build a modern tabbed user interface and gives you flexibility when building applications which require complex UI
• Keyboard support - RadTabstrip delivers convenience with integrated keyboard support. Once the tab gets the focus, you can use the arrow keys or the Tab/Shift+Tab keys to navigate through the tabs
• Various tab positions - With RadTabstrip, tabs can be displayed in horizontal and vertical orientation, either at the top, bottom, left, or right of the content panel. All you need is to set the TabsPosition property to Top, Bottom, Left or Right and the TextOrientation property to Horizontal or Vertical
• Vertical/Horizontal/Arbitrary text orientation - Text within each tab can be angled to fit your particular case, regardless of the tab orientation. You can have it horizontal, vertical or at an arbitrary angle
• Image support - Images and text can be displayed on tabs as well. You cam customize the image-text relation by setting the TextImageRelation property. Possible values are: Overlay, ImageAboveText, TextAboveImage, TextBeforeImage, and ImageBeforeText
• Multiline text support - RadTabstrip supports multiline text in its tabs - instead of truncating long text, it is displayed on several lines. This is achieved through a label which RadTabstrip uses for its text field

RadToolstrip

• Rich Collection of Toolstrip Items - RadToolstrip items are represented as child controls in the structure of the toolstrip and are very easily customized using themes and related properties. Supported button types are:
  • Regular buttons
  • Toggle buttons
  • Dropdown buttons
  • Host buttons for nesting controls such as RadCombobox, standard textboxes, split buttons, etc.
  • Separators
• Text-only, Image-only, or Mixed buttons - Toolstrips can be moved, rearranged, and resized at run time for easy end-user customization, and styled to match any user interface you desire with the aid of the Presentation Framework. Every button on the toolstrip can be customized independently to either display text, image or both
• Horizontal or Vertical Orientation - You can specify the way the toolbar is oriented on the page, i.e. horizontally or vertically. To determine the orientation of a given toolbar you can use the Orientation property
• Run time customization with drag and drop - In a MS Office-like manner, different instances of RadToolstrips can be moved, docked, and rearranged by the end user at run time to get the interface that best suits his/her working habits
• Dynamic Add/Remove buttons support - RadToolstrip supports adding and removing functionality for its tools, MS Office style, regardless of their type and position. Just click on the "Add or Remove Buttons" dropdown to personalize the toolbar

RadUielements

• Customizable buttons and checkboxes - The RadXControls for WinForms suite contains several button controls that will enable you to create advanced functionality for your WinForms applications. They provide all of the features of the basic WinForms button, and also allows you to take advantage of the features of RadControls, such as styles and themes, and handling images and text.
  • RadButton is simple button control which replaces the standard WinForms Button, but gives you full control over the visual appearance. Supports themes, images, text, and backgrounds
  • The RadCheckbox replaces the WinForms CheckBox control and adds robust data binding, state management, and design options
  • The RadTogglebutton gives you a button that mimics the functionality of the check box, but allows more flexibility in its design. State management in the RadTogglebutton is similar to that of the RadCheckbox with the addition of a special ToggleStateChanging event that provides granular control over state changes
  • The RadRepeatbutton has press-and-hold functionality built into the ButtonClick event, giving you options for interactive UI design with minimal effort.
  • The RadDropdownbutton and the RadSplitbutton are buttons that provide a menu-like interface model within a button
• TrackBar - The TrackBar control is a special slider control that allows the user to select a value on a bar by moving a slider. It can be oriented horizontally, vertically, or at an arbitrary angle and supports theming using the Theme Builder
• ProgressBar and WaitingBar controls - The RadUielements include two different styles of bar controls:
  • RadProgressbar is a themeable progress bar control that is designed to display progress information to the user during a long-running operation. In addition to using the Presentation Framework for theming, it offers other advantages over the standard Windows Forms ProgressBar control:
    • Support for displaying text and images within the body of the progress bar
    • Dashed and cross-hatched indicator styles
    • Support for displaying two values on a single progress bar. The second value is indicated by a change in shade in the unfilled portion of the RadProgressbar
  • The RadWaitingbar is used to display an indicator that a long-running operation is underway. Unlike the RadProgressbar control, the RadWaitingbar does not display an indication of percent finished. Instead, it smoothly animates a block across a rectangle image that appears in the background as long as the operation continues
• Scrolling elements - The RadHscrollbar and RadVscrollbar controls are themeable alternatives to the standard Windows Forms scroll bar elements. They allow you to include scroll bars in your applications that are consistent in look and feel with the other RadControls. RadHscrollbar and RadVscrollbar share the same properties. The only difference between the two is that one is displayed horizontally and the other is displayed vertically. RadScrollviewer is a scrolling element, which gives you full control over a predefined content area. It can be used whenever scrolling of an element is necessary. Just put RadScrollViewer in the hierarchy where the parent element is and set the parent to be RadScrollViewer 's Viewport. RadScrollviewer supports Physical and Logical scrolling modes. In Physical mode the scrolling is done in preset intervals (for example 16 pixels per click), whereas in logical mode you can customize the size of the increment. The logical scrolling makes more sense for elements like list boxes where the vertical scrolling depends on the heights of the child items.
• Textbox control - The RadTextbox control is a themeable alternative to the standard Windows Forms text box control. It allows you to include a text box in your applications that is consistent in look and feel with the other RadControls. In addition, it allows the developer to set a default text to be displayed when there is no actual data in the text box
• Custom controls - With the Telerik Presentation Framework (TPF) you can easily build custom controls and take advantage of the animation effects and the visual appearance options of the Theme Builder. All TPF-based controls can also be configured through the RadControlSpy for complete control over its properties