Telerik has released RadControls Q3 2007. The latest volume includes updates for all product lines for Web and desktop presentation layer development, as well as a new release of Telerik Reporting and a preview of Telerik’s RIA controls for Silverlight 1.1/2.0.

Q3 introduces new controls and features across all product lines. Along with functional updates, the Q3 release introduces Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 compatibility. Listed below are some of the highlights by product line:

RadControls “Prometheus” for ASP.NET

• New rendering: “Prometheus” controls use semantic rendering that results in substantially reduced HTML output and the best standards-compliance on the market
• The databinding: Controls now have the ability to bind to Web services on the client. The controls can now load data on demand and support binding to all ASP.NET 2.0 declarative datasources (AccessDataSource, ObjectDataSource, SqlDataSource, SiteMapDataSource, and XmlDataSource) and the new LinqDataSource.
• Client-side features: With most controls you can add/delete/update items at the client side and all the changes will be persisted on the server as well. The rich client-side API provides performance and a desktop-like experience.

RadControls for ASP.NET
While most of Telerik’s new development efforts have been focused on “Prometheus” the Q3 release also brings full Visual Studio 2008 support and several improvements to the most widely used components in RadControls for ASP.NET – RadGrid and RadEditor.

RadEditor’s content filters were improved and now the HTML editor for ASP.NET can output consistent XTHML-compliant content across all major browsers.

RadControls for WinForms
The Q3 release includes seven new controls: RadRototor, RadMaskedEditBox, RadColorDialog, RadStatusStrip, RadSpinEditor, RadDateTimePicker, and RadRadioButton, as well as Visual Studio 2008 support and improvements in the Telerik Presentation Framework. 

The latest release also introduces CAB support to aid the development of enterprise-grade projects with RadControls for WinForms.

Telerik Reporting
Telerik’s Reporting Tool has also been enriched with new capabilities for the Q3 release. The updated Reporting component features an Excel Rendering Extension, which allows downloading a report into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet for offline verification without the need for installing Microsoft Office. This new feature supports Microsoft Excel versions 1997-2007.

In addition, Telerik Reporting now offers a way to provide dynamic table-like layouts by docking/anchoring report items. This new feature simplifies the development process, and enables users to create and style reports. Migration from other reporting solutions is further simplified by adding a converter from XtraReports.

Silverlight 1.1 Controls
Several months ago Telerik was one of the early adopters of Silverlight and released a commercial component library for v1.0. Telerik started working on a rich set of controls that will enable customers to build RIA applications on Microsoft’s emerging platform. On December 14, 2007, the Telerik RadControls for Silverlight were released. The final results demonstrate that Silverlight can deliver a new type of user experience and that Telerik will enablw customers to take advantage of Microsoft’s RIA technology.