Enhance app customization with modern rendering, Theme Builder and boostrap themes support in Version NEXT of UI for ASP.NET AJAX, available in Q3 2015.
Allow me to present the highlights of the upcoming Q3 2015 release:
Theme Builder with Built-in Support for Bootstrap Themes Planned
We know that the appearance of the controls and its customization is an important requirement to create beautiful and useful sites. To satisfy this requirement we are currently working on an entirely new, easy-to-use and modern looking Theme Builder application that will offer the ability to:
- Create and edit skins for lightweight and lobile renderings
- Import a bootstrap theme, read its color primitives and create a new Telerik Bootstrap skin based on them
Everyone who wants to participate in the usability tests of the tool is welcome to join. To declare your participation, drop me a note at rumen.jekov@telerik.com.
Once we deliver the Theme Builder, we will start working on the new Material Design skin, which is currently scheduled for release in Q1 2016.
Markup for Modern Rendering
Modern, or lightweight, markup continues to be a top priority and we plan to introduce it in almost all of the controls. The first controls released as lightweight are the Color Picker, File Explorer and Social Share.
Among the benefits modern rendering brings are reduced footprint, easy-to-customize appearance and semantic rendering.
Mobile Rendering Support
We continue to improve the responsive web capabilities of the controls as well as provide a great UI for every type of screen and dimension.
The Q3 2015 provides:
- Responsive capabilities in the Toolbar
- Elastic capabilities in the Color Picker, File Explorer, Progress Area, Social Share and the Toolbar
For more detailed information on the responsive capabilities of the Telerik ASP.NET AJAX suite, visit Responsive, Adaptive and Elastic Capabilities.
Section 508 Improvements
Three nice accessibility additions are cooking for the new release:
- WAI-ARIA Support for RadTabStrip
- Role Value attributes applied to the RadGrid form elements: textboxes, checkboxes, filter boxes and expand/collapse buttons
- Tooltips for "Expand/Collapse all" icons in the case of grouping and hierarchy
Increased Stability
We will continue to reduce the known bugs, aiming to minimize them by 70 percent till the end of 2015.
Discontinuation of IE7 Support
Our decision to discontinue support for Internet Explorer Version 7 (IE7), taken in accordance with the Microsoft plan to discontinue support for IE7 (see the support document, MSDN: Stay up-to-date with Internet Explorer), leads to the following 
performance boosts:
- CSS hacks and fixes for IE7 from base stylesheets will be removed, leading to size reductions of up to 30% for some controls
- Box sizing, font icons and display modes will be more easily relied upon
- Improved CSS selectors should ultimately provide more human-readable code
- Newer browsers can work with PNG images, CSS3 gradients and font icons, resulting in fewer images and sprites
New Features for Existing UI for ASP.NET AJAX Controls
Grid
- Excel-like look-and-feel filtering: Expect more intuitive filtering that offers not only filter values such as Greater Than, Less Than, Equal To, but also checkbox filters with search capabilities
- Batch-Edit UI: For indication of deleted rows
- Accessibility Improvements: See Section 508 above
Gantt
- Client Task Templates: Customize, via client templates, tasks in the TimeLine view
- Columns Resizing
- Right-to-Left Support
Editor
- New, Modern Table Wizard Manager: Easily build and customize HTML table elements.
- New UI: Easily select, edit and delete table elements
Navigation
- Client-side Binding via RadClientDataSource
- Client-side Templates
- Content Template
- Right-to-Left Support
