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Telerik, a maker of application development software, has announced a major update of its Kendo UI, a unified framework for building HTML5 and JavaScript mobile apps and sites.
This release includes a set of controls and widgets for creating rich iPad user interfaces, as well as the first in a series of server-side wrappers to enable developers to incorporate and configure Kendo UI via familiar server-side programming.
On July 11, Telerik announced Kendo UI Complete, a collection of Web, DataViz and management tools for professional software developers.
In an attempt to avoid fragmentation, more developers are focusing on Web standards such as HTML5 and JavaScript to build software that can run anywhere and reach the largest possible audience. Kendo UIs unified framework incorporates adaptive rendering capabilities and leverages the latest in CSS3, HTML5 and JavaScript Web standards to automatically adapt a mobile apps native look-and-feel on any smartphone and tablet device, while delivering broad support for all major browsers.
With this release, Kendo UI moves beyond mobile phones to help developers create experiences with HTML5 that look native on the iPad and other tablets, Todd Anglin, vice president of HTML5 Web and Mobile Tools at Telerik, said in a statement. In addition, weve added important updates across the Kendo UI framework, including the first in a series of server-side wrappers that further equip developers to quickly and cost effectively create advanced apps and mobile sites with HTML5 and JavaScript.
According to IDC, more than 107 million tablets will ship this year, with nearly two-thirds of those expected to be iPads. By adding iPad-specific widgets to Kendo UI Mobile, the company provides developers with a streamlined way to build native-like apps leveraging HTML5 for the markets No. 1 tablet.
HTML5 is quickly becoming the dominant cross-platform runtime, with ABI Research forecasting the installed base for mobile devices with HTML5 to grow from approximately 500 million in 2011, to more than 2.1 billion in 2016. Gartner further forecasts that worldwide tablet sales will grow by 98 percent in 2012 to 119 million units.
Kendo UI Mobile already helps developers build HTML5 or JavaScript apps that automatically transform to the native look-and-feel of iOS, Android and BlackBerry. With this update, developers can use Kendo Mobile UIs adaptive rendering to target multiple phone and tablet platforms with a single UI code base, thus eliminating the traditional challenges that developers face of manually researching and then combining all the plug-ins and frameworks and libraries needed to build mobile apps.
This new release also adds server-side helpers for ASP.NET MVC, enabling developers to incorporate and configure Kendo UI via familiar server-side programming, while still producing apps that benefit from the client-side power of Kendo UI and HTML5. While Kendo UI works with any server-side technology, some developers are less comfortable in JavaScript and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), but feel very capable when working inside a server-side language. These wrappers ensure that developers who prefer to build apps from their own server-side language can do so quickly.
Moreover, developers using the new ASP.NET MVC wrappers can take full advantage of server-side framework features and coding conveniences, while targeting both desktop and mobile devices using the cross-platform power of modern HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript. Kendo UI Complete for ASP.NET MVC is the first of what the company plans to be a collection of server-side helpers for different platforms, including Java and PHP, all designed to maximize developer productivity with HTML5.
In addition to the new iPad widgets and server wrappers, there are updates across the entire Kendo UI framework, including new and improved widgets and charts in Kendo UI Web and DataViz, enabling the presentation of rich, touch-aware visual information on any browser and any device.
There are new Popover and Split View controls, as well as Action Sheet and Modal View widgets for Kendo UI Mobile. Telerik added new Donut (or torus) and Bubble chart types, as well as date axis support and additional arrow types for the Radial Gauge in Kendo UI DataViz. And the company added a combined DateTimePicker widget, column reordering and resizing on the Grid, and support for hierarchical and relational data in the DataSource for Kendo UI Web.