A book is born!!!

As most of you know, I was involved in writing a book about C# programming (we were 30 authors, each had to write a chapter and edit a chapter).You can click on its cover in order to be taken to download the PDF version:

Hope you will enjoy it.

Oh, almost forgot – it is in BULGARIAN . There were some plans to have it translated but as I am not a part of telerik anymore, I don’t have any information from the kitchen how far this project went.

Please be sure to say a great thanks to telerik for sponsoring this book!

Me, Telerik, Introduction To C# programming book (some personal updates)

Ok, lot's of things happened recently.

First of all - I quit Telerik and got back to Veliko Tyrnovo.
A brave decision I have chosen in order to try to deliver more than it was expected from me ;).
This one was really though to decide as I really enjoyed being part of Telerik. A LOT!

Anyway, sometimes we need to sacrifice things in order to try to get to the next level.

And the next level for me is to try to do something for Veliko Tyrnovo (it is not my birth place, but I spent signifficant part of my life here and really love this city).

I thought it may be beneficial to the city if I quit Telerik and try to establish a company here + try to engage young potential developers attention so they get direction and momentum at a very early stage of their lives (not quite sure if you know or it is the same way in your country but here, it feels like there is a lot of depression).

It feels like the young people are somehow smashed and forced to belive they are no good, hence they become sellers in stores, car wash workers, gas station workers and stuff like that, just because they weren't directed at an early stage. They are vibrating at very low frequencies. Their frequencies are enough to just get them to graduate and find any job that will give them some money. No dreams at all.

To be specific - my company and my future initiative to try to help young developers have nothing in do one with each other so far.
Currently I am not an employer, I am not even a business entity yet.
All I have is some money (as usual - not enough for everything I think I need), some ideas, some dreams and a lot of energy.
The initiative with the young people is something I will do aside from my other activities. I imagine giving them materials, helping them answering questions, founding some user groups and things like that.

To be honest, I realise I have very limited capacity, I don't expect to make a revolution and make Veliko Tyrnovo "the silicon hills :)" but still, if I can help 1 or 2 young developers a year, that will be awesome and I believe it will lead in a signifficant improvement over the long run.

I am rising some money now for my company (well, yes, if you wish, count this as a marketing material, I am not asking anyone for anything, I am working toward this but will not return anyone with a good offer ;).

With all the friends (or should I use my network to look more like pro :) I think it is possible for me to get started and do some of the things I dreamed of.

Last but not least, I was involved in writing a book (I was one of the 30 authors) at Telerik. Leading this book was part of the work of Svetlin Nakov (check his blog to see more information about the Telerik Academy he is currently leading).
They updated us that the book is in pre-release stage (actually it is available for free download but I am really eager to see my name in a printed book ;).

That's all for now.
Wish you a great and productive day!!!

Awesome Presentation Framework from Telerik Silverlight Divisions

For LOB applications it is important that the users have their preferences saved (and later - loaded) once they have them set.

Telerik is now addressing this issue by unveiling awesome Persistance framework for the Silverlight Controls.

More information can in the
Telerik Presentation Framework blogpost by the Silverlight Division.

Ofcourse it was possible to achieve that before, but it tooks way more plumbing than now.

Currently the PersistenceManager class will take all the plumbing itself (probably you may need to implement another provider if you want to store the UI information in place other than the IsolatedStorage but still), letting you focus on the really important, application specific problems instead on plumbing...

It is really worthy to go with Telerik :).

Sitefinity 4.1 SP2 is out!

A service pack for my favourite CMS has just been released.

The list of features and bugfixes can be found at:

http://www.sitefinity.com/devnet/forums/sitefinity-4-x/general-discussions/sitefinity-4-1-sp2-is-released.aspx

Can't wait to finish my ongoing work in order to get some time and try it.

Having column display name in RadGrid Column chooser but not in the header of the grid

A little bit of background for this one.

I had a Telerik RadGrid that was having few columns ...

It had the column chooser enabled. Few of the columns were icons (for example “Answered”, “Rating”).

I wanted to have them without header text so I added the Template column and everything was just fine.

Until I right clicked on the header in order to show the column chooser. It was displaying the columns with auto generated names like “GridTemplateColumn7”, “GridTemplateColumn10”.

My goal was to keep the header of the grid clean (e.g. no label) because the icons were 16x16 and that’s all the space I needed to occupy with those columns, having a header “Answered” would extend the entire column. So to solve this case here is what I did:

Solution:

1. Added header text to the column and saw that the header text is appearing in the column chooser.

2. To hide it from the header of the column I added an empty <HeaderTemplae>.

The column should look like this:

<telerik:GridTemplateColumn HeaderText="Bookmark">
    <HeaderTemplate>
    </HeaderTemplate>
    <ItemTemplate>
    </ItemTemplate>
</telerik:GridTemplateColumn>

 

This would solve the problem for Template columns (and all column types that allow you to define HeaderTemplate). This will not work for GridBoundColumn for example as this type doesn’t have HeaderTemplate.

 

Hope this helps someone out there …

Q2 2010 is comming!

Telerik RadControls for Asp.Net Ajax and



Telerik Extensions for ASP.NET MVC are released.


See this post for more information on the cool new things included!


Enjoy!

Go download Telerik Ultimate collection trial!

We have the Ultimate collection uploaded @ telerik.com.
You can reach it by using the green "Download"button at the top of the page.



Included in the bundle you will find:

1. RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX
2. Extensions for ASP.NET MVC
3. RadControls for Silverlight
4. RadControls for WPF
5. RadControls for WinForms
6. Telerik Reporting
7. Telerik OpenAccess ORM
8. JustCode
9. JustMock
10. WebUI Test Studio Dev Edition

Direct link to the page: http://www.telerik.com/download.aspx

Hope you like the new download page.

Telerik Open Access exception : The assembly 'xxx' does not have a config file with an openaccess node.

In some old versions of Telerik Open Access you may come to this exception.
I am not quite sure about the latest versions.
However, I've found a forum post that explains that this exception occurs if your project wasn't yet enabled for Open Access.
This wasn't my case so I tried some other things.
At the end, it appeared that "The assembly 'xxx' does not have a config file with an openaccess node" exception may occur if your app.config file is broken. It should be a valid XML file. In my case I have forgotten to close a <class> node with its corresponding </class> ...

Edit: As Yosif Yosifov stated, there is an easier way to check if your app.config file is fine. Simply select Telerik -> Open Access -> Configuration -> Check Settings ... dialog from Visual Studio menu.

US courts website runs on sitefinity

Just to inform you that the U.S. courts website was launched by DeepBlue. The site is using our CMS - Sitefinity.

Some more information about the project may be available soon.

Here is the site:

http://www.uscourts.gov/Home.aspx

Hopefully we will see some more .gov sites to be using our precious CMS.

Sitefinity 4.0 CTP is live!

Kind of late but - check out Sitefinity 4.0 CTP. http://www.sitefinity.com/4.0/asp-net-features.aspx
 
Have a great time playing with it!

Telerik OpenAccess ORM Q1 2010 will introduce its DSL Designer, Mapping Details Editor, new Schema Explorer, Update From DB Schema Wizard, Entity D...

A lot of tools I wanted to see live in this product. Finally, from Q1 2010 you can enjoy those really soon!

I will also ;).

Kudos to the team that made it all happen!

Some screenshots from Telerik blog:

The DSL Designer:




Mapping details editor:



Schema Explorer:




Update From Database Model’ Wizard:





Stay tuned ...

Some telerriffic T-Shirts

It's time telerik fans to pick up the T-Shirt they like the most.
You can vote for the T-Shirt that you like most here :
Telerik Facebook Page

Here are all the variants you can choose from:



















Now go vote ;)

Telerik is Red Herring Global 100 Winner

Just to let you know that telerik is Red Herring Global 100 Winner.



I hope this is just the beginning ;)

See full list of Red Herring winners here:
Red Herring Global 100 Winners

Public Issue tracking system launched today!

If you haven't heard yet - we have a brand new Silverlight Public Issue tracking system.

It was built to help you track your issues and features and be instantly informed about the new things we are doing here.
You can also vote for your favourite feature, thus rising their priorities.



The PITS is still tagged ^beta but it is very usable, so you can start using it right away.

Are you still here?
Click here to be taken directly to PITS so you can start subscribing for the stuff you like ;).

http://www.telerik.com/support/pits.aspx#/home

Happy holidays from telerik :)

Posted by Stephen Forte, here are some greetings from telerik offices:

http://www.stephenforte.net/PermaLink,guid,d29db13e-a239-49e6-b620-b72e8980c662.aspx?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+StephenFortesBlog+(Stephen+Forte`s+Blog)&utm_content=Google+Reader

:).

Introduction to programming with C#

As Vesko Kolev stated in his blog - a new bulgarian book about C# programming is in progress.
I decided to take part because it seems very interesting. I haven't much experience in publishing so it will be very beneficial for me to work on this.
Actually I was author in a software magazine few years ago (as far as I remember I was about 17 years old so it must have been about 6 years ago). It should help me as I took the first chapter - introduction to programming where I will show the readers how to install Visual Studio 2010, how to start their first project and how to write their first program, some diagrams of the .NET framework 4.0 will also be included in this chapter.

We decided not to include any advanced features in this book, just core programming language, no extensions, no lambda expressions, no var, no automatic properties, no nothing.
This is because this book targets potential software developers and not software developers. It should show the developer how to code, how to think etc. We decided that if a man / lady without any software experience may think that auto property won't take memory after it doesn't involve variables (at least visualy :).
That is why we do only core things.

Wish us luck. We would really love to expand bulgarian software development community with few more people :). After all if even one guy / gal of all the people that will potentiall read the book becomes an expert - our mission would be completed (we are dreaming for more impact ofcourse :).

As Svetlin Nakov and Vesko Kolev said - telerik is sponsor for this book so it should be published easilly than their prеvious book - "Introduction to programming with Java" and would probably joy some more marketing efforts.

That was it about the book.
Now about my motivation to join the project no matter my personal engagements and all the work I have at telerik and at the university.
The first reason is that I am a self - taught (almost) developer.
I never had degree that will help me find my work, join some society of developers that will help me when I hit a difficult problem.
There wasn't even internet in my hometown. A friend of mine gave me a book on programming with Delphi (that Sams 21 days brick :).
The Delphi help also helped me and I also downloaded html files to read later when I was at school.

Then I applied for a job in the city where I was studying (Veliko Tyrnovo).
It was all my collegues that helped me improve my skills.
I don't feel as a worldwide recognised expert or something but getting to the intermediate level from nowhere is achievement to me.
So reason #1 to join this book is to give something back.

Another reason is that I would like to see how a book is written, are there different proccesses than in the software development. It has something to do with the blog posts I guess :)
So reason #2 is to steal some knowledge :)

And some kind of nostalgy would be the last reason to join :).As I said, I was an editor in a software magazine, it was very nice thing to do. The article, then the readers asking for some more information. I miss this a bit :)
Reason #3 - to feel the old days when I was an editor :)

Telerik after few days of work

I wasn't blogging for a while but I was concentrated at my new work ;).

Actually I had forgotten that I have blog but few collegues were joking with me that I suddenly put my blog posts (especially those focussed on radControls) on hold. They also asked me if I am going to stop writing about telerik :).
So I decided to write about telerik ;). This time from other prospect.
I was thinking a lot about this post.
If I only praise the company the readers may think I have some interest to do so.
So here is the truth.

I will first start with the interview.
It was held in telerik HQ here in Sofia (my position is also here), the people who was responsible for the interview did their job in a very professional way. The interview was very easy to handle and more like a chat with friends. No stress at all.

The technical questions were handcrafted in a way so the interviewers can get an idea of my technical skills without bothering me with a questions like : "Do you know what is the method in the System.x.y.z.Class which should be used to do access NASA space shuttle chip N1A2322AH". I mean I can remember some of them but I can't know each method in the .NET framework, all the commands in the TFS, all the things in jQuery etc.
No such questions. But real technical questions instead. I will not disclose more on that.

Some processes which I will also skip took place in a matter of week.

The first day
It was a day to get familiar with the company, the collegues etc. telerik HR manager introduced me to all the teams, I met all the people, got some other technical orientation meetings and was ready to go.

The task
I had a challenging task (challenging to me at least, it may be easy to do for other people). Anyway it kept my interest all the time until it was finished. Offcourse I will not disclose more details on this. Just to let you know that I was happy with it.

The meetings
Everything is discussed, each collegue is helpful, there are meeting rooms which are available for longer meetings and you can also go to your collegue desk for shorter discussions.

The people
As I said the people are quite friendly.
Lots of smart guys there. You can learn and teach. Also I have a lot of friends who were collegues of mine from previous companies. They really helped a lot to integrate.

So will I continue to write about radControls
Probably not. At least not that often. When I was at my previous work I had found some problems with the controls because I needed to implement some uncommon scenarios. As I stated in my posts - some of them was because of lack of knowledge in rad products. Now if I have problem I can internally ask someone from the team to help me out or if I find an issue we can discuss if we can address it or find a workaround. That wasn't quite possible before. So I may write a post on how the issue was resolved instead just pointing it out.

Disclaimer :)
The above is my personal opinion based on about a week work.
May or may not change in time. Hope it will not :).

First day at Telerik

Just to update you that tomorrow is my first day at Telerik.
Wish me luck!

W3C Zoom CSS property. I really want this feature included!!!

Lot's of people are discussing this.
And the designers are often saying something like:
"I cannot imagine a scenario where you will need to use the Zoom CSS property."
To the readers that haven't yet hit this problem - the CSS Zoom property seems to be proprietary and to be working for IE (I think version 6 and above).

To all those designers - there ARE scenarios where you will want to let the user zoom everything proportionally without using the browser buttons / sliders / shortcuts, but with CSS / JS only.
I will give you few examples:

1. I needed to create an overview control of page. It should represent the page in a smaller percentage and, upon scroll, the page should scroll proportinally. I can have a div with the same DOM tree (or even an IFrame loading the same page or something). In this case I URGENTLY need the CSS Zoom property.
2. Telerik radReporting - the ReportViewer has a dropdown to let the user choose a zoom level to preview the page (web based and not after clicking print preview or something). Actually the Print Preview browser command isn't an option as the report viewer may be on the page with other controls and the user SHOULD BE ABLE to zoom in and out only the portion of the page where the report is (it is an IFrame with the data rendered as HTML, I believe). In telerik case - there seems to be some browser detection and when the browser isn't capable of zooming in / out - the dropdown with the zooming levels is simply hidden (they have no other choice unfortunatelly and I support them for this decision).

Now, as you may expect - in my scenario I cannot simply hide the overview control as the page heavilly depends on it.
Should I now have my revenge now? I've seen all those messages accross the web telling you that there are better browsers to use than IE.
Should I now display a message like:
"Sorry, your browser isn't capable of zooming in and out, only IE supports this, so please switch to IE."

I really hate those browser wars and if you really want to know my opinion - yes, IE may be harder to design. It may be messing up the containers, it may not be passing the ACID N test.
But it is the only browser that is suitable for my scenario (at least from my search in IE all the posts were following the same line - "zoom is IE proprietary, it won't work under other browsers").
Why are all other browsers sleeping then?


P.S. I have found something like -moz-zoom or something but wasn't able to make it work under FireFox (if it works under Firefox it should also probably work under Google Chrome as they are using the same engine I think).
P.P.S. - haven't tested but I think the zoom CSS property should also be available under Opera as they (as far as I know) use the IE core.

P.P.P.S - if anyone know how can we ask W3C to reconsider this for at least the next revision of CSS I would be glad to give my vote. I also advice telerik to do the same. Not only the reporting will work in all browsers but they may be able to do some other great controls using this property.

Really annoying ...

Insignifficant inconvience in telerik radReports

This one is not a big deal but it would be good if there is a workaround.
When you create a new report and choose to create a new datasouce (Database in my case) - the classes will be created in the project root and not where the report is created.
I tried to find some option or something in order to be able to place the datasource in a different folder in my project but with no luck. The datasource was always created in the root of the project.
Here comes the Microsoft part - when you then try to move the classes in another folder (by dragging them in the solution explorer), Visual Studio seems to mess up the namespaces (although I am 99% sure I have moved classes accross the project and the result was I need to manually change the class namespace in order to reflect its path - for example I have been able to move classes from the root folder of the project to let's say a folder named Helpers and I needed to manually change the namespace from ProjectName.SomeClass to ProjectName.Helpers.SomeClass), just can't get it.

It may ofcourse be some of the endless options in the Visual Studio not checked :)
It's kind of pain when you have a large project and want to separate different files according to their role in the project.