Telerik recently released a new release of Kendo UI suite, which solves the data manipulation challenges that many developers face. The latest release of Kendo UI suite, a popular HTML5 and JavaScript framework includes two new data management widgets such as TreeList and PivotGrid.
TreeList is the combination of grid and tree view features into one widget complete with load-on-demand and data editing capabilities. On the other hand, PivotGrid enable developers to perform operations over multidimensional/pivot data.
The Online/Offline support included with Kendo UI suite enable apps to work offline by storing data locally. It also syncs the offline data once the user is online again thus avoiding data loss.
With the help of the the latest release of Kendo UI suite, users will be able to export data into a PDF/Excel document.
Kendo UI suite November 2014 release includes improved AngularJS integration which features mobile application transitions and view interactions. Moreover, the new mobile widgets provides full support for iOS8 and Android Lollipop.
Learnxpress had a chat with Burke Holland, Developer Advocate, Telerik to know more about the new features of Kendo UI suite.
Learnxpress: Can you share with us the key differences between TreeList and PivotGrid?
The key difference is that the PivotGrid is for displaying OLAP data, also known as cubes, and the TreeList is for displaying hierarchical data that usually comes from relational sources as is commonly recursive in its relationship in that a record is probably related to anotherrecord in the same table in a hierarchical fashion.
A common scenario for this might be a table of employees where the organization hierarchy is represented by a “ManagerID” field which points to the “EmployeeID” of the appropriate manager.
In the past, TreeViews were used to represent this sort of information, but TreeViews are really meant to display a Node of data – or rather a singular label while the TreeList is meant to display entire records in tabular fashion so that they can be viewed and edited.
Learnxpress: What is the benefit of online/offline support?
With Kendo Ui’s fully responsive API and mobile framework, more and more developers are building applications that are running on tablets and phones. These devices, unlike traditional desktops, are not always connected. Connectivity on mobile is intermittent by definition. Applications need to account for this.
Disregarding a user’s changes because they were momentarily disconnected is not an option. The offline support makes this sort of offline intelligence trivial to implement for ALL Kendo UI widgets. The Kendo UI DataSource is now aware of an offline state and will manage changes locally until it is brought back online, at which point it will sync it’s changes with the remote service.
Learnxpress: Approximately how many developers use the Kendo UI suite?
Telerik Kendo UI is used by 200,000 devs, worldwide.
Learnxpress: What benefit does a timeline view in Scheduler provide?
The timeline view essentially “pivots” the scheduler onto it’s side so that resources are seen across the left and times are horizontal as opposed to seeing a schedule by date and time and looking at the time vertically. This is a common use case for scheduling meeting rooms and provides a better UX for looking at multiple resource allocations across a single day, week or other span of time.
Learnxpress: Can you explain CRUD support for Diagram?
CRUD support means that the diagram widget will now allow for configuration of remote endpoints for create, read, update and delete. That means that you can build diagrams in the browser, and then save the diagram configuration to a database and likewise edit existing diagrams later.
Learnxpress: Did you release a new theme inspired by Android with Kendo UI suite?
Aside from the existing Android Dark and Light themes for Kendo UI Mobile, we also released a Material Design theme this quarter for both mobile and web. Material Design is a fresh, clean way of building applications that look good on screens of any size and provides some great guidance for developers and designers. Kendo UI’s Material Design theme is built to fit right into applications implementing material design so that nobody has to sacrifice function for form.
Learnxpress: Is it possible to build Windows apps using Kendo UI suite?
While it is technically possible to build WinJS apps with Kendo UI controls, a much better option would be to use Telerik Windows 8 controls for XAML and WinJS, as well as the new Windows Universal controls. Note that most Telerik controls use similar functionality under the covers, but are optimized to work best with the different platforms and visual paradigms.
About Burke Holland
Burke Holland is a web developer living in Nashville. He enjoys working with and meeting developers who are building mobile apps with jQuery / HTML5 and loves to hack on social APIs. Burke works for Telerik as a Developer Advocate focusing on Kendo UI. He is @burkeholland on Twitter.
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