NetAdvantage for ASP.NET Product Changes in 2011 Volume 2
Infragistics has been developing ASP.NET controls since the ASP.NET framework was released during early 2000s. Since then, we have provided the toolset that have helped web developers take advantage of the Microsoft’s web platform, combined with the RAD environment & tooling for Visual Studio to build rich, interactive web applications.
Murtaza Abdeali
8min read
Infragistics has been developing ASP.NET controls since the ASP.NET framework was released during early 2000s. Since then, we have provided the toolset that have helped web developers take advantage of the Microsoft’s web platform, combined with the RAD environment & tooling for Visual Studio to build rich, interactive web applications.
A lot has changed since then, ASP.NET framework has undergone 5 iterations, IE is no longer the dominant browser in the public space, Visual Studio has gone through 4 iterations, and from the client technology front there have been numerous updates on HTML standards, CSS, AJAX frameworks. Today, the web talks are all about JavaScript, HTML5, CSS3 and the modern browsers including Mobile Web.
These are a lot of changes, almost all the web elements from browsers, to frameworks to the client technologies have gone through iterations, the toolset that Infragistics started developing almost a decade ago was faced with some major challenges to keep up with all of these updates. The controls were not designed in a way that it could accommodate all these changes as they were happening and the code was becoming fragile as we continue to make tweaks to expand our reach as much as we could. We did not update the classic controls to support Web Kit browsers like Safari & Chrome because it would’ve required major rewriting of our rendering engine, which would pretty much mean breaking a lot of existing applications. Hence, we decided to build a new framework based on latest standard with performance in mind and modern browser support, named Aikido. We started developing the framework in late 2007 and since then any new controls we’ve shipped has been based on this new Framework.
We do understand that this affects many of you, and we will continue to provide support as much as we can in this area. Input and feedback have been really helpful in making sure we make this transition and change as easy as possible for customers who plan to upgrade to our lasted framework stack. Here are some of the commonly questions asked:
What Controls Are Retiring?
After going through the list of all the ASP.NET controls, the following controls were flagged as classic due to the fact that the code base was old and we were not able to expand browser reach on those.
- WebGrid
- WebCombo
- WebDateChooser
- WebListBar
- WebCalendar
- WebToolbar
- UltraWebTab
- WebDataInput
- WebTextEdit
- WebMaskEdit
- WebNumericEdit
- WebDateTimeEdit
- WebPercentEdit
- WebCurrencyEdit
- WebMenu
- WebTree
- WARP Panel
- WebPanel
- WebNavBar
- WebWeekView
- WebGridExcelExporter
- WebGridDocumentExporter
What Is the Sunset Policy?
The controls listed above are no longer part of the product starting 2011 Volume 2 release. These controls are going to be maintained until June of 2012. Developer support on these controls will be available until Q1 of 2014. Since 2010 Volume 1, these controls were taken out of the Visual Studio toolbox, if you need to locate them in prior releases, refer to this help article.
What Options Do I Have?
You don’t have to upgrade if you don’t need to. The controls support the latest versions of Firefox and IE, so if these two are your primary browser targets, then you continue to maintain your existing applications. If you are looking at upgrading application framework over to ASP.NET MVC or are planning to do pure client-side UI development using JavaScript or jQuery, then check out our NetAdvantage for jQuery product, it is meant to cater to such type of web development needs.
On the other hand, if you want to continue to develop on ASP.NET Web Forms and have a need to take your application to Web Kit browsers or take advantage of the Aikido architecture like light weighted ness, and more standard compliance controls, then you’d have to replace the old control with the new one, and wire up the client and server events and functionality accordingly. Here are the one on one replacement for the controls that we are retiring:
|
Classic ASP.NET Control |
New Aikido-Based Controls/Replacement |
|
WebGrid |
WebDataGrid , WebHierarchicalDataGrid |
|
WebCombo |
WebDropDown |
|
WebDateChooser |
WebDatePicker |
|
WebListBar |
WebExplorerBar |
|
WebCalendar |
WebMonthCalendar |
|
WebToolbar |
WebDataMenu |
|
UltraWebTab |
WebTab |
|
WebTextEdit |
WebTextEditor |
|
WebMaskEdit |
WebMaskEditor |
|
WebNumericEdit |
WebNumericEditor |
|
WebDateTimeEdit |
WebDateTimeEditor |
|
WebPercentEdit |
WebPercentEditor |
|
WebCurrencyEdit |
WebCurrencyEditor |
|
WebMenu |
WebDataMenu |
|
WebTree |
WebDataTree |
|
WARP Panel |
MS Update Panel |
|
WebPanel |
WebExplorerBar |
|
WebNavBar |
Custom Pager Templates with Aikido Grids |
|
WebWeekView |
Old UI, No longer supported in MS Outlook |
|
WebGridExcelExporter |
WebExcelExporter |
|
WebGridDocumentExporter |
WebDocumentExporter |
I am in the middle of migrating over to the new toolset, how can I use both Classic & New Controls?
You can continue to use both the controls if you are on 2011 Volume 1 or earlier. Starting 2011 Volume 2, the classic controls are no longer going to be part of the product. Hence, in order to continue to maintain your applications that use classic controls, we have hosted “Version-Less” assemblies of them. It may require manual upgrade of your projects, but will allow you to continue to use classic controls until you are fully migrated over to the new toolset. You can download the version-less assemblies from the links below.
If you are on CLR 4 you need only assemblies for CLR 4
If you are on CLR 3.5, you’ll need assemblies for CLR 3.5 (2011 Volume 1) and assemblies for CLR 3.5 (2011 Volume 2)
You will find an upgrade guide in the zip which contains instructions on how to apply these assemblies to your projects.
Where Can I Find Help Migrating to New Controls?
Based on the feedback we’ve gotten so far, most of the customers find the grid control replacement to play a major role in the upgrade since it has the most code written around it, rest of the controls are fairly easy to move up.
Does the New Grid Support All the Features of the Old Grid?
One of the things we’ve worked on side-by-side during the sunset planning is maintaining a feature parity matrix. This allows us to have the new grid be compatible to the most commonly used features available as the old one before we retired it. After you go through the list, you will find that the new grids have some features that the classic UltraWebGrid was never able to support.
|
Feature |
UltraWebGrid |
WebDataGrid |
WebHierarchicalDataGrid |
|
Hierarchy |
yes |
NA |
yes |
|
Editing |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
AJAX |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
–Load On Demand |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
—-Manual |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
—-Automatic |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
–AJAX Events |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
–Virtual Scrolling |
yes |
yes |
no |
|
Templating |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
–Column Template |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
–Header Template |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
–Footer Template |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
–Empty Template |
no |
yes |
yes |
|
–Error Template |
no |
yes |
yes |
|
–Instantiating at Runtime |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
–Access Template Controls |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
–Band Templates |
no |
no |
no |
|
Bound Mode |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
–DataSet |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
—-DataTable |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
–IEnumerable |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
–Self Related tables |
no |
NA |
yes |
|
–DomainDataSource |
no |
yes |
yes |
|
–AccessDataSource |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
–SqlDataSource |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
–ObjectDataSource |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
–LinqDataSource |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
–XmlDataSource |
yes |
NA |
yes |
|
–HierarchicalDataSource |
yes |
NA |
yes |
|
Unbound Mode |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
Client Side Functionality |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
–Adding Rows/Events |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
–Editing Rows/Events |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
–Deleting Rows/Events |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
–Cell/Row/Column Selection |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
–Keyboard Events |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
–Mouse Events |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
–Dynamic Styling |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
–Cancel Actions |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
Validation Support |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
Hidden Columns |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
Unbound Columns |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
Merged Cells |
yes |
CTP |
CTP |
|
MultiColumn Headers |
yes |
Yes |
yes |
|
Copy and Paste |
yes |
Yes |
yes |
|
Keyboard Navigation |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
508 Compliance |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
Export to Excel |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
Export to PDF |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
Paging |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
–Custom Paging |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
–Child Band Paging |
no |
NA |
yes |
|
Filtering |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
Summary |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
Client side data binding |
no |
yes |
no |
|
Pinned Columns left |
yes |
yes |
no |
|
–Pinned Columns right |
no |
yes |
no |
|
Column Resizing |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
Column Moving |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
Tooltips |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
Sorting |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
Selection |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
Activation |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
Styling |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
–Css |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
–AppStyling |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
–Presets |
yes |
no |
no |
|
Internet Explorer |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
Firefox |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
Safari |
no |
yes |
yes |
|
Chrome |
no |
yes |
yes |
|
CRUD |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
–Auto |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
–Manual |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
Switching Data Sources Dynamically |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
Row Selector |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
Custom Schema |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
Row numbering |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
CalcManager support |
yes |
no |
no |
|
Stationary header/footer |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
Null text |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
Saving/loading client profile (layout) |
no |
yes |
yes |
|
Multi-row summaries |
no |
yes |
yes |
|
Ajax (loading) indicator |
yes |
yes |
yes |
What Is the Future of ASP.NET Toolset?
We are fully committed to our ASP.NET product and the future of web technologies. We want to continue helping you be even more successful using the Infragistics ASP.NET tools. This change allows us to focus exclusively on the new, modern Aikido based toolset for Web Forms developers and also our latest jQuery/HTML5 based toolset released under NetAdvantage for jQuery. We will continue to innovate as well as maintaining our market leading data grid rendering performance. As we build out new controls which target modern, RIA scenarios, we will also continue to build more of the rich, high performing line of business controls which target modern browsers and enterprise applications.
Lastly, I just wanted to let you know that this decision was not an easy one for us, but something we have to do given the market trends and needs. If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to reach out to me at murtazaa@infragistics.com