Kendo UI R2 2019 Release Webinar Recap

The R2 2019 release of Kendo UI shipped on May 15, 2019. Shortly afterward, we hosted a release webinar that walked through the latest features. This blog post is a summary of the webinar and provides a list answers to questions asked by attendees.

If you're new to our blogs, you might not be aware that we host a webinar after every release of our software. This is our way of showing you the latest and greatest features we've built in products like Kendo UI. It's also your opportunity to ask questions and have them answered by members of the product management and engineering teams.

Our webinar highlighted many of the great features we've added to the R2 2019 release of Kendo UI:

As you can see, the R2 release of Kendo UI brings with it a huge list of new components and features spread across our native libraries for jQuery, Angular, React, and Vue. Carl Bergenhem (Product Manager for Kendo UI) has provided an overview of the latest release in a series of blog posts:

• What's New in R2 2019 for Kendo UI
• What's New in R2 2019 for Kendo UI and jQuery
• What's New in the Kendo UI Angular Components with R2 2019
• What's New in KendoReact with R2 2019
• What's New in the Kendo UI Vue.js Components with R2 2019

The webinar was hosted by Eric Bishard, Carl Bergenhem, and myself (John Bristowe). Don't worry if you didn't get a chance to watch it live. We've posted it to the Kendo UI YouTube channel. In fact, you can watch it now!

Webinar Questions and Answers

We answered a number of questions during the webinar. Here's a sampling of the questions we received along with their answers:

Does Kendo UI share code across the libraries it supports (jQuery, Angular, React, Vue)? Are there any hooks to customize to the base behavior?
We share some common code. Changes to this common codebase are not possible for customers.

What scripts are required to enable mobile rendering? I tried to enable it before without changing any scripts/CSS. Enabling it broke the whole page. I've seen the documentation state different things.
If you're including kendo.all and the full CSS files this should all be included and you shouldn't need to change anything. However, if you're looking for individual scripts we are actively working on updating the page, Script Files for Data Management Widgets to showcase the newest list of files. Please submit a ticket on your specific case to make sure we can help you sooner rather than later! Alternatively, you can submit a suggestion to the Kendo UI Feedback Portal.

Will the features you've highlighted during this webinar be added to Telerik UI for .NET Core?
Totally! Anything mentioned during the section covering Kendo UI for jQuery was also added to Telerik UI for .NET Core!

What advantages do you have for creating PDF reports as compared to PDF.js?
Currently, we offer many similar features, but we are continuing to add features to this component as we speak to make our offering even more unique. 😀 We support both the usage of PDF.js and the Telerik Document Processing Libraries to process PDFs, but have our own unique toolbar and configuration options for the actual viewer. There's more to come for this component in fall 2019 and beyond!

Why are your Angular components better than competitor's components?
That's potentially a loaded question! Rather than do an explicit comparison, it might be useful to highlight a few reasons why people have switched to Kendo UI: overall, the approach we've taken with being truly native to Angular (never copying in code from our jQuery components), the overall performance of the components (especially looking at the Grid), and the overall breadth in offering of our components. There might be more granular and specific items depending on your scenario, but these are the general highlights that we see from chatting with customers.

Is endless scrolling available in a Grid widget available in Kendo UI for jQuery?
Yes!

Do you have solutions for Razor pages and ASP.NET MVC in .NET Core?
Yes, we do! Any of the features you see added to Kendo UI for jQuery is available for both ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET Core. These are available through the Telerik UI for ASP.NET MVC and Telerik UI for ASP.NET Core. We offer both HtmlHelpers and TagHelpers for each of the components.

Do you have grids that speed up the loading of large amounts of data?
Yes, and you're likely referring to our ASP.NET Core offering. We have various ways of dealing with large data sets, including loading only what you need on the current page, virtualization, and a few other techniques to help. None of these are a silver bullet since many features depend on end-user requirements and what features align, but we have plenty of people loading very large amounts of data in our components.

Do you have any products for ASP.NET Core?
Yes, Telerik UI for ASP.NET Core.

For the Spreadsheet component, can we set the row height to auto so it auto-fits?
This feature was not added with the R2 release, but we are aware of this need for future features of the Spreadsheet! Also, feel free to vote and comment on this feature to raise the priority even further: Kendo UI spreadsheet autofit row height.

Does the Editor component allow custom tags? Or, will it remove them when the content is loaded? Also, I did not see a spell checker.
Custom tags could certainly be inserted if you want! We don't have to sanitize anything from the actual content of the editor, so you could insert whatever you want in there. Keep in mind that you should always do client-side and server-side validation of content to be safe. Spell checking is not included at this point, but please submit this feedback: Kendo UI for Angular Feedback Portal.

Are you planning to support vanilla JavaScript?
Currently, we are focused on creating native libraries for all of the JavaScript frameworks we support (Angular, Vue, and React) along with evolving our core jQuery offering. As for an implementation supporting vanilla JavaScript, we are actively looking at what can be offered here (web components, etc.) but do not have any immediate plans to share going down this route.

Does the R2 2019 release remove the requirement on rxjs-compat?
Not yet, but we'll be moving towards full RxJS 6 compatibility soon.

Are there any plans for a Radial Menu widget in KendoUI for jQuery?
Not at the moment. There is a feature request for a radial menu widget in the feedback portal: Create a Radial Menu Control and/or a Animated Arc Popup Menu.

Will we have a drawer component in Kendo UI for Angular?
We will work towards adding this component in Angular during the 2nd half of this year So, it's coming!

Thank You

Thank you to everyone who attended and asked such great questions. If you have any others, feel free to leave them in the comments below or in our Feedback Portal.