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Telerik Kendo UI R3 2018 Release Themes Components Industry-First WCAG 21 Compliance-2_870x220

The Telerik and Kendo UI R3 2018 release is now live, bringing over 20 new modern UI components as well as new themes across the .NET and JavaScript frameworks. Also, we are proud to be the first component vendor to support WCAG 2.1 standard compliance.

I'm pleased to announce that our 2018 Progress Telerik and Progress Kendo UI R3 releases are now live! You can now upgrade to the latest version from your account or download a trial to see the latest features. While this blog will cover the highlights across the .NET and JavaScript product lines, you can also see the release in action through the recordings of our Telerik and Kendo UI release webinars. 

Read on to see how the latest release helps you get more from your .NET and JavaScript apps.

What's New for Web Developers (ASP.NET AJAX/MVC/Core jQuery, Angular, React, Vue)

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are part of a series of web accessibility guidelines published by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the main international standards organization for the internet. We closely watched the work done on the WCAG 2.1 guideline and as soon as the guideline was ready, our team jumped on it.

We've implemented the standards in our Kendo UI tooling, and you can now create accessible web apps that are up to the latest standards right out of the box, without writing any additional code. This is a huge productivity boost for anyone wishing to implement the guideline, and in cases of government-related business, you are likely required to adhere to them shortly after its publication. Applications built with components adhering to WCAG 2.1 guidelines will not only be accessible to people with disabilities, but also to users of all kinds of devices and interfaces: desktop browser, voice browser, mobile phone, automobile-based personal computer, etc.

In addition, we have added several controls and performance improvements across our web tooling portfolio, including:

  • MultiColumnComboBox component and new TreeList features for ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Core, JSP, PHP, jQuery and Vue
  • MultiviewCalendar for React
  • ArcGauge and a new Chat feature for ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Core, JSP and PHP
  • Notification component, chart updates, and features to various components added for Angular
  • Stock Chart, Sparkline Chart and Dialog components and Grid features for React 
  • Material-inspired theme for ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET Core
  • Feature enhancements for HTML Charts, Drawing, Gantt, PDF Export and Spreadsheet for ASP.NET AJAX 

And of course, all our docs and sample apps have been updated to reflect these new additions, so make sure you take them for a spin.

What's New for Desktop Developers (WPF, WinForms, UWP)

Who said a PC can’t look like a Mac? Well, it probably can’t fully, but if you want to have your Windows app look a little more like something that’s been developed for a Mac, or at least to have the modern look-and-feel of the trendy MacOS design, you can easily achieve it, with the latest new theme - the Mac-inspired Crystal theme for both WPF and WinForms based desktop applications. In addition to the new theme, we heard your feature requests and feedback and have added:

  • The highly requested MultiColumnComboBox control is available for Telerik UI for WPF
  • Selection support for the Image Editor component & Bookmarking functionality in PDFViewer in WPF
  • A new NavigationView mode (a.k.a. Hamburger Menu) in the PageView and AgendaView to the Scheduler in Telerik UI for WinForms

What's New for Mobile Developers (Xamarin)

The Telerik UI for Xamarin suite keeps on growing in terms of number of controls—now up to nearly 80 controls for developing on mobile with Xamarin.iOS, Xamarin.Android and Xamarin Forms. With the latest release, we are bringing 9 new components and various new features across existing controls, providing you with all the required tools and controls to cover an ever growing variety business scenarios and used cases. The new additions as of this release are:

  • A new and improved AutoComplete control - The AutoCompleteView
  • Brand New Accordion and Expander navigation controls
  • Built-in login, authentication and app feedback screens
  • Financial and Donut Charts for the Charting component
  • MultiDayView for the Calendar
  • Load On Demand functionality to the TreeView
  • Border and Checkbox as well as scheduling features for the Calendar control
  • Nested Properties Support in the DataGrid

What's New in Telerik Reporting and Report Server

As with most of our products, much of the roadmap for Telerik Reporting and Telerik Report Server comes directly from your requests on our feedback portal, so thank you and keep them coming! 

The R3 2018 release will include pie charts data consolidation, improved scheduled tasks and data alerts (with email report from the report viewers as well as delivery of batch reports), and localization of the web management app. And, most exciting of all, the brand new PDF/A export feature.

While we support fifteen different export options such as Excel, Word, etc., the most popular one is PDF. The current release adds support for the PDF/A ISO-standardized version of this format, which is specialized for use in the archiving and long-term preservation of electronic documents. It is self-contained in terms of the needed assets (e.g. fonts, encryptions, annotations), ensuring that the document will look exactly as-is on any machine the report renders on.

Conversational UI for the Modern UI of Tomorrow

In our May release, we had introduced industry-first conversational UI controls for all the .NET platforms and JavaScript frameworks we support. In our September release, thanks to the feedback you have been sending in, we have made a number of performance and look-and-feel improvements to add an additional layer of polish to our Conversational UI. Please keep the feedback coming and tune in to our Conversational UI page for various tutorials on getting started with Conversational UI and chatbots.

What’s New in Telerik JustMock

The R3 2018 release of JustMock will include the support of the C# 7 features "ref return values and ref locals," "local functions" as well as "named parameters" and mocking of non-public property setters.

What’s New in Telerik Test Studio Dev Edition

In April 2018, we launched an automated testing solution for .NET developers. With the R3 release, we debut new Telerik and Kendo UI for jQuery and Angular translators for IE, Chrome and Firefox in Telerik Test Studio Dev Edition.   

What's Up with the DevCraft Bundle

Our DevCraft bundles deliver all our .NET and JavaScript tools to you in one simple package. While this is not necessarily a part of the release, this year we have significantly increased the value of our DevCraft bundles by adding Report ServerTest Studio Developer Edition and Virtual Classroom (more than 30 hours of on-demand product training that is refreshed with every release). With these additions, we hope to do even more to help you continue to ship quality software on time.

Try Now and Get More from Your Applications

Seeing is believing, so you can now upgrade to the latest version from your account or download a trial to see the latest features. 

Release Webinars

We’ve assembled quite a crew for your entertainment—with our Product Management and Developer Advocates showing you the latest release.

Watch the recording of the Telerik R3 2018 release webinar, which was streamed live on October 2, 2018:
Watch the Telerik Webinar

Watch the recording of the Kendo UI R3 2018 release webinar, which was streamed live on September 27, 2018:
Watch the Kendo UI Webinar


About the Author

Sasha Krsmanovic

is a VP of Product Marketing at Telerik and is based in Toronto, Canada. A geek at heart, Sasha works with HTML and JavaScript developers worldwide and loves learning from passionate people. You can follow Sasha on Twitter @k_sasha.

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