Creating a Simple Example

I'll show you how the Telerik tools work in a moment. First, let me point out that the RAD Control Suite is extremely complex. There isn't any way that a single review will tell you everything about this product. In fact, after testing the software, I had more samples that could possibly fit into five or six reviews. After working with the examples that Telerik provides, as well as the ones I created, I decided to show a typical example so you can get a feel for what you'll need to do to use this product effectively. Just be aware that there's plenty more here than I can talk about.

Adding the Controls to the IDE

Even though the help files are superior in most respects, and the vendor provides an overwhelming number of well-designed examples, getting started with the Telerik RAD Control Suite isn't as easy as it could be.

At first, I thought that the installation hadn't gone as planned. When I opened up Visual Studio, I didn't see a single change. Right clicking the Toolbox and choosing Add/Remove Items from the context menu didn't yield any new entries on the .NET Framework Controls tab of the Customize Toolbox dialog box either.

The one inconvenience of using this product is that you must manually add the controls from the \Program Files\telerik\r.a.d.controls Q3 2005\bin folder of your hard drive. I chose to create a new tab to hold the controls by right clicking the Toolbox and choosing Add Tab from the context menu. Selecting all of the DLLs in the bin folder that begin with the word "Rad" yields the set of controls shown in Figure 1.

This is the only instance where I found the directions in the help file didn't work. The Telerik product support staff promises that the next version of the product will automatically install the controls in the Toolbox. In the mean time, don't use the instructions in the help file unless you have purchased a single control, rather than the entire suite.

Figure 1: The RAD Control Suite includes an impressive list of controls.

Creating a Control

Once you add the controls to your Toolbox, using the RAD Control Suite couldn't be easier. You drag-and-drop the controls to the display, configure them, and add any required glue code. You also need to include the RadControls folder in the root folder of your project.

The directions are a tad unclear here when you're using the RAD Control Suite. To add the folder, copy it from the \Program Files\telerik\r.a.d.controls Q3 2005 folder to your application folder.

I decided to start simply by creating a RadTabStrip. Well, I thought it would be simple; there is a significant learning curve. The RAD Control Suite produces impressive results with only a little effort once you understand the basics, but you do need to spend the time to learn them. Reading the help file end-to-end isn't optional.

The first step is creating a RadTabStrip is to define the tabs. Unfortunately, you won't find a collection for this purpose in the Properties window for this task. Right click the control and choose Build RadTabStrip from the context menu. You'll see a RadTabStrip Builder dialog box, like the one shown in Figure 2.