August 2008 Archives

Just a quick post to highlight Paul Boag's great article over on ThinkVitamin entitled The 5 hidden costs of running a CMS.  I've blogged about problems with content management systems before so it's good to know that I'm not the only one who feels this way.  I won't say that CMSs are always a bad idea but I do think business managers should read this article before making snap decisions and thinking that a CMS will solve all their problems.

While the number of 3rd-party components built on the .NET framework seems to rise by the day, Telerik continues to remain an industry leader, delivering a very comprehensive set of tools at a reasonable price. As the owner of a small web business I'm constantly looking for ways to get complicated tasks done quicker and easier thereby providing excellent solutions for my clients at affordable rates.  The Telerik RadControls suite allows me to do precisely that.

I'd played around with Telerik's controls in the past and had been impressed so when a recent client project called for a custom ASP.NET CMS setup, I decided that it was time to see what the updated RadControls toolset was all about.  In a word... awesome. While the old RadControls for ASP.NET is still a great product, the new RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX versions are just amazing.

The online demos really speak for themselves and say more about the product than this blog post ever could but I'll give it a shot.  The Editor control is the best I've seen with it's easily customizable interface and built in asset management and image editing dialogs.  The Grid control is everything the .NET GridView control should be with it's almost limitless features.  The Dock and Window tools enable you to effortlessly create portal sites with drag and drop windows... and on and on and on.  Hit the demo site and see for yourself.

$999 for a license (plus subscription and source code) isn't exactly pocket change but consider what you get for that money.  With 22 controls in the suite, that works out to less than 50 bucks per control.  Similar components sell for hundreds of dollars apiece.  The best part though, in my opinion, is that the license is per developer.  So once I buy the toolset, I can use any or all of the controls in as many projects as I want.  I can use them across multiple servers and domains and for various different clients.

Lastly, as you would expect there is a slight learning curve to being able to effectively utilize the product.  Telerik's immensely detailed documentation, vast library of training videos, and online forums and knowledge base will all help you get up and running as soon as possible however.  The few hours you'll spend learning the controls will save you countless hours down the road.

If you're an ASP.NET developer, you owe it to yourself to check out Telerik RadControls.  Once you start using them, you'll wonder how you ever got by without them.