Hi Guys,
We started our application development in 2006 using the "NetAdvantage for ASP.NET" classic controls like ultrawebgrid, ultrawebmenu, ultraweb editors, ultrawebtree etc. At that time, multi browser support was not a priority so we didnt consider it while developing our application. Our application supports only IE browser.
Now after five years, we need to support all major browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Safari etc. After going through forum posts and comminucations with Infragistics support, it seems that we need to upgrade all our infragistics controls to new Aikido controls which are supported with those browsers. Also Infragistics is saying that old "ultra" controls will soon be retired, so it seems that it is necessary to upgrade these controls.
But upgrading to new controls doesnt seems to be easy from the forum posts. Also we tried upgrading the controls on one page of our application and found that these new controls are very different in functionalities, methods, properties etc. Many of our pages has rich client side functionalities developed with the help of client side API's of controls like ultrawebgrid. For every small thing - we need to go to Infragistics support to tell the problem, provide sample application and then work with them to resolve the issues. If we go by this method - I think it will lot of time for upgrading the classic controls to new Akido controls. Because currently there doesnt seems to be a proper guideline or documentation on how upgrade should be done.
With this post, I would like to know opinions/views, issues in upgrading from classic controls to new Akido controls.
Thanks,Bhimraj
I'm in a similar position whereby my main web app has just broken because of the Firefox v10 release. I've known that the classic controls were going to be retired but I was kind of hoping that they'd hang in a bit longer but sadly not.
I know that the new Akido controls are better, cleaner and that we all need to "start again" sometimes but I'm in a bit of a quandary right now. Should I actually rely upon 3rd party controls. It's a fundamental question any developer has to ask themselves.
As I said, whilst I can appreciate the rational behind it all, my customers aren't quite so forgiving. I produced web site for a small organisation on a small budget which was launched two years ago. And now it's stopped working with Firefox and yes, then can use IE (Safari never goes down well), it leaves a bad taste.
So before I launch into upgrading everything to Akido, is there some kind of reassurance from Infragistics that they will continue to support Akido for at least five years? Yes, I'd prefer not to have to keep releasing new versions with service releases (so that would be an aspiration for the dev team) but that's still better than having a dead web app. As I developer, I know it's darn hard to write future proof code esp. in the world of the web browser. Even the web browser developers can't decide what the standards are!
Cheers, Rob.
Hi Rob,
Since we support each release for 3 years, as long as you are in a supported version, you are somewhere in a 3-year support window. I do know we plan in shipping ASP.NET controls for quite a while, so putting a 5 year re-assurance on support is not a stretch. Looking at where Microsoft seems to be investing, MVC / HTML5 is where the excitement is at. So you have 2 choices from us:
1) ASP.NET Aikido
2) HTML5 / jQuery w/ ASP.NET wrappers
Both are great solutions, but they target different platforms. The HTML5 / jQuery product is more forward looking, with support for mobile, tablets, multi-touch and high performance browser apps on the desktop. The ASP.NET Aikdio still supports touch, but we are going to put the efforts around tablets, phones and multi-touch in the HTML5 / jQuery product for those types of experiences. You'll notice though that our ASP.NET Aikido controls benefit from the innovations in the HTML5 / jQuery product - we add the same controls w/ ASP.NET wrappers, so you get the best of both worlds. We will continue to do this.
This doesn't even consider our Metro WinJS plans .. that might be another blog post :)
I think the bottom line is we are moving with new technology, and we'll support the the stuff you are using today for as long as we possibly can - in the case of Aikdio and HTML controls, that is where the investment is today and they both have rich roadmaps..
With the Classic Controls, it ran its course, and every fix we made for 1 new browser created 10 new bugs for another, so we had to make the tough decision to re-tool.
I hope this helps, let me know what else I can answer on this,
Thanks
Jason
Hello Rob,
I have contacted our product Management Team concerning this matter to see what they have to say about this. I will update you with the information provided to me.
Concerning Firefox v10 support for the classic controls can you please tell me what version of the NetAdvantage product you are using?
Sincerely,Mike P.Developer Support EngineerInfragistics, Inc.www.infragistics.com