Telerik, a provider of software application lifecycle and content management solutions for .NET development, has opened a public beta for its RadControls for Windows Phone 7 . The beta adds three new controls to those released in Telerik's initial CTP of RadControls for Windows Phone 7—Gauge, JumpList, and ListBox—for a total of 17 controls. The public beta precedes the expected official launch of RadControls for Windows Phone 7 the third week of March, according to Evan Hutnick, Telerik developer evangelist.
The three new controls are based on Telerik's building-block controls, said Hutnick. For example, the new Rad JumpList control is based on Telerik's RadData BoundListBox. "The Rad JumpList uses the BoundListBox as a base," Hutnick said. "The data engine lets you add sorting and grouping, and reproduces the JumpList experience as the native OS does." The difference, though, said Hutnick, is that Telerik's JumpList performs faster because of the BoundListBox's architecture.
Another new control based on the data engine is the DataBoundListBox, which Telerik bills as a lighter weight, faster version of the default, Microsoft-provided list box control for Windows Phone 7.
The third new control is the Rad Gauge, which lets developers add dashboards and display graphical indicators. "This is the first of the visualization controls we will add. It's useful for applications like finance, personal productivity," said Hutnick.
Because Telerik is an early entrant into the Windows Phone 7 component market, I asked Hutnick his thoughts on what kind of mobile development information and resources developers he's encountered seem to need most. "Developers are looking for architecture guidance," said Hutnick. "They're used to working on applications for the web… with the phone, everything has to be quick, the application has to load quickly." Hutnick says he's working on producing some best-practices guidelines for Windows Phone 7 developers, "to help them make the mind shift to mobile."
You can find more information about RadControls for Windows Phone 7 and sign up for the beta here.