Fat Agnus

Apparently Telerik read my article about me not liking their product so much and they took the time to write to me, because they wanted to know more. I`m really impressed by that sort of commitment, even though I don`t like their products (you could learn something from this ComponentArt ;)).

In the article I probably didn`t give enough reasons why I think their products aren`t that great, so I kind of owe that to Telerik, since they was polite enough to write me.

The issues

To be honest Telerik is probably doing the best they can to create some useful controls, and to be fair, some of the issues with the controls falls back on the whole idea of how Asp.Net WebForms works (a concept that I don`t really like).

Difficult to handle the rendered html

The issue with this is that since it is drag n drop (I personally don`t use the designer in visual studio), you can put them anywhere you like. The controls sometimes happen to render some funky Html, that makes it a bit difficult to have the control play nicely with the rest of your Html/Css.

Slow Javascript

One of their controls which I find to be really slow is the WYSIWYG editor. It takes ages to render and if you are so unlucky that you need to add more than one on the same page, then your users a screwed. Not every user is sitting on a computer that is reasonably fast and they might still be using IE6.

Debugging the Javscript?

Not a change. It would be really nice if this was possible because sometimes the javascript from the controls doesn`t always do what you might think it would do, and then you would like to know why.

Inline Javascript

When you are using WebForms with Viewstate the data in your page starts to pile up and controls like the once from Telerik and ComponentArt adds lot of extra data in form of javascript code to the page (depending on the control of course). All this just makes the page even slower.

Here is an idea

I have spoken with a friend about this and we both agree that is would be a great idea if they made a Javascript Framework, which you could be able to use just like PrototypeJs. Because lets face it, there are a lot of cool javascripts out there and people add all kinds of different scripts to the page. This will also make your page render even more slowly, so if you could minimize this with an open framework (which you probably based your controls on), then that would be a great move.

Because the less javascript files you have to add, the faster your page will render.

If you have been a .NET developer for a while then you have probably heard about companies like Telerik and ComponentArt. Both of the companies sell .NET controls that seemingly make it easy to get Ajax functionality implemented into your applications.

I have had the “pleasure” of working with controls from both of the companies and I must say, even though it seems like a great idea, it isn`t. It will give you something fast that you can show off to a client or whatever, but in the long run, they suck.

Basically, they are just poorly written and perform really badly, compared to a lot of the Opensource Javascript frameworks that exists today. I once had a boss that really had high thoughts about them, he also liked MS Ajax.net and in generally, he wasn`t to keen on Javascript, however he is a very good developer and knows his stuff. After a long period of time he started to change his mind, which for me is a good indication of just how bad they suck.

I have another friend, whom I used to work with, which also have had the pleasure of working with the controls and he was a real Javascript savvy. He used to complain about the pain the controls gave him and he was the one who got me hooked on javascript and many of the frameworks that exists today.

So the conclusion is that, if you want javascript that performs well, give you full control of what is going on and maybe just need some javascript magic tricks to your site, then I would recommend that you check out some of the following in this blogpost.

Good collection of javascript frameworks

You might need to work a little more to implement the functionality, but I think that the benefits are greater then the “downside“.

Here is a list of few good Javascript frameworks that will help you get nice javascript functionality added to your website.

• PrototypeJS
• jQuery
• ExtJS
• Yui
• Mochikit
• Dojo toolkit
• MooTools
• MooFX
• Rico
• Script.aculo.us
• Xilinus
• MiniAjax (collection of different javascripts)
• Tinymce (WYSIWYG)

You can also find various addons to some of the larger frameworks like PrototypeJs, jQuery and Yui - Just ask your best friend Google