Letters from Readers
A Matter of Documentation
Readers respond to our May 2010 review of Telerik RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX, debating the quality of the company's product documentation.
I have worked with Telerik's suites and find them lacking in one important area that you slightly mentioned, but which is a deal breaker. Telerik lacks complete and updated documentation. It's virtually impossible to get a production-grade application created using their tools without scouring the forums and getting support tickets. DevExpress and others do not have this problem.
Anonymous
Submitted via Internet
We've been working with Telerik controls for the last two years. The controls really helped us complete projects faster, and also their technical support is pretty good. I agree with the comment regarding the documentation, but I know that a book is coming out from Apress next month.
Yoel Summer
Submitted via Internet
I've been a Telerik customer for a couple of years and I am pretty much content with the AJAX controls (which I'm actively using for development), as well as with the technical resources. Being already familiar with the support materials, I notice regular additions and improvements in their demos, online documentation and other code base. When the docs or online examples are not that good or lacking at some point, I report that and find them updated for the next minor or major version, at the latest.
Anonymous
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VSM Tools Editor Peter Vogel responds: As a part-time technical writer, I often wonder if my dependence on documentation isn't typical of the developer community. Like others, I don't find Telerik's documentation to be everything that I want. To be fair, it gets better with every release but, I suspect, individual developers will have different expectations than I do in this area. I think we may be seeing a shift in the way that product information is being delivered: away from static "docs" and toward interactive "forums."
Visual Studio 2010 Gallery
We reviewed Visual Studio 2010 in June. Readers say the new Visual Studio Gallery is worth a look.
Another great thing about Visual Studio 2010 is Visual Studio Gallery! There are almost 2,000 extensions out there already, with little gems like Open Data Protocol Visualizer, VSCommands 2010 and RegexEditor!
Archi
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About the Author
This story was written or compiled based on feedback from the readers of Visual Studio Magazine.