News

Progress Telerik .NET Dev Tools Integrate Gen AI Prompts

• By David Ramel
• 05/30/2024

Progress shipped an update to its Telerik .NET-centric dev tools suite that facilitates generative AI integration into apps.

Specifically, the company announced the 2024 Q2 release of Progress Telerik and Progress Kendo UI, which are respectively described as .NET and JavaScript UI libraries and app-dev tool suites, with AI updates leading the usual pack of new and improved UI components, features and functionality.

For example, both suites include a new UI component called AI Prompt, which helps developers more easily include Gen AI prompts in their apps and use embedded AI functionality to advance design-to-code automation and accessibility features.

"The new AI Prompt component, available across all Telerik and Kendo UI libraries, enables the creation of quality content, messages and documents, as well as fast access to information through in-UI searches," the company said. "To reduce the learning curve, AI integration demos in Telerik and Kendo UI libraries for components such as TextBox and Spreadsheet help developers discover new ways to include AI-powered interactions within their digital experiences."

Those AI integration demos, which the company calls "Smart (AI) Components," are designed to help developers discover new ways to include AI-powered interactions within their digital experiences. AI integration demos in Telerik Data Grid, ComboBox, Spreadsheet, RichTextEditor and PDFViewer components show developers how to enable interactions such as vector search and AI assistance.

Like every other third-party dev tool vendor, the company is going all out with AI, having last month announced advanced AI capabilities to "accelerate the delivery of digital experiences" in an update to Progress Sitefinity, a content management system (CMS) offering.

Meanwhile, along with the new UI components for Gen AI integration, highlights of the 2024 Q2 release include:

• Accelerated design-to-production workflows: Features here include:
  • Enhanced Figma UI Kits: Improved for better design translation.
  • Improved color system themes: Offering more consistency.
  • Rich design system documentation: Facilitating smoother workflows.
  • Unified rendering: Consistent brand appearance across JavaScript and .NET web frameworks.
  • Extensive theme variables: Over 600 component-specific variables available.
  • Smart CSS code editor: Included in the Progress ThemeBuilder cloud application for efficient customization.
• Accessibility and inclusivity: Highlights here include:
• Increased focus on accessibility: 76 percent of developers now prioritize human-centric applications with core accessibility.
• Compliance: Telerik and Kendo UI libraries meet Section 508, WCAG 2.2, and WAI Aria standards.
• Accessible data visualizations: All web chart components include built-in accessibility and keyboard navigation.
• New features:
  • Embedded data-driven experiences with reporting and visualization.
  • Modernization of legacy projects with support for complex migrations.
  • Support for .NET 9 Preview.

All of the above, along with new components/functionality for Blazor, WinUI, WPF, WinForms. .NET MAUI, ASP.NET and much more is detailed in the company's What's New site.