<update date="6/19/08">

Telerik has released the MOSS compatable version of the RadEditor that places all needed files as class resource files in the _wpresource directory.  They've also made some very nice improvements over the previous release that make extending and customizing the editor very easy.  If you purchase and deploy the Full-Featrured RadEditor, you get ALL of the controls in the Telerik ASP.NET AJAX control suite available to you in MOSS.  Very nice...

</update>

Yesterday I posted about using the new RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX in MOSS, and I started moving the old controls in my current project over to the new ones.  Just now, I found a problem when I was converting the RadEditor from the old to the new.

In the Telerik online documentation for getting started with the RadEditor, they say that in a standard ASP.NET AJAX application, you need to utilize the App_GlobalResources and App_Data ASP.NET folders in order to use the RadEditor.

That's not any different for MOSS.

In the root of your SharePoint Web Application (\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\YourWebApp) create a folder named App_Data.  Drop in the RadSpell folder from the App_Data folder of the RadControls install directory (C:\Program Files\Telerik\RadControls for ASPNET AJAX Q1 2008).  Then, drop the RESX files from the App_GlobalResources directory located at the Telerik install root into the already present App_GlobalResources directory in your SharePoint Web Application root.

I think there's probably a better a way to do this using a Solution, but I'll worry about that later.  Not sure if we can deploy into those folders via a WSP - I don't think so.  I know there's a public property on the RadEditor that allows you to point to where the RadSpell directory is, but can't find anything for the RESX files.

Also, make sure you add the following line to the HttpHandlers section of your web config file, or else, spellcheck won't work:
<addverb="*"validate="false"path="Telerik.Web.UI.SpellCheckHandler.axd"type="Telerik.Web.UI.SpellCheckHandler, Telerik.Web.UI"/>

Anyway, here's a screen shot of the unskinned and unmodified RadEditor running in my local MOSS environment.  This is not tied into a publishing placeholder, but that's not what I'm using it for right now...

I've been a huge proponent of Telerik because of their very impressive controls, support, and documentation - let alone for the fact they are very easy to use.  Now that I've been working with SharePoint 2007 for a few years, I've found that Telerik's controls fit very nicely into MOSS.  Andrew Connell even created an integration whitepaper and some nice utility EXEs to help package the individual controls into WSPs to deploy them into MOSS.

Then, on April 15 of this year, Telerik released version 2008.1 of their new RadControls Suite for ASP.NET AJAX, formerly named 'Prometheus'.  I purchased my upgrade from the old RadControl suite to the Prometheus controls yesterday, and there was something that I noticed immediately which frightened me a little.  There's only one assembly - Telerik.Web.UI.ddl - and nowhere that I could see on the Telerik site that allowed me to get an individual control.

Uh oh. 

How do I get these amazing controls into SharePoint and start benefiting from that ASP.NET AJAX goodness?  Do I package the whole thing into a WSP? I hope not! That'll be a huge WSP file with all those skins getting packaged up!

I was worried, and started thinking that I was going to be stuck with a legacy version of some great controls, being forced to sit  here watching new versions go sailing past every three months.  No way!!!

I figured that there had to be a way, and if it took a massive WSP, so be it, so I started poking around the new control suite to see how it ticked.  There's no RadControls directory, so AC's walk-through documentation won't work.

I tested the RadSlider locally, and I asked myself, where do the images come from in the control?

I got out my trusty IE Dev Toolbar and took a peak.  I liked what I saw.

WebResource.axd!

Now, I don't care if this image is an embedded resource file or not.  It's not a direct reference to an image, and that's what matters.  What happens if a skin is applied? Where's the image then?

Office2007 skin:

IE Dev Toolbar:

Still a WebResource.axd. Excellent!

So - here's the deal.  Install the entire RadControls EXE which you get via your Telerik account on your SharePoint server.  Deploy the Telerik.Web.UI.dll to your SharePoint application's bin, and add the following line to the SafeControls block in the web.config

That's it...

Then, you can use any control in the entire suite just by adding the following Register tag to the page where you're using it

No more individual control references anywhere! Sweet!

For example - the RadTreeView control:

You can even deploy this inside your custom WSP by using the various Visual Studio project templates available on CodePlex.  I know of three that support deploying other assemblies, so finding them shouldn't be hard.  I'm partial to this one, and I know stsdev is really nice, as well.  You can even reference the Telerik control assembly server-side, too.  Just make sure you set the CopyLocal property of the reference to False.

You won't get IntelliSense for the controls, but as far as MOSS dev goes - what else is new, right?  There's plenty of documentation on Telerik's site to help with the control properties and client-side API.

Here's the new RadSlider with the Office2007 skin running in one of my MOSS environment:

I've started moving over all of the controls in my current project from the old version of the suite to the new version, and there's been some minor changes, but nothing of a pain at all.  The changes I have seen have been good ones, so it's been worth it so far.  Besides, these controls ROCK!  I haven't gone through and seen which ones work and which don't, but I'm sure it'll be similar to the old version of the suite.  I know the RadSplitter was a hassle before, will have to try it again with the new ones.  I've even noticed some performance gains over the old controls.

So, if you haven't picked up on it, I highly recommend these controls.  Not only will they completely expand your MOSS UI potential, but they will get you to install Service Pack 1 and configure ASP.NET AJAX in SharePoint if you haven't yet.  Remember, SP1 is required if you want to use ASP.NET AJAX, therefore, it's required to use these controls.

Just received a nice little sting...

I love the Telerik Editor for MOSS, so I use it almost on every page.  I wanted to perform an upgrade to the 4.4.0.0 version, but I just got slammed by a big gotcha!

I've always followed the Telerik documentation for adding the editor to a page layout.  But I must say, after today, I don't agree at all!

When Telerik releases a new version of the RadEditor, they change the version number on the assembly, naturally.  The downfall of this is that because of the new version number, you have to go to every page layout and change the version number in the Register tag at the top of the page.  This stinks!

To keep yourself from having this same problem, place the control reference in the web config file of the sites that you are using the RadEditor.  This will allow you to update the control reference only once next time, not on every single page layout file.

This should be done for all Telerik controls used on page layouts...

Here's another little thing that might be worth doing:
The image browser in the RadEditor for MOSS doesn't allow you to traverse the site structure like the OOB MOSS RichTextEditor, therefore you can't choose images from the SiteCollectionImages library.  To fix this, open the editor's tools file (located at \Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\wpresources\RadEditorSharePoint\4.1.0.0__1f131a624888eeed\RadControls\Editor) and rename the ImageManager tool to MOSSImageManager.  Got this gem on the Telerik forum...

So, The Mossman commented on my post yesterday saying that a little source around the PSMP would be nice, so just for him, here it is.  I figured it would be good to build on Andrew Connell's Telerik MOSS Integration Guide, so this example shows how to create your own top-level menu in a custom server-control using the Telerik RadMenu and the PortalSiteMapProvider.  I know not everybody will have the license for the Telerik RadMenu, so if you don't, hopefully you'll be able to take this example and pull out of it what you need.

Also, I posted this post on top of the one yesterday, whoops.  There's a good lesson on locally saving your postings. Sorry if it's shown up new a couple of times for some of you. Wish I could figure out why...

This solution shows how you could add custom attributes on each RadMenuItem from SPField values in the PublishingPage along with a custom client-side script event handler.

Download the source for the complete control in a text file, if you'd like it.

The menu created will look like the following and will pop a JavaScript alert with the relevant PublishingPage and SPWeb GUIDs when clicked:

 

            

              protected
              override
              void CreateChildControls()
{ //Get the root publishingweb web for the site PublishingWeb
rootWeb = PublishingWeb.GetPublishingWeb(SPContext.Current.Site.RootWeb); //Get
the URL of the default page in the webstring defaultPageUrl
= rootWeb.DefaultPage.ServerRelativeUrl; //find the item
in the PSMP PortalListItemSiteMapNode smnHome = (PortalListItemSiteMapNode)PortalSiteMapProvider.

            

CurrentNavSiteMapProviderNoEncode.FindSiteMapNode(defaultPageUrl); //initialize
the RadMenu RadMenu menu = new RadMenu();
menu.ID = "MainMenu"; menu.RadControlsDir = "/_wpresources/RadMenu.Net2/4.3.2.0__bbe59a8ad3533e68/RadControls";
menu.Skin = "Outlook"; //Set
the client-side clicked event handler menu.OnClientItemClicked = "MainMenu_RadMenuItemClicked"; //create
the first menu item for the default (home) page RadMenuItem rmiHome = createMenuItem(smnHome);
menu.Items.Add(rmiHome); //iterate through each one of
the pages and subsites and create menu items for themforeach (SiteMapNode
smnTopLevelItem in smnHome.ParentNode.ChildNodes)
{ RadMenuItem rmiTopLevelItem = createMenuItem(smnTopLevelItem); //if
the current sitemap has children, create a submenu for itif (smnTopLevelItem.HasChildNodes)
{ foreach (SiteMapNode smnChildItem in smnTopLevelItem.ChildNodes)
{ RadMenuItem rmiChildItem = createMenuItem(smnChildItem); rmiTopLevelItem.Items.Add(rmiChildItem);
} } menu.Items.Add(rmiTopLevelItem); } this.Controls.Add(menu); //create
the client-side script for the RadMenuItemClicked event handler StringBuilder
sbScript = new StringBuilder(); sbScript.Append(Environment.NewLine
+ "<script language=\"javascript\">"); sbScript.Append(Environment.NewLine
+ "function MainMenu_RadMenuItemClicked(sender, eventArgs)");
sbScript.Append(Environment.NewLine + "{"); sbScript.Append(Environment.NewLine
+ "var pageGuid = eventArgs.Item.GetAttribute(\"PageGuid\");");
sbScript.Append(Environment.NewLine + "var webGuid =
eventArgs.Item.GetAttribute(\"WebGuid\");"); sbScript.Append(Environment.NewLine
+ "alert(\"WebGuid:\" + webGuid + \" PageGuid:\" + pageGuid);");
sbScript.Append(Environment.NewLine + "}"); sbScript.Append(Environment.NewLine
+ "</script>"); this.Page.ClientScript.RegisterStartupScript(typeof(string), "RadMenu_MainMenu_RadMenuItemClicked",
sbScript.ToString()); } /// <summary>///
Create a RadMenuItem from a SiteMapNode/// </summary>///
<param name="siteMapNode">SiteMapNode used to create RadMenuItem </param>///
<returns>RadMenuItem</returns>private RadMenuItem
createMenuItem(SiteMapNode siteMapNode) { RadMenuItem menuItem = new RadMenuItem();
menuItem.NavigateUrl = siteMapNode.Url; menuItem.Text = siteMapNode.Title; SPListItem
listItem = null; //if
the SiteMapNode is the default page, it will be a PortalWebSiteMapNodeif (siteMapNode is PortalWebSiteMapNode)
listItem = getListItemFromPortalSiteMapNode((PortalWebSiteMapNode)siteMapNode); if (siteMapNode is PortalListItemSiteMapNode)
listItem = getListItemFromPortalSiteMapNode((PortalListItemSiteMapNode)siteMapNode); //create
the custom attributes on the list itemif (listItem
!= null) { menuItem.Attributes.Add("PageGuid",
listItem.UniqueId.ToString("N")); menuItem.Attributes.Add("WebGuid",
listItem.Web.ID.ToString("N")); menuItem.ToolTip
= listItem.Fields["MenuItemToolTip"].GetFieldValueAsText(listItem["MenuItemToolTip"]);
} else { menuItem.Attributes.Add("PageGuid", string.Empty);
menuItem.Attributes.Add("WebGuid", string.Empty);
menuItem.ToolTip = siteMapNode.Title; } return menuItem;
} private SPListItem getListItemFromPortalSiteMapNode(PortalListItemSiteMapNode
siteMapNode) { SPWeb web = SPContext.Current.Site.AllWebs[siteMapNode.WebId]; PublishingWeb
pubWeb = PublishingWeb.GetPublishingWeb(web); SPListItem pageItem = pubWeb.PagesList.Items[siteMapNode.UniqueId]; return pageItem;
} private SPListItem getListItemFromPortalSiteMapNode(PortalWebSiteMapNode
siteMapNode) { SPWeb web = SPContext.Current.Site.AllWebs[siteMapNode.WebId]; PublishingWeb
pubWeb = PublishingWeb.GetPublishingWeb(web); SPListItem pageItem = null; if(pubWeb.DefaultPage
!= null) pageItem = pubWeb.PagesList.Items[pubWeb.DefaultPage.Item.UniqueId]; return pageItem;
}