Telerik - an end-to-end provider of software application, lifecycle and content management solutions -has been busy of late. Recently the company released its new Icenium platform, which utilizes HTML5 for easy cross-platform development. The company also released an HTML5 study that was conducted across a very large group of developers that points to HTML5's growing importance. Now the company has released some very interesting additions to its Kendo UI HTML5 platform, among them new Java support, which we believe will up the ante on HTML5's enterprise value.
Kendo UI is one of several available comprehensive frameworks for building websites and mobile apps with HTML and JavaScript. Kendo UI targets JavaScript and HTML5 developers and provides both Web and mobile developers now working with HTML5 with the necessary tools for building HTML5 and JavaScript mobile apps and sites. Based on jQuery, Kendo UI delivers a rich UI for Web and HTML5-powered data visualizations, and tools for building native mobile apps with HTML5.
With the newly announced release, Telerik raises the bar for these platforms. The new Kendo UI upgrade adds highly interactive HTML5-based financial charts to Kendo UI DataViz (News - Alert), and now also delivers strong out-of-the-box accessibility improvements in Kendo UI Web.
But more importantly in our opinion is new support for Java server-side wrappers that enable Java developers to use familiar server-side programming skills to build modern Web sites that benefit from Kendo UI's client-side power and cross-browser HTML5 compatibility. Combined, these Kendo UI enhancements make the platform a powerful enterprise-ready collection of HTML5 and JavaScript tools.
Highly Interactive
A key piece of the new Kendo UI release is the new and highly interactive HTML5-based financial charts support for Kendo UI DataViz. Kendo UI DataViz now enables developers to present complex financial data in interactive charts that users can easily zoom, pan and manipulate on both desktop computers and mobile devices, such as the iPad. Additionally, support for real-time zooming and panning has been added to all existing Kendo UI DataViz chart types. Using these enhancements, developers can quickly present enterprise financial data in hardware-accelerated dashboards ready to support touch and mouse input, giving users unprecedented access to data and intuitive tools for quickly gaining insights.
Such data visualization capabilities are especially important for businesses that make heavy use of BI and related dashboards. Adding the capabilities to HTML5 (or rather, making it easy to develop them) is a key feature for enterprises.
Easy HTML5 Java Developers
Building on the significant success of Kendo UI server wrappers released for .NET (News - Alert), today's release introduces beta server wrappers for Java developers. The new wrappers allow Java developers to maximize productivity while creating apps with HTML and JavaScript simply by leveraging existing server-side JSP programming skills to configure and interact with Kendo UI. The recent Kendo UI Global Developer Survey we noted above reveals that 82 percent of developers worldwide regard HTML5 as important for their jobs within the next 12 months - the introduction of Java wrappers is clearly a timely enhancement that will help enterprise development teams prepare for this platform shift.
Initially Telerik is releasing the Java wrapper technology as a short timeframe public beta. The company will - assuming nothing out of the ordinary springs up during the beta cycle - offer a General Availability version of the Java wrappers early in 2013. We also anticipate that Telerik will introduce additional server-side wrappers for other platforms next year.
Accessibility Standards Support
Large enterprises and government organizations interested in adopting HTML5 are often blocked in doing so by potentially challenging accessibility issues common to existing HTML and JavaScript frameworks. Kendo UI conquers this challenge and raises the bar by delivering unprecedented accessibility standards support in an HTML and JavaScript UI framework.
Out-of-the-box support for the modern WAI-ARIA accessibility standard (Accessible Rich Internet Applications Suite, which defines a way to make Web content and Web applications more accessible to people with disabilities, is a technical specification developed by the W3C (News - Alert)), high-contrast themes that exceed the strict WCAG 2.0 (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) contrast ratios, and extensive keyboard support are all present in the latest version. Developers working with Kendo UI will meet government accessibility standards and will be able to create highly accessible Web applications for end-users.
Additional Kendo UI Framework enhancements in the new release include numerous additional features and performance improvements, including:
Kendo UI Web: Right-to-left (RTL) support for all web widgets, critical for developers working with RTL languages, such as Arabic.
Kendo UI Mobile: Cross-platform gesture framework (tap, double-tap, swipe, pinch/zoom), new transitions and hardware-accelerated animations that help mobile apps look and feel increasingly native, as well as a powerful, intuitive Mobile ThemeBuilder with real-time, multi-device (iOS, Android, BlackBerry (News - Alert), MeeGo) theme previews.
Kendo UI DataViz: ThemeBuilder support, which allows developers to quickly customize chart styles without writing any code.
The question that always comes up when speaking of HTML5 is one along the lines of, it’s certainly highly useful, but is it ready for prime time? We believe it is, and we're sure Telerik believes it is.