Announcing the Kendo UI Q2 2012 Roadmap!

If you joined us for our March webcast or have been following along online, you probably know that Q1 represented the first release of the complete Kendo UI story: Kendo UI Web for UI widgets and key framework features; Kendo UI DataViz for cross-browser HTML5 data visualization; and finally, Kendo UI Mobile, our unique mobile development toolset, which enables developers to deliver native-looking mobile web experiences on iOS, Android and Blackberry.

After launching in March, focused on adding to our best-in-class toolset with even more widgets, features and experiences, we got right back to work. Last week, the entire Kendo UI team gathered in person to discuss Q2 and beyond, and I'm excited to share a few things that you can expect in our Q2 release.

What makes a roadmap?

Before I dive into the details of the Q2 roadmap, I thought it might be helpful to set the stage with a little background on how we arrive at our roadmap, in the first place. UserVoice is our public forum for customer feedback, of course, but the data contained therein is only one piece of a much larger puzzle to fit together when it comes time to plan for a release. When planning for a release, we gather all of your feedback from UserVoice, as well as relevant data from these sources:

• Industry research and analysis
• Direct Customer surveys and feedback
• Forum and support requests
• Input from Telerik leadership

With all of this data in hand (and there is a lot of it!) the team gathers to prioritize all relevant requests, create a roadmap for the next few quarters, and establish themes for the current release. Themes categorize much of our focus, while also clearly defining the value we plan to deliver to customers in a given release. Though each release of Kendo UI is full of new features and fixes in our Web, DataViz or Mobile suites, we feel that it's important to focus our release planning around broad themes that represent the "big rocks" of value we want to provide. Many of these themes align to a single suite, while others affect the framework as a whole. Our key release themes for Kendo UI Mobile in Q2 are: 

Documentation

If there's one vocal piece of feedback we've heard from you over the last few months, its that our documentation isn't as useful as it should be. We heard you, and making our documentation second-to-none in customer value is a very high priority for us in Q2. A product's documentation is just as much a part of that product as its engineering, and we want you to receive as much value from the docs as you do the Kendo UI framework itself. So, in Q2, we're giving our documentation an overhaul, and you can expect to see something much more targeted to your needs in the coming months.

iPad UI

Q1 represented the first official release of Kendo UI Mobile, but we're not content to rest on our laurels here, either. In addition to some new features and widgets in the framework itself, we've set the goal to complete the iOS story of Kendo UI with iPad UI widgets like Popover and Split View, along with some additional widgets and features for all devices. Stay tuned to the blog for a post with more details in the future.

Server Wrappers for ASP.NET MVC

We know that many of our customers wish to integrate Kendo UI with their server framework of choice, and we're happy to announce that we'll be delivering the first of these in Q2 for ASP.NET MVC. Customers familiar with the Telerik Extensions for ASP.NET MVC will be familiar with these wrappers as they will offer much of the same key functionality they currently utilize. Our server wrappers will make Kendo UI dead-simple to use with ASP.NET MVC by offering controls and server-side constructs that output Kendo UI widgets and features on the client.

Kendo UI for MVC will be our first set of server wrappers, but it won't be the last, so stay tuned for news of other wrappers coming in future releases. If you’re eager to see server wrappers in your framework of choice, let us know over at the forums.

Additional DataViz Widgets

In addition to the great set of widgets included with Kendo UI DataViz today, we plan to ship Donut (or Torus) and Bubble charts in Q2. We'll also be working on the internals of Kendo UI DataViz to set the suite up for some big new features in Q3. But more on that, later! 

In addition to these themes, you can expect that we'll deliver a number of other requested widgets, features and enhancements for Q2. For additional information about additional features we plan to deliver, head on over to the Roadmap page on KendoUI.com.

The Kendo UI roadmap is a living document. Even though we're focusing our efforts around the themes I shared here today, we're always looking to deliver maximum value to our customers with each release. With that in mind, you should consider the public roadmap published at KendoUI.com to be a living document, as well. There's always a chance that other key and requested features will find their way into our Q2 release, so keep an eye on that space over the coming months.

And as always, we want your feedback! If you're interested in weighing in on the roadmap moving forward, head on over to our public UserVoice forum to view, comment and vote on ideas, or even add your own. We watch this forum regularly, so don't hesitate to let us know what you'd like to see in a future release!

Though our Q1 release represented the delivery of a unified story with Kendo UI Web, DataViz and Mobile, there's still plenty to be done! Thanks to your feedback, the team has arrived at a roadmap that will make our Q2 release this summer even more exciting! Be sure and stay tuned as we work to make the best toolkit for building applications with HTML, JavaScript and CSS even better.

Links

Main Roadmap Page

Kendo UI Web Roadmap

Kendo UI DataViz Roadmap

Kendo UI Mobile Roadmap