Help test the new DevExpress ASP.NET Bootstrap enabled controls

ASP.NET Team Blog
21 April 2016

We're working on a new set of ASP.NET controls that will support Bootstrap. And I would like your help in testing these new controls. More details on that below.

First, let's address your questions:

Why? What problem are you solving?

Our current ASP.NET controls are great but their HTML rendering makes it hard for us to support:

  1. Adaptive and mobile-friendly features
  2. Frameworks like Bootstrap that provide their own themes

So to solve these main issues, we're going to keep the majority of our current ASP.NET codebase and create new (descendant) controls with new HTML rendering. This approach is great because it gives you a benefit of new controls, new rendering, and a solid codebase that they inherit from.

This effort will take many releases before we have a full suite of controls like our existing ASP.NET controls. But in the first beta release, we'll likely have a Grid control and a few others.

And we want your help in testing these controls. If you're interested and willing, click the link below and we'll register you for a private closed testing once we have a build ready.

Register Now

Why Bootstrap?

Bootstrap is one of many great frameworks out there. And the new ASP.NET controls we're working on will make it easier for us provide support for other frameworks besides Bootstrap. We chose Bootstrap because:

  1. It's established), popular, and free
  2. It has a good ecosystem of open-source contributors, third-party themes, etc.
  3. Microsoft chose Bootstrap for their File->New experience.

Here's a small preview of our new ASP.NET pager control using different Bootstrap themes:

Not all controls nor features

Creating a new line of controls also gives us a fresh start to decide which controls and features are worth it to you. So, our initial goal is to create similar versions of our major controls and features. In fact, in the beta that we would like you test, it will likely only include the new Grid.

Sign Up Today

Click this link to sign-up for the private testing and we'll contact you once the build is ready:

Register Now and Be the First to Get the Preview Build

Thanks!


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Gosha
Gosha

:) Good start! Looking forward to see it in XAF :D

21 April 2016
Rick Mathers
Rick Mathers

Which version of Bootstrap are you going to support?

21 April 2016
ASPMVCNewbie
ASPMVCNewbie

Great - Will we also get Bootstrap support in MVC ?

21 April 2016
Olivier Zimmer
Olivier Zimmer

great, good step !

22 April 2016
Edward Tollenaar
Edward Tollenaar

Great, especial when we get Bootstrap together with MVC. I was missing the possibility of using your controls with Bootstrap themes.

22 April 2016
Jonatas Hudler
Jonatas Hudler

This is a very good decision.

Two questions:

- Any similar plans of this decision to DevExtreme as well?

- What versions of Bootstrap will initially be supported? BS3? BS4?

22 April 2016
Mo cisse
Mo cisse

Any bootstrap for DevExtreme ?

22 April 2016
Donovan Woodside
Donovan Woodside

I'm hopeful!

Maybe this will mean that the HTML the controls generate will be leaner? I have a grid that I'm using which generates TONS of HTML (byte-wise) which is mostly due to the CSS class names. I went as far as to create a "custom" theme based on metropolis blue simply to reduce the class names by 13 characters which are repeated hundreds of times and added up to almost 100kb... just for class names!!! As such I had to scale back various aspects of the page and manually replace DevEx controls for plain old HTML code.

22 April 2016
Miro Mz
Miro Mz

Looking forward to an modern XAF web app. Any plans for doing something similar for DevExtreme ?

22 April 2016
Erwin Hendriks 1
Erwin Hendriks 1

Great stuff

26 April 2016
Dennis (DevExpress)
Dennis Garavsky (DevExpress)

@Gosha, Miro Mz: Thanks for your input in this regard - we will take it into account. BTW, are you aware of the new XAF Web UI (documentation.devexpress.com), which represents our own vision of the modern web UI? If so, would you please describe the main reasons or problems with it motivating you to look at alternatives like Bootstrap?

27 April 2016
Baila Paluch
Baila Paluch

will it work for foundation as well? Can't wait for leaner, mobile friendly .net controls.

2 May 2016
André Cardoso
André Cardoso

I think is useful to aspxgridview and aspxpopucontrol because the scrollbars are the problem to the layout and the bootstrap is the most better layout to use on smartphones and desktop/notebook browsers.

The bootstrap is good becaus it's stable in any navigator and in the most cases therees no need to make two versions of the same web page, to smart phone and to desktop and there's no scrollbars!!

Great!

17 June 2016
fabio borghi
fabio borghi

Very Good!

We currently use boostrap and we appreciate your decision.

When can we test this new controls?

How we could download it?

Thanks

4 July 2016
Chandru Nagrani 2
Chandru Nagrani 2

Excellent when can we expect the controls

29 July 2016
Mehul Harry (DevExpress)
Mehul Harry (DevExpress)

We're working on it. Sign up and we'll send you an email once it's ready.

29 July 2016
KenK
KenK

Should include the basics with the AspxGridview to start with, such as AspxButton and AspxPanel.

Also, what's the eta on trying the beta?

We're contemplating integrating boostrap into our existing Web Forms projects. But we really need the DevEx controls to use bootstrap styles and settings when needed.

30 August 2016
Juan Antonio Trujillo Montenegro
Juan Antonio Trujillo Montenegro

Any ETA or update about the new ASP.NET Bootstrap enabled controls?

7 September 2016

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