Telerik, a Bulgarian company offering software tools and subscription tools for web, mobile and desktop application development, has announced the 2015 release of its Kendo UI framework. Most notably, this release includes new tools that reflect the growing demand for websites employing responsive design techniques.

Responsive design refers to a web development philosophy in which websites are constructed with direct consideration of the multitude of devices out there and the different screen sizes they have. A responsive website automatically adjusts to fit on the screen of whatever device is being used to access it; this is usually achieved by altering the layout, hiding navigation in a drop-down menu, reducing image sizes, eliminating non-essential graphics and other forms of clutter and so forth. The result is a mobile website that is completely user-friendly and quick to load, yet by relying on a single source code corresponds entirely with the more fleshed-out tablet and desktop versions.

Launched in 2011, the Kendo UI framework offers more than 70 performance-optimized UI widgets based on jQuery — a cross-browser JavaScript library — and leverages modern HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript web standards to provide a powerful toolset for building web and mobile apps. Kendo UI integrates seamlessly with AngularJS and Bootstrap or can be configured to work with any other JavaScript framework to ensure limitless possibilities. In addition to 11 built-in themes, users have access to the ThemeBuilder tool to create a customized appearance. The framework supports all major browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera as well as the iOS and Android (News – Alert) mobile browsers. 

Responsive websites are essential in an age where users are using devices of all sizes yet expect websites to offer a comprehensive, intuitive experience no matter what they choose to access it. Telerik’s commitment to offering website construction tools that employ this design philosophy is reflective of its importance and raises the Kendo UI framework to be on par with competing products.

With the 2015 release of Kendo UI, developers can now use responsive tools to configure different Grid and TreeList content to display on different devices, hide the left section of the SplitView widget with on-demand visibility, move overflow Scheduler content to a dropdown list and otherwise clean up websites for mobile viewing. This release also includes updates to its widgets with new export capabilities, Excel-like filtering in Grid, new column tools in TreeList, configurable Chart templates and virtual scrolling in ComboBox.

The complete Kendo UI framework is available as a free trial with flexible licensing, or the open-source Kendo UI Core with 23 widgets can be found on GitHub.