I've got a problem. One of the datagrids a website which I am developing, doesn't show any rows >ever< when viewed under the new Google Chrome browser that was released earlier today.
Has anyone else noticed any inconsistences with the Infragistics controls and Google Chrome?
I've published two screenshots on my review of Google Chrome here: http://blog.evolvedsoftwarestudios.com/2008/09/02/web-browser-wars-room-for-one-more-google-launch-google-chrome/ (scroll right down to the last two images in the article).
Hello,
I have just gone through your blog post - great content there. I also was probably one of the first to download and try Google Chrome and I am really impressed by the speed and simplicity of the browser, plus several great ideas they have to save space (pressing Ctrl +K for search goes back to address bar with ? prefix - clever stuff).
Google Chrome's engine is based on WebKit - this is the open source engine that powers the Safari browser. So while we of course cannot make any official statements for Chrome at this very moment, you will typically expect the controls we ship that work on Safari to generally work in Chrome. UltraWebGrid has parts of it that are not working on Safari yet, hence the problem you experience.
Needless to say, Safari and Google Chrome support will be moving up the priority list and we will do our best to be better in this area. In fact, almost 100% of the stuff we will be going to ship soon already works fine in both Chrome and Safari - you can test this with the CTP versions of WebDataTree and WebDataGrid and our brand new Drag & Drop framework here (a lot of this stuff and much more will ship in the next releases we have)
https://www.infragistics.com/samples/aspnet/drag-drop-framework/overview
So basically - yes, we are watching Chrome (and WebKit / Safari in general) closely and will be doing our best to support that, the way we support FireFox/Mozilla and IE.
The Aikido grid (WebDataGrid) will not be backwards compatible with UltraWebGrid, but this is not necessarily a bad thing. It's a brand new grid product, built from scratch, that will employ the latest technologies and what we have learned from the past. It is built with performance and extensibility into account.
Needless to say, this does not mean that we will be actively developing UltraWebGrid as well - it is just that I cannot currently commit to a timeframe for official full Chrome support, but I do assure you that we are looking at that seriously and this will be moving up the priority list soon.
Thanks all for your responses. Apologies for the delay in my own response.
I sincerely hope that we can get the Webkit issues sorted ASAP. Chrome already has over 1% of the web browser market share, it's advertised on the Google front page and takeup for it is growing substantially. I will need some grid replacement pretty quickly - I assume that I'll hae to get up to speed on the new Aikido framework? Is it much different?
My requirements are modest. I just need to be able to set up the grid and display it programatically, perhaps doing some sorts and responding to basic click events. Reckon it'll be a straightforward drop in replacement?
Of course, we have already started talking inside the development team and I can assure you this will be with higher priority (but still, we will need time before we make an official statement about that).
Just wanted to let you know, that we have a great customer feedback form, where you can suggest feature request (or even new products or something general, like Google Chrome support along our whole product line) directly to our Product Management team. The link is here:
http://devcenter.infragistics.com/Protected/RequestFeature.aspx
PM regularly scans all feature requests submitted via this form and chances are that this will be included at one point in subsequent releases. We take customer feedback very seriously, and from what I am seeing, most if not all of our TODO list is based on features requested by customer.
As far as WebDataGrid goes, sure - I think even now the CTP covers all of your requirement and I am sure much more will ship in our next release in 2008.3 (expected October)
Thanks Rumen.
I've left an "ignore at your own risk" message through the feature request page as you mention. To be honest, if Infragistics do not support Webkit (Safari and Google Chrome) you may as well all stop work and find other jobs - this is such a dealbreaking problem.
I'm sure the Project Management team will make the right decision and repair or replace the WebGrid. Perhaps via the Aikido framework that you mention earlier. I need to get started on that; how close to release are you with that? (edit: How close are you to a release of the new WebGrid?)
According to the BlogSphere, Google Chrome is taking significant market share, mostly at the expense of FireFox. I hope that your components can support it ASAP, as at the moment anyone using an Infragistics WebGrid on a live project is going to be severely stuck if anyone uses Safari or Chrome.
Best,
Mike
Hello Mike,
Your expert and honest feedback is much appreciated. We also agree with that (even before Chrome was released) and this is one of the reasons we have public CTPs for Aikido - so you can guys see that online, even download it and play a bit if you have the time - just an honest preview on what we are working and what we will be shipping next.
So if you have played with Aikido, you have probably noticed that it works quite well with Chrome already and now that Chrome is out, we will make even more efforts to support it officially. You surely understand however, that we really cannot make an official statement about Chrome right now, since it is a beta browser and its first beta release was just a week ago, we need time.
WebDataGrid (the new generation of grid product we will be shipping) is one of the major points in our next release (2008.3) and I assure you that you will be amazed by what we will ship. I can only encourage you do download the CTP from the links I sent you above and see for yourself what we were up to a couple of months back (and now we have much much more).
We have a public Aikido CTP forum and our PMs are quite active there - any feedback you give us will be taken very seriously and we do count on that. The Aikido public forum is located here:
http://forums.infragistics.com/forums/186.aspx
Thanks for the feedback again.
Hello All,
I will forward this thread to our PM - hopefully he can add something more than I can do at this point on UltraWebGrid / WebDataGrid.in Chrome/Safari.
We are currently targeting first week of November to ship our 2008 Volume 3 that will include our new Aikido based WebDataGrid.
As for Chrome, we have done some preliminary testing of our new WebDataGrid on it. Since all Aikido controls are designed to support Safari, we have been seeing same results on both Safari and Chrome for the most part. Due to the arrival of Chrome after our test plans had been finalized for this release, we were not able to do a complete round of testing on Chrome as we would like. But since Chrome is based on Safari WebKit, I expect to see it work no differently that it would do on Safari.
Taz.
Hi Taz,
Thanks for responding and giving your insights into the development process. There are a couple of issues that this brings up however:
1. Are the Aikido controls a direct drop-in replacement to the exiting Web Grid controls? The issue is that the Web Grid doesn't work >almost at all< on Chrome (and I assume by implication they are bugged on Safari too). Unfortunately this makes them completely useless for almost all non-intranet web applications as an ever increasing quantity of users migrate to Chrome. What is the relationship between "Aikido" and the current ASP.NET Web controls?
2. Am I right that the next release will not explicitally support Google Chrome but there are plans to thoroughly test on Safari?
I've had to drop Infragistics for the current project I'm working on as the lack of Chrome support is a deal breaker. This is dissapointing since the rest of the Infragistics framework appears to be ok.
Thanks,