Progress Releases Updates to Telerik App Development Platform

Progress has released the latest version of Telerik, its device and OS agnostic mobile development platform that combine UI tools and cloud services to build apps. This comes on the heels of the Progress’s announcement that it had finalized the purchase of Telerik AD in December 2014.

The Telerik Platform offers tools and services that can be adopted individually or as a platform and integrated with other developer solutions. It is a cloud-first, end-to-end solution that uses web technologies (HTML5, CSS and JavaScript) to create hybrid or native mobile apps using the Telerik web-based IDE or a developer’s preferred IDE. It is based on open standards and is designed to integrate with numerous tools, frameworks and services. Developers benefit from using the Telerik Platform alongside AngularJS, Kendo UI, PhoneGap, GitHub and more.

The platform provides the ability to code inside a web browser, a desktop client, Visual Studio, Sublime Text or by using the Telerik command-line interface (CLI) to integrate with existing build processes. Developers can create a mobile development environment on PC, Mac or Linux without downloads, installs or configuration, then integrate with existing tools and services.

The platform offers on-demand cloud services to power mobile apps including data services, push notifications, email services, SMS and more. It allows the ability to connect to existing databases, including MySQL, MS-SQL, Oracle and PostgreSQL. It  also offers automated testing on mobile devices, including iOS, Android and Windows Phone, and allows developers to write tests using JavaScript and then execute them across multiple platforms.

The latest Telerik platform release includes the launch of the company’s Verified Plugins Marketplace which offers a gallery of Cordova/PhoneGap plugins. Included is the Telerik Cordova Push plugin which offers built-in backend services, push troubleshooting logs and a simplified push API. 

Another new enhancement, Screen Builder (in beta), accelerates PhoneGap app scaffolding and enables developers to create 80 percent of the mobile app from pre-built and pre-wired screens without coding. There are also new quick start templates and quick start workflows to help get started building an app in as little as 15 minutes. 

The new Telerik open source project, NativeScript (in private beta), is an effort to create a native development framework with support for CSS styling of native app UI. It offers an improved cross-platform JavaScript framework, support for third party native libraries, and the ability to build native apps using Command Line Interface.

More information is available on the Telerik website.