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I am trying decide on how I want to handle the UI for an external-facing web app. Because it is external, latency caused by page bloat could be an issue.

I have used jQuery some in the past, and I am evaluating the Telerik controls now. I have seen a lot of good recommendations on the Telerik controls, including some on StackOverflow. Indeed they do seem fairly full-featured. I also have no doubt that I can develop the application much more quickly using those controls than I can with jQuery. However, I am worried that they will cause too much bloat on my pages.

Do any of you have experience comparing the performance of these controls against a purely jQuery implementation? Specifically,

  • Is the RadScriptManager from Telerik really any better than the MS Ajax ScriptManager?
  • Are there performance issues in general with the Telerik controls?
  • Is there any plug-in for jQuery that comes close to the grid functionality of RadGrid?

Any other related information would be useful as well.

nshaw
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14 Answers14

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I've used Telerik and JQuery for years. "Full featured" generally equates to tons of bloat, features you don't need and a final page that is hard (or impossible) to optimize. Drop Telerik and use a bare metal framework like JQuery. You'll find that it will allow you to build the specific functionality you need and you'll never go back. Many of the full featured UI suites like (like Telerik or ComponentArt) are very seductive but I think they encourage a lot of bad programming.

For instance.... Do you really need to have drag-and-drop-able columns on your grid? Probably not. It's probably better to have a design area where your users can layout their column preferences and then the main view where the grid is snappy and lightweight. Don't render down megabytes of added features that your users will never (or rarely) use with every page view.

Powerlord
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    Agreed. I was honestly disappointed in the Telerik tools. I had heard so many good things about them, but my evaluation didn't go so well. – nshaw Jan 10 '09 at 17:34
  • Within their problem domain (FF Libs) they're fine, but unfortunately that domain is just an artificial playground for bad coders. Paul W hits the nail on the head. – annakata Jan 19 '09 at 15:13
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    There are Mort, Elvis, and Einstein programmers. UI components best serve Mort and Elvis. Einstein's think they are smart enough to roll their own- or at the very least enjoy the challenge- so they often are the least served. You just need to know what type of developer you are. – Todd Feb 17 '09 at 22:24
  • @lfonlfonlfon - Delete you answer if it's no longer appropriate - don't erase the content... – DJ. Mar 24 '09 at 21:03
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    I think Telerik is great for intranet apps, it's just not always the best solution for large client-facing apps (neither are any of the other control suites, IMO). – Beep beep Jul 20 '09 at 23:07
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    i dont know what makes any of you think that just because a implementation has a lot of perhaps unnecessary for most of us high level features and code... that its bound to be bloated... with server/client programming esp with jquery/javascript and html rendering, if a feature is turned off or not used, there would be no reason why that feature would bloat the client, itd be off and wouldn't lag the program, very different from bloatware in a typical win32 desktop app, where bloating is 'always on', in server/client apps the paradigm is really much different in terms of likelyhood of pitfalls. – Erx_VB.NExT.Coder Dec 31 '09 at 06:06
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    Try tell your clients if they REALLY need that feature! With Telerik you have many features out-of-the-box that otherwise will be hard to write with jQuery. It's great for intranet applications and when you need build application fast. Like any framework you need to learn it and do some customization and also there are bugs, but their support is great. – jlp May 14 '10 at 09:20
  • Each one serves to different purposes, I love using Telerik with Web forms for Admin or Control panels, saves you lot of time. But I use jQuery UI for MVC for regular websites. So depend what you are programming. For web systems backend I suggest Webforms + Telerik, for websites MVC + jQuery is better. – Nestor May 26 '11 at 03:26
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Good discussion here. Some clarifications:

  • Telerik does use jQuery internally (and will be increasingly now that MS supports it) to enhance the client-side features (and reduce client-side code) for many controls
  • jQuery is a client-side library that is great for JavaScript development. If you need to address accessibility, though, you are up a creek with jQuery UI implementations because they depend on JavaScript for all functionality. Telerik's unique advantage is that you can render both client-side and server-side, meaning you can support clients that do not have JavaScript enabled.
  • For many Telerik controls, you can either A) eliminate extra code on the page by disabling features (due to internal load-as-needed script logic), or B) significantly reduce the impact of client-side code by using provide script combiners and compressors.

Being a long time web developer, though, I always encourage people to use the right tool for the job. If you don't need the powerful capabilities of the RadControls, or the accesiblitity support, or the extensive documentation (to help the guy that will inherit your app), don't use them for your site. If all you need is basic UI, jQuery may be just fine. What I tend to find, though, is that when a developer can offer advanced features to users (what we sometimes think of as "bloat") for doing no extra work, users are much more impressed with the end product and find it much easier to use.

And above all, remember in most cases you generate value for your company/customers by building applications- not UI components. So unless there is good reason to re-invent the wheel, you're usually best served by using something that's already been built and tested to solve the problem you're facing.

Hope that helps. -Todd

Todd
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    +1 although you should have mentioned you are a the Chief Evangelist at Telerik... – Dror Mar 06 '09 at 06:16
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    Sorry if there was any confusion. I make my title clear in my profile. At the end of the day, though, as a MS MVP and Developer, I'm most interested in helping developers. Hope my title doesn't get in the way. :) – Todd Mar 08 '09 at 00:42
  • Todd: could you expand on "Telerik's unique advantage is that you can render both client-side and server-side": I always tick when we are speaking of ASP.NET without javascript (think doPostback), I can't see how it would be with Telerik webcontrols. I also tick when someone tells javascript avoid accessibility, it depends how obstrusive it is made. – smoothdeveloper Apr 20 '09 at 20:53
  • Let me clarify. 1) Telerik can render many of the control's HTML client-side OR server-side. In fact, many Telerik controls -will work- when you completely disable JS. Not as rich, of course, but the basic functionality and rendering will persist. Try it. 2) I'm not call JavaScript "in-accessible." Instead, I'm suggesting that Telerik takes extra steps to ensure controls meet "accessibility standards," such as Section 508 and WC3. We also try to ensure full keyboard support for all controls when the use of a mouse is not practical. -- Hope that helps. -Todd – Todd Apr 28 '09 at 17:02
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    Telerik is dah bomb!! I'm a single shop developer that has to do tons of small projects with many features - IT... WOULD... BE... IMPOSSIBLE... to do all that I do with just HTML and Jquery - get real. If you work for NetFlix or Google, you have the time and resources to build your customized grid from scratch - no one I know has that kind of time and money though. – RichC Jan 14 '10 at 21:36
  • my only prob with telerik .. admittedly after 1 day of them ... is that all their samples have ui and database access on the same page. I'd like to think most devs now are distributing this across several layers. I guess people making lives harder for themselves should really be able to figure it out ;) – John Nicholas May 10 '12 at 14:25
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Regarding the "bugginess" and other challenges faced by Brian C (et al), I think some additional clarification is deserved here. As a developer advocate, I won't make any pretense that the Telerik controls are perfect- no software written by mere mortals ever is. What's important then is how those bugs are addressed.

All too often, people overlook how a company (or open source project) addresses bugs until it's too late. No matter what tools you use- jQuery, Telerik, or even Microsoft- you're going to eventually hit bugs. Where Telerik tends to excel is providing rapid fixes for those problems and very thorough support to help you be as productive as possible. If you have a problem, Telerik -will- help you solve it. With other companies, and especially with Open Source, that is not always the guarantee.

So just remember: no matter what tools you use, you're going to face bugs. Make sure you pick tools with support that can respond to your problems and fix them very quickly. And since I know my perspective is unavoidably biased, I'll let others on StackOverflow confirm or deny Telerik's support quality.

Todd
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    I can say with firsthand. non-biased experience that Telerik support *is* excellent. – Nick May 11 '09 at 16:38
  • just wanted to comment several years later than Telerik's support is still great :) They say they will respond you in 24h and they do it, not in a minute less XD – Gabriel Espinoza Oct 02 '13 at 14:55
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The Telerik controls does seem a bit bloaty, but I doubt you would be able to achieve something similar in JQuery without a lot of efforts.

It really depends on how much bloat you can tolerate. If it's for an Intranet application, then it doesn't really matter, but as you specified external-facing, then this might be a problem, it really depends on the average connection speed of your users and on the speed of their computer/browser which will ultimately run the controls.

The other important question is: do you want to standardize your web application in a proprietary toolset that is used far less than JQuery? I doubt JQuery will go out of business anywhere soon.

Vincent
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  • While jQuery won't "go out of business," it's evolution can slow or stop. But that's about as unlikely as Telerik going out of business. :) jQuery is great and we leverage it heavily for our WebForms and (entirely) ASP.NET MVC tools. Our goal is simply to help make developers more productive and deliver high quality results. – Todd Apr 21 '11 at 17:01
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In case it helps anyone later, I have dumped the Telerik tools and am using jQuery exclusively for now. We'll see if I run into something that I can't do. I was disappointed in the Telerik tools. I had heard so many good things about them, but they didn't work so well for me. Here is what I found when evaluating the Telerik tools.

  • The Telerik Ajax tools have problems handling master/content page setups. They acknowledge this in their forums, and I guess they are working on it. Quite problematic for me though.

  • I saw lots of unexpected behaviors and quirks that don't seem to have any documentation. For example, when using the Web20 skin and form decorator, the rounded corners on a fieldset go all to hell when doing Ajax.

  • The Telerik tools slowed down my dev machine quite a bit and seem to cause problems with my environment. I almost never have crashes or memory violations, and I had four in two days while using these tools. It had probably been a month since my last one before that.

  • So combine all that with the fact that jQuery is free and lightweight, and the choice was easy. It might take me a little longer initially, but the result will be much better in the end.

nshaw
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  • I would love to see samples of things you have done with jQuery. I too am using Telerik and looking for alternatives for external facing sites to load faster. – Picflight Mar 12 '09 at 00:01
  • After having used Telerik a year ago and now jQuery for a few months, I have to say jQuery gets you 80% of the way there or better in many cases. Not to mention it's free and lightweight. The pro on the Telerik side is that their controls are more complete and require less tinkering. – Dave Swersky Aug 19 '09 at 16:55
  • I'll also add for the record, Telerik offers tools for ASP.NET MVC that are based entirely on jQuery. This is a good alternative if you have trouble with WebForms performance. Also, don't forget that pure client-side UIs do introduce problems in the areas of SEO and accessibility. – Todd Apr 21 '11 at 16:59
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Your UI requirements will have the greatest impact on this decision. I don't think the Telerik controls can be compared to jQuery in terms of functionality. If you need server-side controls to display data, evaluate Telerik against other competing controls.

Dave Swersky
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I use the Telerik controls and also paid for the source code, so as for them going out of business, not a huge concern given the source code. I have no specific experience using the Telerik controls on a public facing website but wouldn't hesitate to at all. I have been directed at times, to use JQuery for additional functionality that the controls didn't have.

The one issue that I do have is that because you aren't coding all of this functionality yourself with the use of controls (not just Telerik's) it's really easy to drag and drop all kinds of fun stuff to your page, which is going to add processing to each and every page. That being said, keep your use of them to a minimum and I don't think they'll be any more bloated than hand-coded JQuery implementations.

GregD
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The RadScriptManager is different than the MS Ajax scriptmanager because it has an EnableScriptCombine="true" property that you can set that enables all the javascript files used by telerik controls to be combined into one .js file to improve performance.

Originally the rad editor ran pretty slow. But the latest version is much faster. Plus they have paid staff that is constantly working to improve their controls.

I'm not aware of anything that comes close to the RadGrid. It's pretty powerful. I'm using it right now on an intranet app, and it runs fast so far. I'm using all of its features, Group By's, Export to excel, etc.

That said, if I was creating an Internet Application for external use, I would use JQuery over telerik. That way you have more control.

Diodeus - James MacFarlane
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Nathan Prather
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We use the Telerik Editor for our intranet product, and I have to say it was much nicer to work with, customize, upgrade, etc. than any of the previous editors we used.

If you need some advanced functionality and/or more complicated controls and Telerik provides this, I would say it's premature to write them off. If you just need basic UI functionality that jQuery UI can provide, then use jQuery for those specific parts.

There's no need to go with one or the other; use a mixture of tools to get the job done.

steve_c
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I don't usually post on these things -- but I couldn't resist this one. I went with jQuery / jQuery UI over Telerik. I really liked what they had on the demo pages -- then I tried to get it to work. I struggled with the ribbon bar, and showed them a bug or two. They was it was going to be fixed soon... it wasn't....then the next release... it wasn't. Finally they had a beta and asked me to test it for them -- good grief. Their stuff sure is nice looking, but I couldn't deal with the things just not working.

I've been using jQuery / jQuery UI for about 6 months now and I like it. Easy to use. Lightweight. Does what it says. Not as full featured perhaps as Telerik but understandable and can be put in your project with just a few scripts. I really like the Themeroller, too.

George
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I think that Telerik anounced that they will use JQuery for client side.

dmajkic
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  • This is true. Our tools for ASP.NET MVC are entirely based on jQuery, and the RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX are increasingly using jQuery to replace MS AJAX client-side libraries (consistent with Microsoft's own approach to JS libraries). – Todd Apr 21 '11 at 16:48
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Telerik is just now starting to devote more time to the client-side support for their RadGrid. So far I've been disappointed with the grid. I feel bad for them, because they are having to maintain essentially 2 code-bases: one for their server controls which redraws everything in C# based on Postbacks and ViewState, and one for the client-side controls which redraws portions of the control in javascript (kind of like a port of their C# code to javascript). That's a hell of a lot of work for them and so far I feel it's incomplete.

For example the client-side support for the current version of their grid (ASP.nET AJAX 2008.3.1105.35) does not include:

  1. Grouping expressions
  2. Increasing page size
  3. Pager styles other than NextPrev
  4. Hiding/showing columns
  5. AllowNaturalSort="false"
  6. Pure client-side sorting (ie right in the browser)

Having said that, if you would be happy using the Telerik controls with traditional Postback/Viewstate rendering, then I would say there are no jQuery grids that can compete.

Crescent Fresh
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  • Absolutely, plus from what I saw if you try to do any sort of complex Ajax on a master/content setup, the whole toolset blows up. – nshaw Jan 10 '09 at 17:35
  • Just cleaning-up the record. Yes, it's a lot of work to do client-side with a Grid what is done server-side (due to the great deal of configuration a Grid allows server-side: templates, editing modes, etc.). That said, we've worked hard to provide rich client-side support for many "core" scenarios, both for WebForms and ASP.NET MVC. As you note, there are few client-side grid implementations that can really fully replicate what can be done server-side. *** As for @nshaw's comment, I think it's an obvious over generalization. Telerik tools work very well with Ajax in Master/Content scenarios. – Todd Apr 21 '11 at 16:56
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I worked with both jQuery and Telerik. Telerik is very fancy at its official site’s demos but when using it, you feel it very heavy and slow. With jQuery you can write light and efficient codes that address your needs but requires more time. In performance terms I recommend rendering Initial heavy HTML results on the server instead of client browser. (Ex. Big Grids)

bipen
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Mehdi Shojaei
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I have been using Telerik for controls for 3 years. I finally realized that I am in love with the idea but the controls themselves are very buggy, annoying to implement and in the end have cost me way more time that it would have to build myself. I would definitely recommend not using Telerik.

  • Same with ComponentArt. There's a whole section of my hair gone grey just from dealing with the controls. All these toolsets were developed a while ago and progressively hacked to do AJAX when they should have been re-architected completely. I've come to the inevitable conclusion that the whole ASP .NET winforms/MVC model is essentially flawed (although MVC is streets ahead of Winforms), so don't imagine any of these component frameworks will ever be any good. – Ben McIntyre Sep 20 '11 at 01:46