What third party component set would you recommend to enhance look and functionality of existing applications - both Windows and Web (C#, .NET 2.0, Visual Studio 2008)?
Manager wants all applications to have "nice, simple and uniform" look.
Thank you!
DevExpress is a popular one I know and have seen being used often. It is also WAY more powerful than .NET's default controls.
There are a good number of components out there, so it really depends on what you are trying to do.
It sounds like you are looking for a suite, which you can take a set of components that are expected to have a themed look & feel... The two most popular are Telerik and Infragistics. I would take a look at both...if they have alot of what you need, you should be good to go.
Each suite has components for WinForms, ASP.NET, WPF and potentially others. So you pick the suite based on the target architecture you are or will be working with.
I recommend you to try Telerik RadControls and Infragistics NetAdvantage controls I think they are the most popular 3rd party choices.
If you care about application startup time and overall UI performance, you should be very careful when adding a 3rd party component set to your project. I have used many of them in my career and it seemed that most of them are bloated, heavily decreasing app startup time and overall performance (even with NGEN - users' workstation are not as fast as ours!). When I were you, I would really try to avoid integrating any of them.
Having said that, if you just want the uniform look, Component Factory's controls are a reasonable choice.
We have used Janus controls. They are relatively cheap. They did contain some bugs, but support staff was very responsive and provided a workaround and fixes in the next release.
I haven't tried Telerik yet but plan to because they have a great reputation. In the meantime, DevExpress are offering 60 freebies so you might as well take them while they are on offer!
http://www.microsoft.com/web/content.aspx?id=ove-60-free-controls-from-DevExpressv
Anthony, www.codersbarn.com :-)
In my previous application (Windows) we used Infragistics controls. I found them very powerful.
We extensively used the UltraGrid control that allowed us to create professional and uniform looking datagrids across the application. It takes getting used to, but once you get the hang of it there is possibly nothing you couldn’t accomplish. The Infragistics knowledge base is quite helpful covering a lot of day-to-day programming situations. Features like multilevel headers / sorting / formulas / formatting are very flexible and powerful.
I would definitely recommend using the UltraGrid control if you have a lot of Grids in your application that do more than simply display data (performance isn’t exactly its forte).
It depends on how much of a "web guy" you are. When I was contracting, I did some evaluation, and found that devexpress aspXperience was way beyond the competition when it came to things like animations and behavior. They also offer a great javascript API that is well documented and fully featured.
At work we use telerik, and while most asp guys love it, I hate it. Their controls are very good for people who transition to the web from the winforms world, but for web guys they tend to be frustrating to work with, and typically look and behave like what people were doing outside of the asp world 5-10 years ago.
I would recommend doing your own evaluation. If you hate working with javascript, you will probably love telerik. If you think javascript is awesome, devexpress is probably for you.
Since I cannot yet comment directly to Emile's answer, I will just add this answer: Stay away from Janus Controls. I'm forced to work with their web controls at work since they ARE cheap and the boss simply shuts his ears when we tell him the controls are crap.
They do have several advantages:
However, the disadvantages are:
I could go on, but I won't. I don't mean to sound bitter, cold, or cruel, but I am, so that's how it comes out. :P
Our team uses VIBlend for Windows Forms projects. The lib is quite large with many good looking controls. I work mostly with the data grid but my colleagues are happy with the other controls as well.
Hi,
I recommend that you go with Telerik ASP.NET AJAX UI Controls.
I fx. used r.a.d.grid from telerik for several years now. It's a very solid and easy component to use. I have always found "a way" with it. Try it out and you will be up and running in no time.
r.a.d.editor are another great component that are used and by many, fx. on TechNet and CodePlex. You can read more here.
We use Infragistics for WinForms and in one of the projects and happy about it - customers are satisfied.
We are very happy with ComponentOne products as they're very powerful while easy to use, also having a clean API.
The Peter Blum Data Entry Suite is pretty awesome in terms of added functionality for ASP.NET:
We have a very dynamic site with a lot of hidden questions and nested logic where certain questions appear under certain conditions. And this suite helps a lot.
At first I was just using his Validators, but then found a lot of benefit to his "Interactive Pages" functionality as well.
I would recommend Telerik.
Based on flexibility, documentation, support. I really like their office ribbon control that allows me to create new office like interface with little effort. Their API's are easy to learn and tie into. Their support and forums are great at answering your questions and providing examples.