Hi,
Having used DevExpress and the like for several projects for clients, I am wondering if there is a community maintained collection of controls comparable to the DevExpress, Telerik et al collections for ASP.NET?
Any thoughts?
Regards Moo
+1
A:
While I'm not aware of any community maintained collection of controls there are many OSS controls out there. You'll just have to be specific in what you are looking for.
That said, DevExpress are fantastic and offer 60 controls free of charge, see here. You can't really ask for more than that!
Lazarus
2010-08-12 11:47:11
Thats the problem, I don't want specific individual controls because that means each control has its own nuances et al, which is why the third party pay-for collections are so lucritive - they have a consistency across the entire collection. I also already have the DevExpress free control set, and do enjoy using it but cannot justify spending out on the entire set for personal use!
Moo
2010-08-12 11:54:36
What are you developing for personal use that needs a comprehensive suite of consistent controls?
Lazarus
2010-08-12 12:13:54
+2
A:
I would search through www.sourceforge.net or www.codeplex.com for ASP.NET community projects. Unfortunately a lot of these projects become abandoned or neglected and can suffer from inconsistencies.
I prefer the paid collections. If you regard 'time as money', I would argue that a lot of these paid options end up being cheaper than free collections that take more of your time to use. Not to mention there can be support differences as well.
A lot of the paid options have trial periods. Why not spend a bit of time playing with them and if you find one that will improve your products, go ahead and purchase. The earlier mentioned DevExpress and Telerik have a lot to offer (other vendors also exist).
If on the other hand you are only looking for a specific control, these paid packages may be a bit over-the-top and not worth the cost. You could find an open source type solution or consider rolling your own.
Edward Leno
2010-08-12 14:56:12
Outstanding comment and perfect description of the situation. The closest thing that exists to a free collection of tools for ASP.NET is the Microsoft-maintained ASP.NET AJAX Toolkit http://www.asp.net/ajaxlibrary/act.ashx. If you're considering MVC, Telerik offers a free and open source collection of UI tools for that platform http://telerikaspnetmvc.codeplex.com/
Todd
2010-09-08 21:36:15