Best UI Components/Suite

D

DesireToFire

Member
Joined
May 10, 2003
Messages
6
I appologise if this question has been asked many times, I tried searching but didnt find an awfull lot.

Ive been given the task of deciding which (UI)component suite to buy or which free components that the company i work for will standardise on.

The basic controls we want in Visual Studio.Net/Office XP and possibly Office 2003 style are as follows:

Menus
Toolbars
Docking
Tabbed MDI

Im aware of the controls available from http://www.divil.co.uk/net and Ive tried a selection of the commercial controls such as dotnetbar.
Since Im not paying the cost isnt as big a concern, but its proving to be a tricky desicsion to make.

I would be ver gratefull for youre oppinions on such controls, which controls are in youre toolbar?
 
I wouldnt say i really dislike any of the controls Ive looked at so far.

divils controls are pretty good and for the price i dont think you could ask for much more, the only problems Ive found with them are fixed(unmoveable) toolbars and when clicking on the top left corner of an application using the controls (The close/minimize/maximize menu) it kind of looks flatened with a white edge.

I hope that made some sense.

Im somewhat less clear on the http://www.dotnetmagic.com/ controls, Ive found an older version on sourceforge, but they appear to no longer be free. Do you have to purchase these controls or can the older version still be used for free?
 
Huh, it looks like youre right. The newer version appears to cost $200. The older version is still good though, if you can find it.
 
The http://www.codejock.com/ components certainly look very good, and they even have a an office 2003 style. I prefer the Office XP look myself but i think some of our coustomers would be impressed by the 2003 look. Sadly the price is not cheap that really would be hitting the limit of the budget ive been given.

The older version of dotnetmagic is available here, i assume theres nothing wrong with this link.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/dotnetmagic

Any more oppinions?
Im trying to narrow my search down to a few suites. I know i shouldnt be so lazy, but its hard to get a good feel for components without using them for a while first.
 
Maybe you should download the trial versions of those components and see which one you like best.
 
Oh I have done, Im trialling commercial components from the following companies, its proving to be quite a task.

Codejock
Developer
DevComponents
Infragistics
Innovasys
Syncfusion
Xceed

Ive also looked at the ComponentOne stuff included in the VB resource kit, but we were pretty dissapointed with there menus.
If you move between menus quickly you can still see the previous one with the new menu on top.
 
I think you should take a look at www.devexpress.com

I have all their .net suite controls and theres nothing bad to say about them... :D
I use specially the XtraMenus and the XtraGrid and theres nothing compared to that on the market... If you want, buy the source code and see for your self...

About the companies you told I just worked with some Infragistics tools and most of them arent trully .net... are some "masked" ald COM controls...

Try DevExpresss controls... you wont regret! :)
 
Well we defenitley want something 100% .Net so if thats true about Infragistics then theyre off the list.

The only complaint I have about the DevExpress components is that the toolbars have a rather thick title bar when dragged off of a form, i havent had an oportunity to see if this can be changed.

I know im being far to picky about it, but we supply software to a number of other IT companies and they really pick up on the details.
 
I have the XtraBars component but I never notice that... mostly because I never allow the user to play around with my toolbar!

I desable this property mostly regarding the support issue... They call telling that this button or this toolbar just desapeared! :D

A serious thing about DevExpress its its support, they reply to you on max 24 hours... very nice...

I may sound like I get something out of this publicity but I really like these controls and I see so many people buying junk controls like I did in the past.
Just to finish, last year, here on the office, we got the professional suite of ComponentOne and... it really really really sucks. The controls sucks, the suports sucks... they make 1 update per week minimum!! It may soud great but if you develop a control that you have to deploy weekly updates... It really sucks...

:D
 
The most stable components IMHO are from Infragistic... I would suggest u to uz em. =)

best regards
 
I used to use DotNetBar, I would recommend it as a comprehensive suite of UI controls. Its downsides are that its designer support isnt too great, and you have to include a ~900kb dll with your application. I even have a license I might be able to sell you since I dont use it myself any more.

If youre not in a hurry, there will be a major new version of my own menu and toolbar library which supports floating etc sometime in the next few months.
 
DotNetBar does seem pretty good. Id say the docking in youre controls is probably closer to Visual Studio.Net than DotNetBars, you also certainly win on pice too. DevComponents are doing a 40% off discount until the end of the month, which would be quite a nice saving.

We are looking at getting a license for 10 developers , I guess you have a single developer license.

We are in a bit of a rush sadly, Ill certainly keep an eye out for updates on youre web site. The designer integration on youre components is particularly impressive.
 
Back
Top