Best user interface control suite?
The application I'm currently developing requires a very robust and user-friendly interface. I know there are many third party control suites out there, but which one is the best for the money?
I'm looking for a package that supports dockable toolbars and windows/containers, preferrably multiple color schemes, menus with icons, tab interfaces, etc. (pretty much the standards.) I've looked at Infragistic's NetAdvantage, Actipro's UIStudio, QIOS DevSuite, DivElement's Sandbar and Sandock, etc.
If anyone has personal experience with any number of these (or other) packages, please share your suggestions and preferences.
Also, I've seen that VS.NET 2005 includes some more extensive UI controls... are they worth using?
Thanks
[753 byte] By [
root] at [2007-12-16]
I find infragistics is a good group of controls.
Takes a bit of time to learn them though as they have billions of properties.
Also differences between web and windows controls will drive ya nutters.
But they are clean and very prowerful when used right.
they released a version of 2005 vol 1 that works with the vs2005 beta 2. as i recall from converting to 2005, there was only one issue with a AutoScaleDimensions property on certain controls... but it was only a Obsolete message, not an error per se.
Anyway, yeah, Infragistics works great in 2005, can't tell you how happy I have been with both their products as well as their technical support staff. I highly recommend the additional priority support, worth every penny!
We use Qios.DevSuite and we are very happy about it. They don't have as much controls as the other providers, but the controls they have work great and are easy to configure and use. Another thing we like is that they support the Windows XP themes fully. You can define the colors for all the themes at once, instead of switching from colorschemes or something.
Also the guys from that library give a good support, they reply within a working day and often in several minutes. They give deep technical information and if you have a good addition to the library they implement it in the upcoming version.
So i would recommend Qios.DevSuite.
Actually, I ended up hating most of the control suites I tried and ended up using Sandbar and Sandock from Divelements:
http://www.divelements.co.uk/net/The controls seem to be pretty stable in VS.NET 2005 and the price is very appealing. Tech support is not quite as impressive as others (probably due to being located on the opposite side of the world from me), but they have a forum that usually generates responses in 24 hours or so.
windowsforms.net has a very comprehensive selection of controls, including a lot of free/open source ones. CodeProject.com also has a wide array of open source controls as well.
