3rd Party WinForms Docking Windows Component, need recommendation

  • Thread starter Thread starter Lecture Snoddddgrass
  • Start date Start date
L

Lecture Snoddddgrass

Greetings,

Can anyone recommend a good 3rd party docking windows component for
WinForms? I'm looking for something that allows windows to not only be
docked but to "popout", much like the Solution Explorer or Toolbox in Visual
Studio.NET. For my last project, I used the SyncFusion component for docking
windows, but my experience is that SyncFusion is buggy. I'd prefer to use a
different vendor for this project. Any advice?

Thanks,

Gil Grissom, CSI
 
Try http://www.devexpress.com they have great components at good prices
and
the support is second to none.

BTW, I have *no* commercial interest in the company ;-)
Click to expand...

Doh! DevExpress is **horrible**! I should have known they were horrible
when no one would return my calls to purchase their XtraTreeList component.
They eventually just gave it to me for free because of all of the hassles I
had with their sales department. When I finally got my hands on that
control, it was absolutely the worst piece of crash-prone garbage I had
*EVER* used. I've been developing and using 3rd party components for many
years and have NEVER had such a bad experience with a component/vendor as I
did with DevExpress. Maybe their other components are better, but I
personally will avoid DevExpress like the plague. The only good thing that I
can say about them is that they were nice enough give me the component for
free... but from *my* perspective, the experience was not free since I spent
many days with tech support trying to resolve bugs in their products. Then
they'd try to patch the bug for me and they'd end up creating two or three
MORE bugs in the process... argh! As you can see, you hit a raw nerve with
me when you mentioned DevExpress... it just brought back bad memories. No
hard feelings. My anger isn't focused on you. I don't mean to jump on you
when you were nice enough to make a recommendation! The reading the name
DevExpress makes me see red. :)

For what it's worth I've had mostly positive experiences with other
component vendors. ComponentOne, Xceed, SoftwareFX, SyncFusion [with the
exception of their docking component], and many others... Unfortunately,
none of the vendors on my "good" list make a viable docking component. I
found a company called Actipro that makes a docking component. I'm playing
with their trial version right now.

Thanks anyway for your input!

David
 
Hi Lecture:

I am a DevExpress subscriber and use all their .NET components, I have had
*NO* trouble at all am I'm delighted with the ease of use and the technical
support.

Curiously, I had trouble with the ComponentOne components.

Well I suppose that's life...

Regards,
Martin.

Lecture Snoddddgrass said:
Try http://www.devexpress.com they have great components at good prices and
the support is second to none.

BTW, I have *no* commercial interest in the company ;-)
Click to expand...

Doh! DevExpress is **horrible**! I should have known they were horrible
when no one would return my calls to purchase their XtraTreeList component.
They eventually just gave it to me for free because of all of the hassles I
had with their sales department. When I finally got my hands on that
control, it was absolutely the worst piece of crash-prone garbage I had
*EVER* used. I've been developing and using 3rd party components for many
years and have NEVER had such a bad experience with a component/vendor as I
did with DevExpress. Maybe their other components are better, but I
personally will avoid DevExpress like the plague. The only good thing that I
can say about them is that they were nice enough give me the component for
free... but from *my* perspective, the experience was not free since I spent
many days with tech support trying to resolve bugs in their products. Then
they'd try to patch the bug for me and they'd end up creating two or three
MORE bugs in the process... argh! As you can see, you hit a raw nerve with
me when you mentioned DevExpress... it just brought back bad memories. No
hard feelings. My anger isn't focused on you. I don't mean to jump on you
when you were nice enough to make a recommendation! The reading the name
DevExpress makes me see red. :)

For what it's worth I've had mostly positive experiences with other
component vendors. ComponentOne, Xceed, SoftwareFX, SyncFusion [with the
exception of their docking component], and many others... Unfortunately,
none of the vendors on my "good" list make a viable docking component. I
found a company called Actipro that makes a docking component. I'm playing
with their trial version right now.

Thanks anyway for your input!

David
Click to expand...
 
Hi Lecture,

We have no record of any support incidents that you have submitted. We
apologize for any inconvenience that you may have experienced with our
components. Our promise is that we will do everything possible to make
things work for you. Please let us know your customer information in an
email and we will have someone from our development / support teams work
with you to fix any issues that you may have run into. We take great pride
in the quality of our components and hope that you will give us the
opportunity to continue working with you.

Best regards,
Daniel Jebaraj (danielj@syncfusion******n&_s&&&pam.com)
Syncfusion, Inc
http://www.syncfusion.com
 
Daniel,

Shortly after I posted that message I went around looking for docking
controls from other vendors. I couldn't really find anything better than
what I had already purchased from SyncFusion so I decided to download the
latest version of your component. To my surprise, version 1.6.1.8 fixed many
of the bugs that I was complaining about in 1.6.1.0 [which is what I used in
my previous project]. More specifically, my problems were two-fold:

- Closing the app while the dock animation was in progress caused a
crash.
- Under certain circumstances Dispose()ing a floating dockable window
caused a crash.

The release notes for 1.6.1.8 states that both of these problems were
fixed, and sure enough the component seems to be much more solid now. The
problem I had with SyncFusion was that they kept promising me that the fix
for these problems would be out in "a week" or "very soon" and I kept
waiting and nothing ever happened... and this was many months ago. 1.6.1.8
wasn't released until October (correct?). In any case, I'm using 1.6.1.8 in
a new project right now and it's behaving nicely.

My support account at SyncFusion is under the email address
'(e-mail address removed)' , but please don't try to send email to that address as
it's no longer valid. Also, you can look at forum#5 (tools) on your support
site and see that I'm awaiting resolution for Q209.

Thanks for your follow-up!

David
 
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