Obout controls in C# .Net - c#

Is anyone using the Obout controls in C# .Net? How would you rate these controls, especially the Grid Control?

I was thoroughly impressed with them. Of all the other control sets out there (infragistics, telerik) this is the only (more than) respectable one I've worked with that was 1) free! and 2) lightweight!. The only caveat to Obout is I had trouble with merging some of these controls and some of the stock AJAX components.
Infragistics is by far my favorite (my comment about Obout being "lightweight" is in comparison with the heavy use of viewstate in some of the Infragistics controls) but it's around 1000-1500 a seat, so it can get expensive if you have a larger team.

I like obout for their lightweight'ness. Their licensing policy is very fair (pay once free updates for life) and they also give (free) educational licenses.
However, I had to use Developer Express on one of my projects and never looked back since. Very powerful and not as bloated as Infragistics.
Basically, if you decide to go obout way, you probably will not regret it.

I like obout for their simplicity and functionality. They have pretty good documentation and samples of almost everything. And they cost a fraction of price than others (Componentart/Telerik). I am currently testing their Grid control ( after I gave up on Componentart grid for client side functionality) and find it pretty straightforward.

I purchased the license a few years ago and have been using it ever since. The support is pretty good and the controls are great. I have looked at some of the other vendors (telerik, etc) but haven't moved any where because of cost transition. The nice thing with obout is that I bought it a few years ago and they still give me free updates. That may change inthe future, but for now, its great. The products work as expected and they are always making updates to the software.

This is the first time I was working with obout controls.Previously,I was working with telerik controls and so,I had a good chance of comparing these two set of controls.I would prefer Obout for its light weight and functionality.

I used their tree for a project. Not bad for free controls.

I have been using their Calendar control for nearly 2 years. All of a sudden it stops working on Google Chrome (Vr: 17.0.963.56 m). Even their live demos don't work, try scrolling through the months a few times and it will just hang with the error 'Uncaught TypeError: this is not a Date object.'.
I've emailed the company on two occasions regarding this issue as it has brought my site down and I'm getting customers contacting me incessantly. I'm afraid as of yet no reply!! Very frustrating!!
It's really a shame because the tool is otherwise excellent...If they could at least acknowledge the fault and assure me they are working on a solution that would be something, but to be left in the dark shows a complete lack of basic customer service etiquette.

Related

Generating an Organogram in MVC and Displaying in View

I imagine this question will not bear anything, but this is a last ditch attempt before I have to tell my PM I simply can't do it.
My colleague (usefully before leaving the project) was a yes man to everything our PM asked for, regardless of what it was, and I seem to have been volunteered to create some functionality that will generate an Organogram / Organisational Chart and present it in the view.
I have dug around and asked around, no one really seems to know how I would go about doing this. Can anyone offer any advice on anything that can help? Even if it's the most basic tutorial or obscure API ever, it will be helpful.
To put a point on it, my question is: Is it possible to generate a chart in an ASP.NET MVC C# Application, and display it on a View? (Even a yes or no would help)
Yes, everything is possible. It's just a matter of how much time you can spend on it. Not everything has a good return on investment though, but that's for your PM to decide. As long as your team can make an estimation of the complexity.
But for ASP.NET, Microsoft has a Charting library that allows you to build charts. There are also commercial libraries (the first google hit) out there that are more feature rich.
And if they don't work, you can Always build images manually using the System.Drawing namespace of .NET (that will of course take considerably more time than plotting a chart using one of the available libraries). Generated images can be sent through an ashx handler, or you can embed the image in the same page using base64 encoding.
It's not bad to say yes to your PM, but I rather say: "Yes, we will stick this feature on the feature list / back log, and make a estimate of the complexity. Once we know the complexity you can choose to select it for a future iteration." But perhaps I'm talking too Agile now ;-)
You can hand off the chart drawing to an external library, for example, Google Visualization: Organizational Chart
Have a look at this question for other suggested librairies:
What's the best library to draw organization chart using JavaScript?
This sounds like it's in a commercial scenario, so it's really worth looking at the commercially available solutions. Steven already mentioned one, but as far as I can see that one is for Windows Forms and the other one is for charts as in bar charts and provides no organigram features.
A Javascript diagramming library with the capabilities of displaying organizational charts is yFiles for HTML. It has a nice online example of an organization chart that might be exactly what you are looking for:
There is also a Video that shows the demo in action.
The library is a pure Javascript implementation that does not depend on server libraries or servers at all. Integrating it in an ASP.net environment should be easy though, as long as you know Javascript. Being a library it offers full customization capabilities. You can determine the look and the feel of all aspects of the chart. Under the hood the library is a generic graph drawing and editing tool and the organizational chart is just one possible use-case.
Full disclosure: I work for the company that created the library, but on SO I do not represent my employer. My comments, thoughts, etc. are my own.

Creating your own forms designer

I would like start writing an application that will let my user design the interface by choosing some basic controls as Labels, TextBoxes etc. Once done I would like to save the layout in an xml file and be able later on runtime to reconstruct what user choose.
Is there anything similar ready and pre-made?
Can you suggest me the approach?
Any suggestion is welcome!
Cheers
Creating your own designer is a lot like building your own submarine in your basement. Programmers tend to take the quality of the Winforms or WPF designers as a standard of measure. Both are however the result of multi man-year efforts at Microsoft. Reproducing their work from scratch is a daunting task.
Best thing to do is leverage what's already done by them. Possible with the Winforms designer, this magazine article is excellent to help you get started. It is dated but I'm fairly sure it is still relevant, little has changed in Winforms in the past 6 years.

difference between telerik mvc controls suite paid/opensource

what is the difference between the paid version and open source telerik controls for mvc 2/3?
we have been using telerik controls for asp.net mvc for an year now. they work great and you can post issues on their forums and most of the problems are solved there. they also have a code library where you can find code samples. the only thing is that if you want to create a support ticket and want telerik team to see it on priority then you have to pay the support cost otherwise its just free. but from our experience i can tell you that we weer stuck about dozen times (in the beginning) but never had to create a support ticket problems were solved at forums. i will strongly urge you to use these controls. they are great and can save you lot of coding and time
Another thing...you may want to read the fine print to check me on this, but I believe that the open source version can only be used for an internal application or another open source application that you are developing. If you want to sell or use your product on a commercial basis, then you have to buy the full license.
There is mainly no major difference in terms of functioanlity.
The basic thing is that u can't get support from Telerik company if something stops working.
I am already using Telerik open source MVC toolkit in my project and is working fine.

Free alternative to standard C# DataGrid?

The standard DataGrid is quite unresponsive when it comes to displaying large amounts of information. I tried SourceGrid and can live with the results, but see room for improvement. Can anyone think of any other free alternatives to the standard DataGrid that can handle large amounts of data? I am open to creative ideas.
After looking into XPTable and trying out ObjectListView, I've decided that SourceGrid is superior (speed wise) to both for large quantities of data, scrolling feels much smoother.
How about XPTable on CodeProject? Ok, it is a modified form of ListView but that might suffice and lighter. The source code is on sourceforge as it is more up-to-date then on CodeProject. A newer clone is available on github.
There is also a custom DataGrid here on CodeProject called SourceGrid, the source repository resides on github here.
I've heard good things about ObjectListView but I haven't used it. It seems to have a very rich feature set. In the past when I used Windows Forms I would have killed for some of the issues it solves as compared to ListView. Note that it's not a DataGrid however.
Not to sound like a shill but although you said free alternative, I still should mention the best Windows Forms datagrid I've ever used was Developer Express's XtraGrid. I've yet to see any grid in any UI technology come close to it in terms of usability and features.
Component Factory's Krypton toolkit has a nice looking one. It is free, however, I've never used it so I can't speak for or against it.

What is the best 3rd party GUI framework for application development in C#?

Examples could be Infragistics or DevExpress.
But I'm also looking for your opinions on other frameworks. It could even be WPF if that is your favorite.
Infragistics is very good. I think they have a better product for windows than the web. However, I get very upset using their products sometimes. I just want to find some hidden property, and it is impossible to find. They have way to many properties. Sure, you can do anything with their grid, but it should be easier. All of these vendors are leap frogging each other. You really have to compare all of them every year or two. I am currently using Infragistics on most web and windows project. If I could switch today, I would go to DevExpress for Web and Windows. Everything that Mark Miller and the guys at DevExpress produce is beautiful, and thoughtful. On a side point, you should check out CodeRush and Refacter. I may sound like a salesman, but I am not. I just could no longer code without CodeRush. It would feel like coding with one hand. If you are going to spend $1000 or more on a framework, you should also get CodeRush.
I've used Telerik RAD Controls for Asp.Net and it is a very comprehensive suite of controls that are easily converted to AJAX. The support is top notch, with the forum as a first place to go to for research before contacting the staff.
The client side API is fairly easy to understand, and they have good examples of mixed implementations with client and server side code.
I would say Infragistics
Haven't used it before, but I've heard good things about Telerik. My experience with the Infragistics Web components has been less than stellar. I found there were a lot of hidden features that I required, which were undocumented and had to go hunt around in the sample code for examples.
These toolkits can make sense for intranet applications but when you start providing it out on the web, the functionality can come at the cost of a bigger download for users. Just something to keep in mind.
What frameworks are you looking for? I currently use Janus Grids for grids on the winform side, but DevExpress has an awesome web grid that is amazing.
For current Winforms development my favorite is Infragistics. DevExpress seems to have more Silverlight controls in the works, but Infragistics may deliver.
I don't do much non-web development, but if I do I like to use gtk# for Mono (screenshots). It's much more fun and very easy to program then winforms. WPF looks good to, but I only tried an Hello World.
Infragistics has got good controls for Applications. WinGrid is one of the most important ones which would help you displaying information professionally and is quick.
the only drawback is the time consuming process of contacting their helpdesk or searching for the hidden properties. But they do work after you get to know them !
I would say go for DevExpress seems to be the most elegant, intuitive and well document suite out there.
To see their product offering in action demos.devexpress.com
Do the same for any component suite check out their demos and see which best suit you needs.

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