So in my last post, I blogged about WPF components. I have veen deep with the ones I mentioned and more in the past 2 weeks and I have reached some conclusions about WPF component vendors. I have also eval’d more vendors out there to add to my list.

So last post, I was continuing to actively review:

• Infragragistics
• ComponentOne
• Developer Express
• Syncfusion

I was mainly looking @ their grids as my #1 needed component. I can say that I have spent a fair bit of time now with each one, and I have some solid opinions. I have also drilled down a level and reviewed the suites from other vendors including:

• Xceed
• Telerik
• DivElements
• and even Nukeation’s Reuxables reusable WPF themes

At the end of the day, there is actually a fair bit of usable vendor software out there. The grid was by far the hardest to select as there are just so many ‘bells and whistles’ you can have in a grid product.

My WPF Vendor Grid Rankings

1. Xceed
2. Infragistics
3. ComponentOne
4. DevExpress
5. Telerik
6. Syncfusion

That is not uber-precise, but it is my general feeling. Here is a random list of features I was looking for:

• performance
• summaries
• hierarchical data
• quality data-templating
• general ‘feel’ of the grid
• sorting
• skinning
• auto-filter
• any Excel-like features
• API feel
• out of the box embedded editors
• documentation/ examples

Other WPF components (excluding the grids)

That ranking is just for my grid. Interestingly, my least favorite grid implementation was Syncfusion’s, but they actually had the best (IMO) general controlls suite; The Syncfusion WPF Tools set. I compared this with Infragistics control suite for the most part. I did look at all the above mentioned vendors, and the ones in contention were mainly Syncfusion and Infragistics.

Infragistics seemed to focus on ‘bling’. They had really nice carousel controls, but financial apps are no place for those unfortunately. They had a few basic ‘editors’, but syncfusion just had a few more.

Docking and Ribbon control; both Syncfusion and Infragistics offered good Ribbon controls and Docking controls. They all look the same. The APIs are very similar (unsurprisingly). I liked them both.

Explorer bar; Infragistics latest CTP has an explorer bar, and Syncfusion has one out. Infragistics gave me some bugs while working with it, so I could not get too deep. It kept blowing out my XAML files unfortunately. I am sure it is just fine, once it is out of beta.

Syncfusion also has a handy Autocomplete control. It is not fantastic, but it was in use in minutes and I got good use of it fast. Infragistics has no analogy.

Syncfusion has the following controls:

• Ribbon
• Explorer bar
• Autocomplete
• Task bar
• Docking
• Font list/ combo box
• Gallery (cool)
• Datetime edit
• Numeric Up/ down
• Color Picker
• Advanced Tree View
• Clock
• Masked Text Box
• Integer Text Box
• Double Text Box
• Calendar Edit

I could go on and on. Essentially, this is what I have so far. I hope it is helpful to someone/ anyone!

-Chris-

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