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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Well, I have been building toy projects with WPF for some time now. I have been monitoring and trying Acropolis, Prisim and whatever the heck they call prism now. I have been closely monitoring the landscape of 3rd party vendors.

In order to be productive and deliver real, purposeful applications I need to be able to focus on the business domain (finance/ trading in my case). I DO NOT want to build low level widgets. I do not want to rebuild the wheel. In order to do this, I need to use a component vendor. This gives your application ‘perceived integrity’ inasmuch as your users will see something and touch something that looks like a modern application, not a 1995 web page with java applets and midi songs.

So – I have been following the big vendors and their WPF offerings:

* Infragistics
* Syncfusion
* ComponentOne
* Developer Express

I have ben waiting for Developer Express in particular to come out with their grid offering. They released it not too long ago. Syncfusion also released their grid not too long ago. Infragistics has had the longest lived WPF product suite. Grids are the most important component in my world. The other components are also important, but grids are king in my world.

I need minimally:

* Grid
* Docking/ MDI management
* Toolbars/ Ribbon
* General Editors

DevExpress

As far as grids go, DevExpress is my favorite WinForms grid provider. It is fast, flexible, good in every way. Their WPF grid is nice enough, but not nearly as plush as their WinForms grid.

Their other great component is their layout component. It is still not in their WPF Suite. Unfortunately, they only have a chart offering and a grid. They are not quite there yet.

* Grid
* Charts

Syncfusion

At one point (in WinForms days), Syncfusion was the darling of wall st IT departments. They were fast, the only one that did a good enough job supporting real time market data. At a point, the rest of the grid vendors caught up and in Developer Express’ case, surpassed Syncfusion. Their WPF grid offering feels immature to me. Aside from a grid they do have a more complete offering than say Developer Express:

* Grid
* Docking
* Several nice editors
* Charts
* Ribbon
* Taskbars/ Groupbars
* An auto-complete control

All in all, they have a nice package, notwithstanding the grid which as I mentioned – feels immature.

Component One

I have never really been a big fan of Component One. Their WPF Offering still has an uncomfortable feel to me. They currently offer:

* Grid
* Schedule
* Charts
* Reports

I have played with the grid a bit. I wanted to like it, but it just doe snot feel right to me… I realize that is qualitative, but so be it.

Infragistics

Well, Infragistics has the best grid currently. It does the most stuff, feels the realest, seems the most extensible. It just does what you expect. Now in WinForms land the Infragistics grid always had a big API, but it generally was SLOW. With my former employer we had several meetings with the people responsible for WPF at Infragistics and they were very reactive to our performance requirements. They also just came out with their Docking Manager, which was missing and important. Their current suite consists of:

* Grid
* Carousel
* Charts
* Several Editors
* Docking
* Ribbon

There are a number of smaller vendors that have one bit or another. This is OK for open source stuff – but I really do not want 10 different micro component vendors. Ideally, we could have 1 vendor. In the past I have almost always had 2 vendors – Infragistics for everything but the grid, then developer express or syncfusion for the grid.

Conclusion

I think that in conjunction with Prism, there is a farily compelling platform for building non-trivial front office trading applications presently. With the current ’stuff’ that is out there, we should be able to focus on the business facets, and deliver a real application in a timely fashion.

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