I'm looking for a skinning library for Windows Forms.
I see this question asked a few times on StackOverflow, but always people looking for free/open source solutions. I don't mind paying for a skinning library. Googling around I see DevExpress's controls support some kind of skinning, and there's also skincrafter.com (though I'm unclear if that supports Windows Forms). Anyone familiar with either of these products or can recommend something better?
I'd like "full" skinning support, but I might be happy with something simple like Firefox Personas/Chrome Themes.
I'm used to using the DotNetBar controls but they don't seem to support skinning, other than basic color themes.
I use DevExpress WinForms and I'm very happy with them.
However, developing custom controls that look good in all of their included skins can be quite challenging.
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I am a systems analyst focusing on interaction design and usability, normally working on web applications (using my Mac). However, currently I am in a project team working on a legacy application which has a Windows Forms-based front-end.
I try to simplify and clean up the interface but given my web background it's quite frustrating to work within the strict constraints of WinForms and DevExpress 8.3 controls. (WPF would be great but it is not an option: the company has lots of off-shore users logged in remotely to virtual machines. WPF was tested several times and it failed. Windows XP and IE6 are still on all workstations.)
It would be great to see some good examples for elegant UI design for complex forms with lots of input fields in different categories and groups, including read-only sections with meta-data. It should not be fancy, just simple, slick and clean. Do you happen to have some good examples?
It looks like this post might give you some ideas/leads to pursue:
Where are examples of great program UI's built free with Winforms?
I still couldn't find real good ones, only sporadically. The best WinForms examples I found are in Windows XP itself and in other Microsoft products, like IE, Office.
This may be a long shot but have you considered using a metro-style layout (see wp7 et cetera)? I personally think it would be really well suited to forms with large data entry requirements, I mean, you have the spacing that will separate things perfectly for you, and it's all blocky so you know what you're doing.
This is just my opinion, but hope it can help!
With regards to being "restricted" to Windows Forms, I wouldn't see it as this. By creating your own custom controls you can do pretty much anything you want. I've always hand-coded my WF apps and they're always easier (not to mention more fun) to develop than in WPF. I think WPF is the restrictive place, but again that's just me... Haven't used it too heavily at all.
I've looked at a couple of articles today, and it doesn't seem to be working, I don't have enough of an idea of what is going on to troubleshoot... any simpler implementations or insights that may make this easier?
A WPF based treeview would exactly solve the purpose. This is a classic example of it's implementation for Windows Explorer.
I am using delphi as my primary development tool.
and recently I found these 2 libraries in KSDEV.com
and i found they are similar to WPF . So i just downloaded them and stated to playing with them until the time to end comes ( i have not checked its license policies yet). I am not a good WPF knowledge person but i found was WPF hard to develop.
But my doubt is , are these 2 libraries can replace WPF in delphi . what are the drawbacks Dxscene and VGscene have or what are the drawbacks WPF have ,
There are only a little articles about them in internet (google gave me millions of results but most of them repeated 2 articles which was published in KSDEV)
VGScene and DXScene can be compaired to WPF for the rendering result.
I think VG/DXScene are less resource consuming, and what I like against WPF, is that they are not XML-based.
You use regular Delphi components to define your UI.
But the learning curve and the documentation is still a bit lacking for VX/DXScene.
I found out to be a bit difficult to create forms with DXScene. VXScene is perhaps a bit easier to create your UI with the mouse.
I think the full power of these libraries will be obtained using code-generated UI.
I don't like the XML root of WPF. It's verbose, and difficult to work with, with real application with a lot of forms. For some projects, the external WPF designer could be necessary.
But don't ask Microsoft why they don't publish WPF-based applications... and they still use unmanaged code...
VgScene and DxScene are really cool libraries! You can make fast and nice looking GUI's with all kind of effects. It also has a grid component now!
But when I tried using them, I encountered some "drawbacks": there is little documentation how to make and what to use for a complex GUI (there are some nice demo's for simple GUI's though). So it has a relative high learning curve (when you only have VCL knowlegde because it is very different).
But besides these things, I think it is worth trying (only if you know how to do it and/or spend some time learning). It has good platform support (via FPC and OpenGL) so you can run it also on MacOs, Linux and iPhone/iPad!
Since they do not depend on WPF, they can be used for cross platform development in Lazarus/CodeTyphon. That is the main advantage for me. Drawback is documentation.
If you were to buy one control suite for WPF, which would it be?
EDIT - I know that this is vague and understand that the answer might be different depending on the exact requirements. I guess what I'm getting at is that there are numerous WPF control libraries out there (e.g. Infragistics, Telerik, Syncfusion to name but a few) and instead of forking out for a different one per project because that is the best fit right now, based on experience with costs, upgrades, support, etc. who would you choose as a "preferred" supplier?
Going on the assumption that you are looking for the best control suite, to suite most general purpose uses, I'd recommend telerik. They have a pretty wide range of controls, in basically every UI platform on the Microsoft stack. WPF, WebForms, WinForms, Silverlight, and ASP.NET MVC.
I think what I have learnt from this and from looking around at all of the different vendors is that they really do all offer something slightly different in different areas. To pick a suite before confirming your requirements is not sensible.
Having determined your high level requirements you can then go through each of the suites and find the short list of vendors who do what you need.
In the meantime, I think I'm going to still with Infragistics (if anyone's interested)
I would buy me a Visual Studio license with all the standard controls.. harrr
Surely it would depend on what controls you wanted? Or your budget? This is kind of a vague question since it depends heavily on the requirements.
Personally I've only used some of Actipro's stuff but it seems well written.
Try the WPF Toolkit from Microsoft, its even free...
I use Telerik WPF Controls about a year. Great controls with good support.
You should definitely evaluate DevExpress.
Their WPF and SL controls have the same foundation = same functionalities, same APIs.
Their grid is available for Winforms, ASPx, MVC, WPF and SL.
Their control set is one of the best there is.
http://community.devexpress.com/forums/p/95200/327082.aspx#327082
We are implementing an application that needs dockable windows, similar to Visual Studio 2005/2008, but with multiple "docking sites", unlike VS's single one. Does anyone have a recommendation on a good library for this - either OSS or commercial? I am aware that Infragistics has one, as well as Divelement's SandDock and WPF-Dock from DevComponents, as well as ActiPro's Docking & MDI product. There is also one on CodeProject. Has anyone used any of these libraries? Was the experience good or bad? If you have experience with one of them, does it support multiple "docking sites"?
The one from Codeproject is the AvalonDock - we use it for more then half a year now, but we're far from release yet so we have the flexibility. Before ending up with AvalonDock we tried Infragistix, ActiPro, SandDock and may be some others.
Even though AvalonDock is not 100% bug free (well what is?) there are no major ones, it is very stable, fast and has all the functionality. It does support multiple docking sites.
Its an open source project and is in active development, so bugs are beeing found and fixed. Good experience so far.
I've been using the ActiPro library for several months and it's done me well. It does support multiple docking sites. The support is outstanding and you get some other controls (date picker, etc) that are missing from WPF. To me, for $150 it's money well spent. It worked out of the box, no fuss.
We used to use Divelements for WinForm controls but we think Actipro has better support, so we switched for WPF.
Just my two cents.
Don't forget AvalonDock on GitHub (part of WPF Toolkit). I've seen it mentioned in other places.
Initially I was going to use the ActiPro library (mostly because I am already using their ribbon), but I might give AvalonDock a chance since it is open source.
Anybody have any feedback/comments on AvalonDock?
I use DotNetBar, because it has ribbon/dock and more controls, and it's inexpensive. It's great.
http://www.devcomponents.com/dotnetbar-wpf/
SandDock is alright. We used it for a POC phase of a project. I found some pretty bad bugs in their layout saving mechanism. It generated XML, but then couldn't load this XML back; it threw an exception! I actually read through all the generated XML and had to write code to modify the XML slightly after each time it was generated. It did not seem like it was a well thought out design; I was hoping for common WPF base types like
Infragistics is a bit better but buggy. In fact, if you try running it on a machine that only has .Net 3.0 and no .Net 3.5, it doesn't work correctly. Have an outstanding dev issue with Infragistics and I don't know if they've made any progress on a fix for this. I've also had it crash a few times when floating a window and dragging it around (suspect this has to do with the .Net 3.0/3.5 issue above). I've found styling this control to be pretty un-intuitive.
I tried all the libraries listed here and they're all buggy to some extent. Although they are pricy I would recommend Telerik and Infragistics. Nevron merits a mention because their library is the best I've seen but it's for WinForms.
1 year later ...
AvalonDock is now stable and robust.
There's also an "AvalonDock wrapper" that simplifies working with it without reducing its possibilities.
See http://sofawpf.codeplex.com/
Here is another one:
http://www.essentialobjects.com/Products/EOWpf/DockView.aspx
This one has a number of built-in skins that you can switch dynamically. It also has many individual controls (such as a "Splitter" control) that you can use independently.